Questions · Straight Answers
Did Jesus Kiss Mary Magdalene?
One ancient text raises the question: the Gospel of Philip, a third-century Valentinian anthology, says the Savior loved Mary Magdalene more than all the disciples and 'used to kiss her' — and then the papyrus breaks off exactly where the location of the kiss would be. Here is the actual damaged text, the ritual meaning of kissing in the same gospel, and the honest answer about what the sources do and don't say — including about a marriage, which none of them mentions.
The passage, holes and all
Here is the famous sentence as the manuscript actually preserves it, in Mark M. Mattison's public domain translation of Nag Hammadi Codex II — brackets marking where the papyrus is gone:
“The Wisdom who is called ‘the barren’ is the Mother [of the angels] and [the] companion of the [… Mary] Magdalene [… loved her] more than the disciples [… he] kissed her on her [… many] times. The rest of […] they said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’”
And the Savior's answer, which survives intact, is about sight, not romance: when the light comes, the one who sees will see, and the blind will stay in the dark. Whatever the kiss meant, the text's own punchline is that Mary perceived what the others didn't. Read the full context in the complete Gospel of Philip.
What's actually in the hole?
“Kissed her on her mouth” is a reconstruction — a plausible guess at a gap roughly one short word wide. Scholars have also proposed “forehead,” “cheek,” and “feet,” all of which fit the space and all of which have early Christian parallels. Editions that print “mouth” without brackets are filling the hole silently; that is precisely what this library's standards forbid. The honest report is: the manuscript says he kissed her often, and where, we genuinely do not know.
The kiss in Philip's own theology
A few pages earlier, the same gospel explains what kissing means in its community — and it is not courtship:
“The perfect are conceived and begotten through a kiss. Because of this we kiss each other too, conceiving from the grace within each other.”
In Valentinian practice the kiss is a sacrament of transmission — grace passing mouth to mouth the way word and breath do, and early Christians broadly exchanged a “holy kiss” (Paul commends it four times). Read inside Philip's own frame, Jesus kissing Mary “many times” is a claim about teaching and transmission: she received more because she could hold more. That is exactly the claim the Gospel of Mary dramatizes when Peter objects that the Savior spoke to her privately.
“Companion”: what koinōnos means
Philip twice calls Mary the Savior's koinōnos — Greek for partner, sharer, associate. The New Testament uses the word for Paul's coworker Titus and for business partners in a fishing operation. It can be warm; it is not “wife” (Greek had a word for that, gynē, which no source applies to Mary). In a gospel whose central sacrament is the “bridal chamber” — the reunion of the self with its heavenly counterpart — companionship language is doing theological work, not documenting a household.
The marriage claim, checked
No ancient source — not Philip, not Mary, not the canonical gospels, not the church fathers who catalogued every heresy they could find — says Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. The chain of the modern claim runs through nineteenth-century speculation, the 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, which put the Philip passage — hole silently filled — into a courtroom-confident speech. A 2012 papyrus scrap dubbed the “Gospel of Jesus's Wife” briefly seemed to add evidence; its owner's story collapsed under investigation and it is now widely regarded as a modern forgery. What the real texts give us is stranger and better documented: a tradition that remembered Mary as the disciple who understood — and communities that fought about it. For that story, see Was Mary Magdalene an apostle?
Read it yourself
The complete Gospel of Philip and the complete Gospel of Mary are on this site, free, with every gap shown as a gap. The most famous hole in ancient literature is exactly where we left it.
Common questions
Does the Gospel of Philip say Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth?
Not quite — the manuscript is damaged at exactly that word. The surviving text reads '[… he] kissed her on her [… many] times.' 'Mouth' is a scholarly guess for the hole, printed in brackets in honest editions. The same gospel describes kissing as a ritual by which 'the perfect' conceive grace in one another, which is the context most scholars read the passage in.
Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene married?
No ancient text — canonical, gnostic, or otherwise — says they were married. The Gospel of Philip calls Mary the Savior's 'companion' (koinōnos), a word that can mean partner or associate; the Gospel of Mary says he 'loved her more than us.' The marriage narrative comes from modern fiction, most famously The Da Vinci Code.
What does 'companion' (koinōnos) mean in the Gospel of Philip?
Koinōnos is Greek for partner, associate, or sharer — used in the New Testament for business partners and fellow believers. It can carry an intimate sense but does not mean 'wife'; Philip's own theology pairs every believer with a heavenly counterpart, which is the register its Mary passages inhabit.
Why is the Gospel of Philip damaged at exactly that spot?
Coincidence, not conspiracy: NHC II was buried for sixteen centuries and the papyrus decayed where it decayed. Dozens of other passages in the same codex have identical holes. The kiss passage's lacuna is famous only because of what readers hope was in it.
Where can I read the actual passage?
On this site — the complete Gospel of Philip in Mark M. Mattison's public domain translation, with every bracket and gap printed exactly where the manuscript has them.