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The Harvard “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” the Gospel of Thomas,
and the Old Saxon Heiland:
Erotic and Allegorical Valences of Jesus’ and Mary Magdalene’s Spousal Relationship
By
Dr. Samuel Zinner 1
Casablanca, Morocco
(http://www.samuelzinner.com/)
The Old Saxon Heiland, which mentions a “wife” of Jesus, is a document whose
authenticity, in contrast to Harvard Professor Karen L. King’s controversial fragment now
known as the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, 2 wherein Jesus speaks of “my wife” (in Sahidic Coptic,
ta-hime), cannot be called into question. 3 By authenticity we do not mean that what the
document relates or reflects is historical fact, but that the document is not a modern forgery.
Heiland is a fully orthodox gospel harmony apparently commissioned by the Munster bishop
Liudger, composed ca. 840 CE in the Werden monastery near Essen in present-day
1 Associate Member, Metaxu Research Consortium. Homepage http://metaxuresearch.org/
2 On the GJW, see the draft of Karen L. King, with contributions by AnneMarie Luijendijk,
“‘Jesus said to them, “My wife”’: A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus,” Harvard Theological
Review Vol. 106 No. 1 (January 2013), under review. Accessed on 19 September 2012 at the
Harvard Divinity School web site http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/researchprojects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife
3 GJW’s authenticity is presently being questioned by authorities such as Christian Askeland
(Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal and Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung,
Münster), Alin Suciu (University of Hamburg), Stephen Emmel (University of Münster),
Wolf-Peter Funk (l’Université Laval, Quebec), Hany Sadak (Coptic Museum, Cairo), Scott
Carroll (Oxford Manuscript Research Group), and David Gill (University of Suffolk). See
Daniel B. Wallace, “Reality Check: The ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Coptic Fragment,” posted 21
September 2012 at http://danielbwallace.com/2012/09/21/reality-check-the-jesus-wife-copticfragment/,
accessed 24 September 2012.
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Germany. 4 Heiland lines 5929-5932, modelled after the Gospel of John 20:15-17, explicitly
call Mary Magdalene “the wife” (obviously of Jesus) in a narrative detailing her encounter
with him in the garden near his tomb:
And straightway she came closer, the wife (uuiƀ), with good will, and recognized her
savior himself. In her love (minnia) she could not refrain, but with her hands she
longed to hold him, the woman (fehmia) to touch the World-Lord. 5
The Old Saxon uuiƀ, like the modern German Weib or Frau, can mean both “woman”
and “wife,” just as can the Sahidic Coptic hime and the ancient Greek gyne. The Old Saxon
noun uuiƀ is transliterated as wif (uu = w; i = i; ƀ = f) and is obviously cognate with English
“wife,” although the latter is unambiguous in modern English.
To discern the particular spousal nuance of uuiƀ as applied to Mary Magdalene in the
Heiland we turn to lines 78-79. Line 78 calls Elisabeth the uuiƀ of Zacharias; this is followed
in line 79 with a synonymous idis, “woman”:
78: His (is) wife (uuiƀ; i.e., wif) did the same.
79: She was an aged (gialdrod) woman (idis). 6
In his German translation of Heiland, Simrok translates uuiƀ with reference to the
Magdalene as Weib, and consistently renders the same word uuiƀ as Weib when used of
Elizabeth in line 78; he renders line 79’s idis as Frau. 7
4 See Gilles Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 99.
5 Mariana Scott, The Heiland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), p. 203.
We have supplied the relevant Old Saxon words from Eduard Sievers, Heiland (Halle: Verlag
der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1878).
6 Our translation from the Old Saxon in Eduard Sievers, Heiland.
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When we compare the Magdalene and Elizabeth Heiland passages, the following
isomorphism comes into clear relief:
Magdalene
uuiƀ = wife
fehmia = woman
Elizabeth
uuiƀ = wife
idis = woman
That the Heiland applies uuiƀ to Mary in a spousal valence is further supported by
traditional (as well as modern scholarly) associations between Magdalene in John 20 and the
Song of Songs. 8 This association is represented also in Christian art. A colour edition of a
German version of a Biblia Pauperum from ca. 1470 that lives at the Bodleian Library
University of Oxford contains a plate depicting the John 20 meeting between Jesus and Mary
Magdalene and applies to Mary the Latin Vulgate text of the bride in Song of Songs 3:4
Tenui eum nec dimittam, that is, “I held him; I will not let him go.” The same plate calls Jesus
“spouse” and Mary “beloved bride.” 9 Such literary and artistic traditions arguably confirm
the spousal valence of the Heiland’s application of uuiƀ to Mary Magdalene.
Medieval sources such as the Heiland and the Biblia Pauperum likely understood
Jesus’ and Mary’s shared spousal relationship in a spiritual sense, given the perennially
7 Karl Simrock, Der Heiland: Nach dem Altsächsischen (Leipzig: Insel, 1959).
8 See Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the
Heart of Christianity (Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, 2010), pp. 221-230.
9 The plate can be viewed online at
http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/detail/ODLodl~14~14~75957~134714:Da
niel-in-the-lion-s-den---Christ-a; accessed 5 October 2012. Another version of the same plate
has been recently drawn into the discussion of the Coptic Gospel of Jesus’ Wife; see Deirdre
Good, “Magdalene: Spouse of Christ,” September 25, 2012, at
http://notbeingasausage.blogspot.it/2012/09/magdalene-spouse-ofchrist.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OnNotBein
gASausage+(On+Not+Being+a+Sausage)&utm_content=Google+Reader, accessed 2
October 2012.
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allegorical Christian exegeses of the Song of Songs (e.g., Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux).
By contrast, the ancient Greater Questions of Mary (Magdalene), cited by Epiphanius in Pan.
26.8.2-3, portrays Jesus’ and Mary’s relationship in starkly physical and sexual terms:
Jesus gave Mary a revelation, taking her aside to the mountain and praying; and he
brought forth from his side a woman and began to unite with her, and so, forsooth,
taking his effluent, he showed her that “we must so do, that we may live”; and . . .
when Mary fell to the ground abashed, he raised her up again and said to her: “Why
didst thou doubt, O thou of little faith?” 10
This narrative is inspired by Genesis 2’s story of Eve being drawn forth from Adam’s
side. The question here is why would Jesus allow specifically Mary Magdalene to witness the
(androgynous) sexual act of union that Jesus performs? It is not inconceivable that the
passage presupposes the idea that Mary and Jesus form a sort of syzygy like Adam and Eve,
and that as such Mary has the right to witness the intimate display. This would seem to be
confirmed by Jesus’ statement to Mary, “We,” that is, Jesus and Mary, “must do this,” that is,
unite sexually. Although the whole episode is midrashic and allegoristic rather than historical,
this by no means implies a non-sexual texture.
The Greater Questions of Mary portrays Jesus as the Adamic androgyne of Genesis, a
primordial human created in the divine “image” and “likeness” which is simultaneously male
and female according to Genesis 1:26-27, and who is therefore bi-sexual or androgynous. The
Gospel of Thomas saying 114 also alludes to the primordial androgyne of Genesis 1 and 2,
10 Wilhelm Schneemelcher, editor, New Testament Apocrypha. Volume 1: Gospels and
Related Writings. Revised Edition. Translated by R. McL. Wilson (Louisville/London: James
Clarke & Co./Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p. 390.
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and it is possible the saying understands Jesus as a New Adam (cf. “the living Jesus,” Thomas
incipit) and Mary Magdalene as a New Eve (cf. “a living spirit,” Thomas 114), who together
constitute the eschatological androgyne, as a sort of re-instantiation of the protological
androgyne of Genesis. 11
The “effluent” mentioned in the Greater Questions of Mary was understood by its
readership as an allusion to the Eucharist. This is in striking accord with the following
Islamic Jesus Eucharistic hadith:
This is the meaning of the Messiah, son of Mary (Peace be upon them!), when he had
water in his right hand and bread in his left hand, “This is my father and this is my
mother.” He made the water father, and he made the food mother, because the water
of the earth is in the place of the semen with relation to the woman. This [the earth]
brings forth from this [water], and this [woman] becomes pregnant from this
[semen]. 12
A Eucharist which substituted wine with water is an attested Ebionite Jewish-
Christian praxis (see Epiphanius, Pan. 30.16). This curious co-incidence between “Gnostic”
and Ebionite Eucharistic conceptions reminds us of Gilles Quispel’s discovery that the
11 For more on this point see Samuel Zinner, “The Gospel of Primordial Androgyny,“
http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/exegesis/the-gospel-of-primordial-androgyny/
accessed 7 October 2012.
12 James Robson, Christ in Islam (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 90; bracketed materials in
original.
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“Gnostic” Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) actually quotes the Jewish-Christian Gospel
according to the Hebrews. 13
Given the existence of texts that understand Jesus’ and the Magdalene’s marriage in
physical as well as allegorical senses, the valence of Jesus’ reference to “my wife” in the
Coptic GJW must remain uncertain. The medieval kabbalistic dual trope of Lady Wisdom as
both mother and bride to the male seeker of truth has ancient roots in texts such as Sirach
15:2: “She (wisdom) will come to meet him like a mother, and like a young bride she will
welcome him” (NRSV). This makes it possible to understand Jesus’ “wife” in GJW in a
mystical sense, possibly referring to Lady Wisdom or to the feminine holy spirit, as in Jesus’
statement recorded in the Gospel of the Hebrews where he speaks of “my mother the holy
spirit,” or as in the Zohar’s depiction of the holy spirit and Shekhinah as the bride of male
mystics.
It is not even clear if the newly unveiled Harvard fragment identifies Jesus’ wife with
Mary Magdalene. It is intriguing to us that the GJW is undeniably cognate to the Gospel of
Thomas, especially logia 101 and 114, the latter of which involves Mary Magdalene. We say
“intriguing” because Quispel has documented some mode of literary relationship between the
Heiland and the Gospel of Thomas possibly involving the Diatessaron as an intermediary. 14
According to Thomas 101, Jesus’ true mother gave him “life.” This seems to be an
allusion to Genesis 3:20’s designation of Eve as “the mother of all the living,” so that Eve
13 G. Quispel, “Das Hebräerevangelium im Gnostischen Evangelium nach Maria,” Vigiliae
Christianae, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1957): pp. 139-144.
14 See Gilles Quispel and J. A. Huisman, “Der Heliand und das Thomasevangelium,”
Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 16, No. 3/4 (Sep., 1962): pp. 121-153; for a critical evaluation of
Quispel’s essay, see Willy Krogmann, “Heliand und Thomasevangelium,” Vigiliae
Christianae, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun., 1964): pp. 65-73; for an assessment of the evidence
presented by Quispel and Krogmann by J. J. van Weringh which in part supports Quispel, see
A. F. J. Klijn, A Survey of The Researches Into the Western Text of the Gospels and Acts.
Part Two: 1949-1969 (Leiden: Brill, 1969), pp. 27-28.
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functions as a prototype of Jesus’ mother the holy spirit who gave him life. Similarly, Paul
(or Deutero-Paul) in Ephesians 5 understands Eve allegorically as the Church who is Jesus’
spiritual wife. Thomas 114 explains that Mary Magdalene will become “a living spirit,” a
transparent allusion to Genesis 2:7, according to which God breathed the breath of life into
the primordial androgyne, thus causing it to become “a living being,” or as some ancient
Latin and Greek versions read, “a living spirit.” (Recall that the Hebrew and Aramaic words
for “spirit” are grammatically feminine). As we have already had occasion to point out, the
opening of the Gospel of Thomas speaks of the “living Jesus,” while the ending of the same
gospel promises that Mary Magdalene will become a “living spirit.” This isomorphism may
reflect the idea that Jesus and Mary constitute the eschatological androgyne, and that they are
at the very least spiritual spouses.
As we noted at the beginning of this paper, the GJW’s authenticity is currently under
heated debate. Timo S. Paananen questions Francis Watson’s logic 15 in the latter’s essay that
argues GJW is a modern forgery based on the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas. 16 Paananen’s
article on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and the Egerton gospel points out some of the cognitive
limitations that are regrettably overlooked by many New Testament scholars, who generally
do not have an interest in psychology or philosophical trajectories such as deconstructionism
that highlight the indeterminate qualities and quantitative boundaries of human knowledge.
Too many scriptural scholars seem to be overly fixated on texts, ignoring the interplays of
ancient orality and textuality, which may call into question the simplistic idea that GJW is
based on a reified “Coptic Thomas,” which seems in turn to overlook the possibility that the
15 Francis Watson, “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: How a fake Gospel-Fragment was
composed,” http://markgoodacre.org/Watson.pdf; accessed 6 October 2012.
16 Timo S. Paananen, “Another ‘Fake’ Or Just a Problem of Method: What Francis Watson’s
Analysis Does to Papyrus Köln 255?”
http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/GJW/Another%20Fake%20Or%20Just%20a%20Problem%2
0of%20Method%20by%20Timo%20S.%20Paananen.pdf. Accessed 6 October 2012.
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latter may itself have been “influenced” by prior oral traditions that emanated from possible
dual Greek/Coptic scribal and/or liturgical settings. 17
As we have argued elsewhere, it is possible that so-called Matthean redactional
phrases could have originated and circulated in oral homilies in various regions decades
before being committed to writing, so that documents containing Matthean (or Lukan)
redactional phrases may still be completely independent of the written gospel traditions, and
may have been written down before or after the publication of canonical Matthew. 18 We do
not claim to have answers to all questions about the interplays between ancient textuality and
orality, but we are convinced there is something operative in this domain that is much more
complicated than just secondary orality and similar paradigms.
Not only psychology and epistemology, but also theoretical physics can be fruitfully
integrated into literary hermeneutics. Few in the humanities are extensively exploring such
possibilities; one who has done so is Elliot R. Wolfson, who integrates particular aspects of
time theory as posited in various modern theoretical physics into literary exegesis by means
of a principle of “timeswerve/hermeneutic reversibility,” 19 a multivalent and simultaneously
synchronic-diachronic paradigm that allows an exegete, within certain controlled parameters,
to interpret later texts through the lens of earlier sources and vice versa, which makes sense if
one accepts the block world model’s temporal simultaneity, which would seem to be
supported by the repeated confirmations of the kinematic effects of Special Relativity. 20
17 This and the following two paragraphs were partly formulated by us during email
exchanges with Timo S. Paananen; the comments above naturally reflect the views solely of
the author of the present essay.
18 Samuel Zinner, The Gospel of Thomas in the Light of Early Jewish, Christian and Islamic
Esoteric Trajectories (London: Matheson Trust, 2011), pp. 3-18.
19 See Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic
Imagination (NY: Fordham University Press, 2005), pp. xv-xxxi.
20 On block world theory, see Vesselin Petkov, Relativity and the Nature of Spacetime
(Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2005).
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Thomas:
As we have suggested in a recent paper on GJW and its relationship to the Gospel of
If a Coptic scribe translating a Greek document that contained recognizable parallels
to Thomas gospel traditions was already familiar with a Coptic rendering of Greek
Thomas, then such a scribe conceivably could have simply reproduced from memory
the relevant lines from the already existing Coptic version of Thomas rather than
going through the unnecessary task of translating afresh and from scratch, so to speak,
the Thomasine parallels word for word from his Greek manuscript. 21
Only after the ink of the Coptic GJW papyrus fragment undergoes scientific testing
will we be in a better position to more deeply discern (or exclude) the possible
interconnections concerning Jesus and Mary Magdalene shared between it and the Gospel of
Thomas on the one hand, and between the Heiland and the Biblia Pauperum on the other.
Samuel Zinner
7 October 2012
Casablanca, Morocco
21 Samuel Zinner, “The Coptic Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (GJW) and the Gospel of Thomas:
Some Preliminary Comparative Explorations,”
http://www.samuelzinner.com/uploads/9/1/5/0/9150250/gjwacademia_edu02.pdf.
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