Is Mary Magdalene the Red Haired Lover depicted in thousands of Love Quotes?

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
⁷ Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned. (Song of Songs 8: 6-8)

Have you ever wondered about Jesus’ love life and his sexuality? Did Jesus desire Martha or Mary Magdalene with the intensity reflected in the Song of Solomon, also known as the Song of Songs, quoted above?

The Church teaches that Jesus was a king as powerful and wise as King Solomon, but maintains, unlike Solomon who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, Jesus was celibate. He resisted all temptation to give in to sexual desire.

The recent Dan Brown book “The Da Vinci Code” suggests otherwise. “The Da Vinci Code” suggests that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and that Jesus fathered a female child. Although the book is immensely popular, many prominent church theologians adamantly refute the claim that Jesus was married or that he fathered a child.

In my view, Dan Brown has done Christianity a great service. Christianity needs to get over its prudishness. Love and sexual desire can be dangerous. It is like fire. Yet, without fire, we humans will remain like people who have not experienced the benefits of fire.

One would think the Gospel and Jesus would show us how to love one another as passionately as the Woman and the Man in the Song of Songs.

Consider this quote:

I slept, but my heart was awake.
Listen! my beloved is knocking.
“Open to me, my sister, my love,
my dove, my perfect one;
for my head is wet with dew,
my locks with the drops of the night.”
³ I had put off my garment;
how could I put it on again?
I had bathed my feet;
how could I soil them?
⁴ My beloved thrust his hand into the opening,
and my inmost being yearned for him.
⁵ I arose to open to my beloved,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh,
upon the handles of the bolt.
⁶ I opened to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and was gone.
My soul failed me when he spoke.
I sought him, but did not find him;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
⁷ Making their rounds in the city
the sentinels found me;
they beat me, they wounded me,
they took away my mantle,
those sentinels of the walls.
⁸ I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if you find my beloved,
tell him this:
I am faint with love. (Song of Songs 5: 2-8)

In my Master’s thesis, “Mary Magdalene: Her image and relationship to Jesus”, I suggest that Martha is the beloved wife of Jesus the Teacher.

In Luke 10:40, Martha is concerned about all the work a household full of disciples demands. She says: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

The Lord answers: ⁴¹ “Martha, Martha you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Martha is the wife, the housewife of the Gospel. In my view, this is why Jesus calls her Martha, not once but twice and why Martha calls him Lord. Martha is an Aramaic word that means Lady. Many people miss this fact.  For 2000 years, many people like Dan Brown have insisted that Mary Magdalene, not Martha, was and is the Bride and the Church that Jesus gave himself up for (Ephesians 5:24). My thesis maintains that Mary chooses not to “help” Martha with her housewifely duties and upholds the fact that Jesus tells Martha that Mary’s choice will not be taken away from her. It is the better choice because Mary goes and anoints Jesus the “good teacher” in a sensual way that shocked people to challenge the hypocrisy and double standard within Patriarchy.

In the Song of Songs, the Woman wisely scorns the Man who offers her all the wealth of his house. Like the Rich Person of the Gospel, when the “Good Teacher” asks her to give up all her wealth to become one of his beloved companions, the Woman chooses not to give into this temptation. Instead she holds to her faith and to this song sung by faithful women down through the ages, trusting that the Man who loves her, will revive her with his beautiful singer’s voice when she is faint with love.

Consider this quote:

O you who dwell in the gardens,
my companions are listening for your voice;
let me hear it.

¹⁴ Make haste, my beloved,
and be like a gazelle
or a young stag
upon the mountains of spices!

Some people who have read my book “The Ecumenical Affair” are shocked and offended. In my book, I reveal an erotic affair that really and truly happened during an international religious conference.

In “The Ecumenical Affair,” I weave in quotes from the Song of Songs and other Gospel texts to suggest that the Woman having the affair sees herself as the Woman of Song of Songs. She’s not a prostitute. She’s a homemaker whose marriage is dead.  Her marriage doesn’t have the spark, the passion of the Song of Songs. This adulterous affair and its exilic aftermath causes her like Mary Magdalene to mistakenly see her adulterous lover as the Gardener, the man of Song of Songs.

I think what is shocking and offensive about “The Ecumenical Affair” is the idea that I have suggested that the Greek, the Woman’s adulterous lover, is Jesus the Teacher.  One would think that the Greek, his wife and the ecumenical community of faith would see this as flattering. However, for the moment, this does not seem to be the case.

I think people’s reaction to my book may be similar to the photo someone tweeted of a naked woman walking down the street wearing only paint. Looking at the photo, it is obvious that people have noticed and are pretending not to have noticed. Similarly, with my book, people have noticed and are not sure how to react. What they see is beautiful and artistic. And yet, it challenges their morality. It asks. “Is the Jesus worshipped by millions over the years as God incarnate the man caught in adultery? Is this his human side, the side more like King Solomon and his father, King David than the church allows people to admit?”