Phillips: I think most people will be surprised to hear that there is a gospel in which she is foremost among the Apostles.King: According to this Gospel, Mary was the disciple who understood. In these more recently discovered alternative Gospels, Mary emerges as a kind of original feminist, Jesus' most trusted disciple and advisor, and a rival to the apostle Peter, the fisherman thought to be the first head of the church. And that set of images, make for a strong figure.Phillips: Not the shy, retiring, passive type?King: Not the shy retiring, passive type. And later tradition also sees her as someone who was a leader in the church. King: We get these later Gospels that elaborate on these possibilities for what Jesus may have told Mary. These texts have never been recognized by the church, but some scholars say they contain revealing new insights about Mary. вЂњThe Da Vinci CodeвЂќ refers to them as scrolls, but they are, in fact, leather bound books, part of a collection known as the Gnostic Gospels. In December 1945 near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, a peasant smashed open an earthenware jar and pulled out more than 50 ancient texts hidden since the 4th century. They're clues that are, in fact, based on something real. The fictional professor points to some tantalizing clues, buried in the sand for almost 1,600 years, that help explain Mary's secret connection to the grail. And from that point on, in the 6th century, it came to be thought that Mary Magdalene must have been a prostitute.Д«ut the novel's professor, who's trying to unravel the mystery of the grail, suggests something more sinister behind the slander: a conspiracy by the church to hide the true nature of Mary's relationship to Jesus.

But Pope Gregory the Great identified the two and said they were the same. Why would he do that? Many believe he simply mixed her up with another Bible figure, an unnamed prostitute who appears just before Mary is introduced in the Book of Luke.Д«art Ehrman, author of 'Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code': TheyвЂ™re clearly different women. In no text in the New Testament is Mary Magdalene ever said to be an adulterer or a sinful woman.Д®ven so, in a 6th century Easter sermon, Pope Gregory the Great declared that Mary was a prostitute. Ben Witherington, III, Asbury Theological Seminary: No. Phillips: Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute?Dr. That role in his story places her at the center of the Christian message, and, one has to assume, at the center of Jesus' life.ДЇew scholars doubt that Mary was an important follower, but there is another label that has stubbornly shadowed her through the ages - prostitute. And she's said to be the first witness to the resurrection. Stone Phillips, Dateline correspondent: How important do you think she was to Jesus?Karen King, Harvard Divinity School professor: Mary Magdalene had to be one of the most important people in Jesus' life. Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King is an authority on women's roles in the early church and author of a recent book on Mary Magdalene. She lives in our memory as the Biblical figure with the flowing red hair, a fallen woman until she is forgiven by Jesus.

Mary Magdalene was born, it is believed, in the town of Magdala, a fishing village on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. To understand that secret and to separate fact from fiction in вЂњThe Da Vinci Code,вЂќ we pieced together a portrait of the novel's key figure, a woman who lived 2,000 years ago: Mary Magdalene. It might not be a cup at al, but a secret, the author suggests, that would radically change our understanding of Jesus and the life he led. But in вЂњThe Da Vinci Code,вЂќ the grail takes on an entirely new meaning.

In the book, the monk kills the curator in a quest for the legendary Holy Grail, a mythical vessel often thought of as the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. 'Fiction, as if it were fact, as if it were history, and say 'Well, this really rocks my world? What IвЂ™ve always come to understand about Jesus and the Catholic church is suddenly everythingвЂ™s up for grabs and that shakes a lot of people up,вЂќ says NBC News analyst Father Thomas Williams of Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University. But readers are told right from the start that 'all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.' That provocative statement gives an air of credibility to the book's elaborate conspiracy theories and it's caused millions of readers to wonder how much they really know about Jesus and a woman named Mary Magdalene. That scene, from the opening pages of вЂњThe Da Vinci CodeвЂќ is, of course, fiction.

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