Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess

While conventional wisdom sees Mary Magdalene as a trollop-turned-saint, recent scholars and popular biographers (including evangelical funny lady Liz Curtis Higgs) have quite convincingly argued that there's no credible evidence that this close disciple of Jesus was ever a lady of the night. Revisionist history, though, takes a turn for the improbable with Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess, Lynn Picknett's overly speculative account of Mary as the ""secret"" goddess of the New Testament and early church. Drawing on several Gnostic texts, Picknett offers both well-worn and new arguments about Mary, who Picknett claims Jesus designated as his true successor. Where some Gnostic texts suggest a sexual relationship between Mary and Jesus, Picknett sees full-blown sexual rituals as de rigueur in the esoteric early church, though they were later suppressed. And while some fanciful (and relatively late) church legends have Mary Magdalene fleeing to ""France"" after Jesus' resurrection, Picknett offers a detailed chapter claiming that this ""French connection"" was not legend but fact. This reformist take on the much-maligned Mary Magdalene is sometimes fascinating, but conjectural and prone to hasty theorizing.