APPENDIX 6
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I have combined and edited the texts of John 2.1–11 (the wedding at Cana) and John 20.11–18 (the garden tomb) and created an imagined, pre-gospel tradition of Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus on Easter Day. This is not meant to represent a historical reconstruction, but a narrative by which women expressed their powerful ecstatic experiences of the resurrection. In doing this, I am attempting to counter the minimalizing or reframing of women’s experiences in the gospels, which were written from a male perspective, and so I have removed all the references to Jesus distancing himself from the women and saying, ‘not yet’. The idea that the two Marys together saw the risen Jesus corresponds to Matthew 28.9–10.
On the third day when Jesus rose from the dead, the mother of Jesus saw him as the bridegroom at a great wedding in heaven. The mother of Jesus said to him, ‘We have no wine.’ Now standing there was a jar of water. Jesus said to her, ‘Fill the jar with water.’ And she filled it up to the brim. She tasted the water that had become wine, and said to him, ‘You have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this and revealed his glory. When the mother of Jesus told the disciples about this, they believed in him.
Mary Magdalene had been standing weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. She turned around and saw Jesus standing there. Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him, ‘Rabbouni!’ Joyfully, she embraced Jesus. He said to her, ‘Go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Compare these with an actual text, a resurrection appearance to James the brother of Jesus which is not found in the New Testament. It comes from the Gospel of the Hebrews, probably second century, quoted by Jerome in Illustrious Men 2; an English translation is given in Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that did not make it into the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2003, p.16).
…[the Lord] went and appeared to James. For James had taken a vow not to eat bread from the time he drank the cup of the Lord until he should see him raised from among those who sleep … The Lord said, ‘Bring a table and bread’… He took the bread and blessed it, broke it, gave it to James the Just, and said to him, ‘My brother, eat your bread. For the Son of Man is risen from among those who sleep.’