The Gospel of Mary Magdalene Explained

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jeremy Payton, a paperback seen at an angle.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is the gospel in which Mary is not a penitent but a teacher. After the resurrection the disciples are afraid. So Mary stands up, consoles them and passes on what Jesus told her alone: a path of inner knowledge. Then Peter objects, because he will not take such teaching from a woman. For centuries the text stayed hidden. Finally, in the late nineteenth century, it came back to light, and this book explains what it says.

Above all, this is the book for anyone who has heard of Mary Magdalene as the first apostle and wants to know what her gospel really teaches. You need no Coptic and no prior reading, because Jeremy Payton starts from the discovery and then takes the gospel one theme at a time.

What is inside

Origins and discovery. Where the gospel came from, how it vanished, and how it turned up again in the late nineteenth century.
The text. What the gospel says, theme by theme, and what its teaching on inner knowledge means.
Mary Magdalene in Christian tradition. How the Gospels and the apocrypha portray her, and how her image changed over the centuries.
Theology. What the gospel implies for the teachings of Jesus, for the place of women in the Church and for the path to enlightenment.
The gospel today. Why Mary still speaks to modern readers, and what her gospel offers them.

Between them, these parts follow one thread: a woman who taught, and a Church that later forgot her. In the end, the book answers the question that the gospel raises: what did Jesus tell Mary that he told no one else?

How the text is presented

First of all, this is a study of the Gospel of Mary, not an edition of the text. The gospel survives in a single damaged manuscript, with pages missing at the start and in the middle. So the book reads it theme by theme, explains what each part says and sets it beside the other early Christian writings. If you want the bare text, look elsewhere. If instead you want to understand it, this is the book.

The writing is plain, current English. The chapters follow a fixed order, so you can read the book straight through or open it at the part you are after. Finally, a corrected and improved edition came out in September 2025.

What readers say

Two verified purchasers, one in the United States and one in Canada:

I learned so much in the details about her life and who she truly was. It helped me dive deeper into this beautiful person.
Nica, Amazon, December 2025