Author Description

Detailed, poetic, and fully human, this is a thrilling novel, a powerful evocation of a Mary Magdalene who was in her own right a philosopher, a traveler, a teacher, and a prophet. This Mary Magdalene was much more than a wife, much more than a favored follower, more even than the Beloved Disciple. Mariamne Magdal-eder "knew the All." And while the popular view of the Magdalene has lately begun to change its shape from repentant sinner to Beloved Disciple, few speak of what "knowing the All" actually means. KNOWING THE ALL is the heart of the Christ's original Gnostic teaching. It was the Apostle Paul's message, his "revelation of the Lord" that blinded him on the road to "Damascus." It was the very heart of early Christianity. Still beating, Gnosis, or "knowing," was cut out of the body of the Church more than sixteen hundred years ago—and was then buried so deeply and for so long, all involved lived and died in the belief it could never come again. But it has. With the discovery in 1945 of the Nag Hammadi codices, perhaps the last of their kind, Mary Magdalene has returned to us in the full splendor of her original form. The Secret Magdalene is not only a painstakingly researched portrait of a great woman who was wise beyond her time and her place, it is a portrait of the search for GNOSIS—the individual's direct experience of God.