The Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Mary is an early Christian text, preserved only in part, in which Mary Magdalene emerges as a teacher who consoles the disciples after the departure of the Saviour and relays a private vision he entrusted to her.

Her teaching maps the soul's ascent past the powers that would hold it in the material world, and centres inner knowledge over external authority. The dispute it stages — Peter doubting that the Saviour would confide in a woman — dramatises an early contest over spiritual authority and gender.

Rediscovered in the modern era, it has become a touchstone for reconsidering the diversity of earliest Christianity and its suppressed contemplative and visionary streams.