Mary Magdalene Unveiled (2023)

Mary Magdalen Unveiled. Hidden Sources Restore her Broken Image.
Including a commentary on the Gospel of the Beloved Companion that emerged in 2010

Synopsis Mary Magdalene Unveiled
Synopsis short Mary Magdalene unveiled

The Gospel of the Beloved Companion. Why has the question of the author of the fourth
gospel of the disciple Jesus loved become relevant again? Recently, a new apocryphal gospel
has surfaced that few people have heard of. It is about the Gospel of the Beloved Companion,
which was returned to the world in 2010.1 This Gospel of Miryam de Migdalah or Mary
Magdalene shows remarkable parallels with the fourth gospel by the hand of the beloved
disciple. There are many similarities in the structure and historical framework and often
the word usage is literally the same. Why is this so? To find out, I’m going to compare
these two texts in Part II. But before moving on to the text comparison, I will discuss the
background in Part I.

PART I. The first part ‘Backgrounds’ is structured as follows.
• In Chapter 1, I present the latest research on female leadership in the early Jesus
movement.
• Chapter 2 contains information about the early Christian sources, canonical and extra-
canonical. Why is this necessary? This is necessary for Part II. In part II hidden or
apocryphal sources are discussed and it is good, prior to the quotations that pass in
part II, to provide background information on these texts. This chapter 2 is therefore
a kind of preparation for Part II. I will discuss the background of the fourth gospel
of ‘John’, but also provide information about numerous apocryphal texts, including
Mary Magdalene in particular.
• In Chapter 3, I discuss the 2010 gospel of Miryam de Migdalah or Miryam the Toweress,
the ‘Exalted One’. The document was written by Mary Magdalene herself.

PART II. In this section ‘The Public Years’, I walk – using the fourth Gospel of the Beloved
Disciple of Jesus, traditionally called ‘John’ – through the public years in which Jesus
and Mary Magdalene acted together. Those public years span years 29 through 33. I order
events chronologically. I will examine how they succeed each other over the years 29,
30, 31, 32, and 33. I will start from the fourth Gospel of the Beloved Disciple. Despite the
many similarities, this appears to deviate from the Gospel of Miryam de Migdalah in some
fundamental places. The fourth gospel omits just those places that in Miryam’s account
prove her important position next to Jesus and her leadership after his resurrection.

An inseparable cohesion? The titles of the two Gospels alone make it clear that there is
a connection.
• The canonical fourth gospel was written by “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” or the
“Beloved Disciple”.
• The apocryphal gospel of Miryam, which only came out of the mystery in 2010, is
called, in the words of the translator, the Gospel of the Beloved Companion, or the
‘Beloved Companion’.
According to the translator Jehanne de Quillan, who literally follows the Ancient Greek
in Miryam’s account, it says: the Gospel of Miryam de Migdalah, the Companion and Beloved by Yeshua.1 She then abbreviates that to ‘the Beloved Companion’. In one text it
is about a beloved disciple, in the other it is about a beloved companion. In both cases it is
about someone whom Jesus loved. In the canonical fourth gospel it is about a male beloved
disciple, in the apocryphal gospel it is about a female beloved companion. The big question is
this: Is the Beloved Companion the original author of the Beloved Disciple’s Fourth Gospel?
Can the text comparison clarify this?

PART III. In the third part I give a summary of what was found in Part II about Mary Magdalene.
On this basis we can restore her broken image. Then I will discuss its significance
for people today. In the closing paragraph I explain why I chose the title Mary Magdalene
Unveiled.

Worked with passion. I have worked on this book with incredible pleasure and dedication.
It is as if all kinds of threads that I have spun on all my life come together in a weaving, of
which I am only now starting to distinguish the underlying pattern. I have been taken by
the hand of Providence all my life, it seems in retrospect. Nothing has been for nothing. All
that I have gained from years of intense study, I was able to put to use in writing this book.
 
Grateful. That fills me with great gratitude. Mary Magdalene and Jesus have come a lot
closer. They have come into my heart more. I feel deeply connected to them, connected to
who they are now. This is partly because my respect has grown enormously about what
they have put together in Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era. It turned out to
be quite exciting to follow them through their public years using hidden sources.

Time travel. I hope that you, reader, can feel and experience the passion, the gratitude,
the dedication and finally the full and unconditional commitment with which I spent
months researching and writing continuously. Immerse yourself in the Palestine of Jesus’
and Mary Magdalene’s time. Join me on a time journey in Part II, first to the past and then
in Part III to the present and future. May Jesus’ and Mary Magdalene’s blessing continue
to rest on this work …

Annine van der Meer