I was raised in the catholic faith, which is full of beautiful stories. But as an adult I’ve always felt more in tune with traditions that include the Goddess. I started reading about the Goddess, all the different ways She was represented throughout Antiquity, with the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans, and it wasn’t long before I found that the Goddess was also represented in the Bible, especially through Mary Magdalene’s life.

The story I wrote just jumped off the pages while I was reading the New Testament. I was exhilarated with the discovery that my adult spirituality and experience of the feminine aspect of God is not a denial of my upbringing – rather it is rooted in the indelible Christian tradition in which I was raised.

When I was little I was told that priests have to be men because they represent Jesus. Well, Mary Magdalene was the first to share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection to the other apostles, the Catholic Church calls her the Apostle to the Apostles. I believe she presents a role model in the Bible for women to be considered spiritual leaders. People of many religious backgrounds are increasingly drawn to that idea.

It’s certainly how Mary Magdalene is portrayed in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary.

This is a good example too of how rich women’s lives were, so much more than we used to believe. We’ve been told for so long that women have always been second class citizens, until the suffragettes, but it’s not true. There is a long history of women in roles of leadership, a history that has been steadily erased even as it was being written.

More and more people are asking me about the Gospel of Mary. There’s a great book on the subject, also called “The Gospel of Mary” by Karen King, Prof. of Divinity at Havard.

One of the key things we learn from the Gospel of Mary – which is part of what we call the gnostic gospels – is that her listeners accepted Mary in a leadership role. We hear Peter being jealous that Jesus favored her, but it was not strange to her listeners that a woman was teaching them. This is not the picture we usually have of Christianity, even in the early days.

From a historian’s perspective the answer is – it’s very likely that Jesus was married. Jesus was a Hebrew man, and Hebrew men were all supposed to be married. There were rules about this. If Jesus had not been married, it would have been noted.

From a storyteller’s perspective, the Bible tells us that Mary Magdalene was always close by – so she’s the obvious one he would be married to.

To me that’s a fascinating proposition – what was that marriage made of, and what role did it play in making this what is often called the greatest story ever told? Would we will still be talking about Mary and Jesus two thousand years later if they had not met?

So right from that, you can tell there was a class of women in 1st century Israel who were powerful and independent. No one comments on the fact they were there. IN the gospel, they comment on every broken rule. Later in the Gospel of Luke, for example, Jesus gets called to task for healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath, because you weren’t suppose to do that on the Sabbath. This was a society that lived with very strict rules for social conduct.

Now in the Old Testament, there are all these stories about priestesses, that is, women priests, who held positions of power in the great Temple of Jerusalem – that was the seat of both the religious and political power in Israel. Priestesses being consulted by kings on what course of action to take, and priestesses trying to block major political actions.

Throughout Antiquity, all religions had both priests and priestesses, to reflect the natural order of life. I think Mary Magdalene was one of these priestesses.

And then only about 25% or so of the people had running water.

The rest of the people in Roman cities lived in neighborhoods as densely populated as Manhattan, but on only five stories and not only that, with their cows and sheep and chicken indoors at night so no one would steal them. You can imagine the stink.

When it comes to Israel itself, I was really shocked to find out how brutal life was for ordinary people under the Roman Empire. I had always pictured 1st century Israel as this peaceful countryside, with old shepherds sitting on the hillside with gentle sheep and little birds flitting around.

In fact, people lived in fear of their lives – this was an harshly oppressed country – even at home, at any minute, Roman soldiers breakdown the door and take whatever they wanted – food, livestock, even their families to sell as slaves. There was no protection and no predictability.

But as much as I did learn, spending weeks and months in specialized libraries, reading journal articles that are only available on microfilm, I was really taken aback by how little information we have about life in 1st century Israel. There’s really only Josephus Flavius, the great historian. Josephus was a Hebrew man born around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and he wrote a history of his people and his own life. That’s the only known eye-witness account of life at that time. With only one perspective, there is no way to corroborate or disprove it. There’s a fascinating book, “Galilee,” by Richard Horsley, Prof. of Religion at U. of Mass., which takes Flavius’s works and shows all the holes in the history of Galilee and Israel, and shows us how many assumptions we’ve made about that time.

Most of all I experienced that pounding merciless sun. I never understood the importance of shade until I went to Israel.

All these, the food and water and the perfume and the sun, were woven in to “Magdala.”

Telling the story of Mary and Jesus being married, this is the sacred re-union.

When you read between the lines, the Bible seems to be telling us that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married – and specifically, that there marriage was a sacred union.

This whole concept is beautifully explained by Margaret Starbird, who wrote “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar.” By the way, a lot of “The Da Vinci Code” was based on her book.

In the Bible, Mary Magdalene anoints Jesus with perfume from the alabaster jar. We believe she is enacting a priestess ritual already ancient at the time, called the sacred marriage ritual.

I believe this is our nature. It cannot be suppressed, only repressed. And the time of repression is over.