Here, Griffith-Jones (Master of the Temple Church, London; The Four Witnesses: The Rebel, the Rabbi, the Chronicler, and the Mystic ) takes a trendy Da Vinci Code topic and provides the scriptural and historical background that gave writers like Dan Brown license to cast Mary Magadalene as Jesus's presumed wife. Following a Gospel survey paying special attention to John's treatment of Mary, Griffith-Jones turns his focus to Gnostic works of the second and third centuries, and herein lies the work's primary strength. Unlike Susan Haskin in the impressive cultural history Mary Magdalene: Truth and Myth , Griffith-Jones here situates Mary in the canonical Christian scripture and then demonstrates Gnosticism's imaginative use of Mary as a site of incarnational theology, sexual dimorphism, and Sophia/Wisdom in creation. In the last chapter, he considers her evolution in aesthetic and cultural terms, with illustrations charting her evolution from repentant prostitute into an eroticized sexual figure embodying physical intimacy with the risen Christ. In Mary, claims Griffith-Jones, we glimpse our fundamental striving to understand what it means to be an embodied human being. An accessible read whose greatest usefulness is its Gnostic analysis; recommended.—Sandra Collins, Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh

Beloved disciple or whore? Was Mary of Magdala married to Jesus? Was she a leader of the early church? Why did Jesus appear to Mary first and instruct her to tell the other disciples about his resurrection? In a brilliant and beautifully written book, Griffith-Jones, master of the Temple Church in London, explores these and other questions. He cannily reads the canonical Gospels side by side and then introduces the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas and Mary, among others, in search of a portrait of the historical Mary Magdalene. Griffith-Jones traces Mary's reputation in the medieval world, using medieval paintings and other artistic images, as well as the writings of mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux, to show how Mary became an object of veneration during the Middle Ages. He concludes this elegant study by observing that Mary Magdalene stands in for the reader of John's gospel, who must go through the whole drama of the gospel in order finally to see what Mary sees in the garden on Easter Day. (Sept.)