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The Da Vinci Code — Mary Magdalene as Jesus's wife

Invented Literature 2003

The novel's central claim rests on a manuscript where the crucial word is physically missing. "Mouth" in "kissed her on the mouth" is an editorial reconstruction of a damaged text.

Context — what the work shows

The novel claims Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, bore his child, and that this was suppressed by the Catholic Church. It cites the Gnostic Gospel of Philip as evidence.

Claimed reference

The Gospel of Philip is presented as containing direct evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married.

Actual reference

The Gospel of Philip (Nag Hammadi codex II, tractate 3; likely 3rd century CE) is a real Gnostic text, but it is outside the biblical canon. The crucial passage referenced has a manuscript lacuna where the key word would appear.

What the text actually says

Gospel of Philip 63:33–64:5: "And the companion [koinōnos] of the [—] is Mary Magdalene. The [—] loved her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [—]." The brackets show the manuscript damage. Editors typically supply "Saviour" and "mouth" but the readings are reconstructions of physical holes in the codex.

Verdict

The novel's textual case for a married Jesus rests on (a) the Gospel of Philip, which is not in any biblical canon (Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant); and (b) a specific passage in that Gospel where the manuscript has a hole exactly where the relevant word would be. The reconstruction "mouth" is a conventional editorial guess; the manuscript itself shows only "kissed her on the [—]." The Gospel of Philip says nothing about marriage or children. No canonical Gospel describes Jesus as married.

What the Gospel of Philip is

The Gospel of Philip is a Gnostic text discovered at Nag Hammadi (Egypt) in 1945. It is preserved as the third tractate in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi library. The text is Coptic — itself a translation from a lost Greek original. Date: most scholars assign the underlying Greek to the late 2nd or 3rd century CE.

The Gospel of Philip is not in any Christian biblical canon — not Catholic, not Orthodox, not Protestant. It was not included in the 4th-century canon-formation conversations preserved in Athanasius, Origen, or the Synod of Hippo. The historical mainstream regards it as a Gnostic devotional text, not a Gospel in the sense of the four canonical Gospels.

The passage The Da Vinci Code uses

The passage Brown’s novel rests on (Gospel of Philip 63:33–64:5) reads, in conservative translation with brackets marking the physical damage to the manuscript:

“And the companion [Greek loanword koinōnos] of the [—] is Mary Magdalene. The [—] loved her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [—].”

Three damage points: the title for Jesus (twice — usually reconstructed as “Saviour”), and the body part Jesus is said to have kissed (usually reconstructed as “mouth” but the manuscript is physically holed at this point).

The conventional reconstruction reads: “And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. The Saviour loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth.” But “mouth” is not in the manuscript — it is an editorial supplement of a missing word.

What “companion” (koinōnos) means

The Greek koinōnos — partner, associate, companion — appears throughout the Pauline corpus (e.g., 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 1:7) in the sense of spiritual or business partner, not specifically spouse. Greek has a different word for spouse (gynē for wife, anēr for husband). The Gospel of Philip’s use of koinōnos does not, on its own, imply marriage.

The passage also does not say “wife,” does not mention children, and does not say anything about marriage as an institution.

What the canonical Gospels say

None of the four canonical Gospels describes Jesus as married. Mary Magdalene is described as:

  • One of the women who followed Jesus and supported the ministry from her own resources (Luke 8:1–3).
  • Present at the crucifixion (Matthew 27:55–56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25).
  • The first witness of the resurrection in John 20:1–18 and the other Gospels.

The medieval conflation of Mary Magdalene with the prostitute who anoints Jesus’s feet in Luke 7 — and with Mary of Bethany — is a separate misidentification. See /entry/mary-magdalene-prostitute/.

What this entry documents

The novel’s textual case is built on a damaged manuscript reading from a non-canonical text. That reading, even if reconstructed in the conventional way, does not say what the novel claims it says. The novel is fiction; the entry simply records the textual situation.