"Pray in the Place Where There is No Woman": Mary in the Dialogue of the Saviour

• Author / Creator

  Cwikla, Anna

• One of the Dialogue of the Saviour’s most prominent features is the female character Mary who participates with other disciples in a discussion with Jesus. Most texts in the Nag Hammadi codices including the Dialogue of the Saviour have been traditionally labeled as Gnostic. This study demonstrates the problems with the term, its influence on scholarship specifically on the so-called Gnostic Mary, and the ways in which it inevitably fails as a useful descriptive category, especially with respect to creating an artificial uniform character as the Gnostic Mary. This work then proceeds to consider a number of frequently overlooked issues including the unspecified identity of Mary in the Dialogue of the Saviour and the gender construction in the socio-historical context of the Dialogue of the Saviour.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Women
  • Gospel of Mary
  • Gospel of Thomas
  • Gender
  • Nag Hammadi
  • Mary Magdalene
  • Gnostic Mary
  • Dialogue of the Savior
  • Dialogue of the Saviour
  • Gnosticism
  • The Gnostic Mary

• Graduation date

  Fall 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3PR7N30H

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.