Customer Reviews

The Magdalene Gospel

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Outrageous. Unthinkable. The Gospel as experienced through the lives of the women who followed Jesus, that is The Magdalene Gospel. As a woman feeling out of sink with the rest of the world, no matter where she turns, how refreshing to realize we each in relation to Jesus have our own stories to tell. The Gospel accounts are filled with Jesus' friendships, encounters, even dependence upon women and yet most of my own focus has often been on the men who surrounded Jesus. Why is that? This book touched something deep inside me as a disciple of Jesus Christ, a story crying out to be heard, my own story aching to be told, how I see things, how I express my own relationship with Jesus, different from men and yet just as important and precious in Jesus' eyes. Truly an affirming book. I found myself identifying with Mary, Martha, Mary the Mother of Jesus and others as they each stood at the cross watching their dreams come crashing in around them, sharing their stories as they wait for the break of day, only to be first at the tomb to care one last time for his body in gratitude for all that He had meant to them and all that He did for them. They were no lesser disciples. They were His and they sought to follow their Master no matter what. Well researched. Well written. Readable and affirming for not only women but also men. We can be who we are as we follow the one who came to make us all we are meant to be.

The Bible tells us that females were there, also, when Jesus walked the Earth and proclaimed the Kingdom of God. Though men wrote the Gospels and have received most of the attention among Jesus' disciples, there were the women, also, and it's their perspective that Mary Ellen Ashcroft takes in this slim hardcover.

In a quick, easy-to-follow read, Ashcroft adopts the first person for each character who speaks in this novel: Mary Magdalene, Salome, Martha, Joanna, Rhoda and others. Each tells the effect Jesus had on her life. The tone is dark, dramatic and loving, and the women show emotions that reflect not just a student attitude toward their Teacher, but also motherly and sisterly feelings. The most captivating story to me was the telling of the Biblical woman (Ashcroft names her Lydia) with a longtime discharge of blood, who pushes through a crowd to touch Jesus' robe and be healed.

Like novelist Margaret George, Ashcroft sees a Mary Magdalene who is a smarter-than-average female of her time, and is tormented by various nightmares and demons before Jesus calls her to follow Him. Ashcroft address the age-old assumption of Mary Magdalene as prostitute: "Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute," she writes, "but a young woman straining at the confines of her culture's restrictions on women, and God alone knows how many women like her have been driven to madness over the centuries. Her reputation as a prostitute has been propagated by men who wanted to believe that anything might be possible of a woman who won a place so near the Christ." From a female perspective ... nice.

This book is fiction, a glimpse at what the women who followed Jesus MIGHT have felt and said to each other. I found it respectable, plausible and enjoyable.

If you are looking for an interesting and emotional account of what Jesus meant to some of the women who followed him, you will enjoy this. If you are looking for true scholarship, this is not for you. It's a quick, easy read. You can probably finish it in a single sitting if you are an avid reader.