About

A series of four creative talks that bring together artists, academics and practitioners to discuss, wonder at and amplify the legacy of Mary Magdalene, female spirituality and heresy. These creative talks are part of a wider project, HERESY by Jo Blake; a multi-stranded arts project inspired by the rediscovered Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Few people have heard of The Gospel of Mary – even fewer have read it. Yet this short but powerful text gives a remarkable insight into an early version of the Jesus movement and paints a picture of Mary Magdalene as the disciple who best understood and embodied his teachings. Written in the second century, the gospel offers a counter narrative to the developing orthodox, mainstream, patriarchal Church. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that it ended up being hidden away for 1500 years. Much like a Tibetan “terma”, a hidden treasure, it is a text that went underground until the world was ripe and ready to receive it. Maybe now in the 21st century we are at last able to listen to the words of the only known gospel attributed to a woman.

What is the context in which these words were written, read, buried, and then found? What can these remnants tell us about Mary’s Christianity? What might any of this mean for us today? Drawing from their direct experience with the Gospel of Mary, David Curtis will talk about his relationship to the gospel, and Dr Sarah Parkhouse will take us deeper into Mary’s Christianity and its relationship to the orthodoxy of the Church.

More information about our speakers

Dr Sarah Parkhouse is an academic researcher of early Christianity. She is an expert on the Gospel of Mary in its second century and late antique context, having published her first book on this text: Eschatology and the Saviour: the Gospel of Mary among early Christian dialogue gospels (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She has also published papers on the Gospel of Mary in the journal New Testament Studies, and the books Connecting Gospels: Beyond the canonical/non-canonical divide (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Telling the Christian Story Differently: Counter-Narratives from Nag Hammadi and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2020), which deal with Mary’s gender in antiquity and its reception, the text’s teachings on the afterlife, and the motif of heterodoxy. She has forthcoming papers on the relationship of the Gospel of Mary to the Gospel of John and the late antique reception of the Mary figure in John 20. She currently holds a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester.

David Curtis studied comparative religion at Lancaster University in the early 80s. He then spent most of his working life as a woodworker, but when Mary Magdalene showed up, everything surprisingly changed. He is now an associate tutor with Woodbrooke Quaker College and leads Gospel of Mary study groups. His teaching methods aim to put people directly in contact with the text, without his own views or interpretations getting in the way. David's emphasis is on facilitating a safe and supportive space for the non-judgmental sharing of insight, difficulty, and experience. Vive la difference! He is currently working on a new translation, wanting to make the gospel more accessible for all to read. David’s website: www.theGospelofMary.org

What to expect

The session will be hosted on Zoom, with live captions, and we will send you the join link and information after you book your place.

We will open the Zoom room from 6.45pm if you wanted to join earlier.

Supported by

The Heresy project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and funding from the Kenneth Fund, Northamptonshire Community Foundation.