In an era that has reclaimed many aspects of the feminine, Margaret Starbird’s The Woman with the Alabaster Jar stands out as a courageous exploration of the scorned feminine in the Western religious tradition. But espousing the marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene created a personal crisis for this Catholic scholar. In The Goddess in the Gospels the author tells how she was guided in her ever-deepening study of the New Testament and the gematria--number coding of the Greek alphabet--by an incredible series of synchronicities that mirror the inner and outer worlds and which reveal the Sacred Marriage of male and female--the hieros gamous--leading to her own personal redemption.

While I liked the basic premise of this book, I just could not come to terms with many of the personal issues that the author spoke about. I wish that Margaret Starbird had left this book as a treatise on hieros gamos and merely explored the concept rather than delving into "synchronicities" and "personal redemption". I had enjoyed reading The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail but this book didn't really cut it. In fact, The Rozabal Line, has given a very interesting take on the whole issue of the sacred feminine be exploring the fact that Mary Magdalene's powers could have been derived from the ancient Hindu feminine trinity of Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kali.

This is the book that changed my life. I read it and I began my spiritual spiral towards feminist religion. Margaret Starbird was a Roman Catholic when she read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a book that dared to suggest that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalen and that their descendants carried on his holy bloodline in Western Europe.. Her theological beliefs were profoundly shaken, so she set out to refute the book, but instead found evidence for the existence of the bride of Jesus. Mary Magdalene was the same woman who anointed him with precious unguent from her "alabaster jar."

This book is part non-fiction thesis proving that Mary Magdalene was the bride of Christ. Starbird draws evidence from history, heraldry, symbolism, medieval art, mythology, psychology, and the Bible itself. It is also part narrative of Starbird's spiritual crisis. She got to the point that she felt that she was going crazy.

Upon reading this book, I too had a spiritual crisis. Although I was not raised Roman Catholic, I found it amazing that the Church suppressed Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine. I began to fear I was becoming a conspiracy nut. I dreamed that God was talking to me, telling me I needed to investigate the presence of females in religion. I feared that I spiritual crisis would lead to a mental crisis. I read more and more until I realized that I was not alone, and that my beliefs were valid. Then my spiritual journey became a part of my everyday life.

Starbird's The Goddess in the Gospels is a frightening book in it's near-zero use of reason and reasonableness.

The issues in this book are legion, much like the demons in Luke 8:30. But, because I just tied the word "legion" from a Bible passage about demon possession to her book, can I then make the conclusion that Starbird is possessed? No, I cannot. I am just making that connection up. Yet, that's what Starbird does throughout this book. She uses numerology (Greek "Gematria") to draw connections between words from all over history - ancient fertility cults, the Bible, the planets and stars, etc.

Let's look at an example on page 156, in the section where she overviews Gematria. Here Starbird associates 1080 with the numerological value of the letters of the Holy Spirit (gr. to agion pneuma) -- note, she needs the definitive article here to get what she wants. But, she drops the article in other places, with other words. The number 1080 is also "based originally on the calculation of the radius of the moon" and the moon is associated with the feminine throughout the "ancient Middle East" (the "Middle East" here is never defined, no support is given outside conjecture that this is tied together, and the radius calculation is never explained). In Gematria, the Greek word for dove adds up to 801, which is an anagram of 1080 (it is-?)! The dove was later adopted by Christians to represent the Holy Spirit (whose number is 1080). "So by Gematria, the Holy Spirit is linked explicitly to the lunar or feminine principal and to the dove" (pg 156).

This is how she makes connections. The problem with numerology is that you can take all the words you want, transcode them into numbers, and then pick and choose the connections that agree with your theory, and ignore those that don't. If you add the ability to do number anagrams (which she does), you get an unlimited number of combinations you can make. AND when you take into account that ancient texts can have minor variants from their originals (from being copied multiple times) - how do you know you're working with the right one? Finally, on page xvi, she admits herself that she has changed the spelling of certain words she uses (in Magdalene, she has added the `e' at the end, and in hieros gamous, she has added the u). This would change the value of these words, but I am sure these new values help her make new numerical connections. Did she go back and invalidate the old ones-

What gives Starbird peace of mind that she is revealing truth, and not just reveling in delusions? Simple - she is having this "truth" revealed to her by the Holy Spirit through 3 modes (page xi-xii): 1) through connections from her earliest childhood memories, including "blue iris and stone citadels, beloved fairy tales, storybook titles, symbols, and puns", 2) her charismatic community Emmanuel , in which she has had "prophetic revelations" including "timely scriptural passages, locutions, and often startling synchronicities" and 3) Gematria. So, in common terms, she feels revelation is coming to her by 1) childhood memories of fairy tales, 2) people saying what they want (locutions) and coincidence, and 3) numerology where she can make up whatever connection fits her model.

Addressing priest sexual abuse, priest celibacy, and looking to empower women are all noble aims. Doing it with nonsensical quackery is not helpful. For shame on Dan Brown for referring to her as an authoritative source in the Da Vince Code (page 253, DVC).

Occasionally, when criticisms of Margaret Starbird's work appear, they tend to be uninformed.

Margaret Starbird is a scholar of comparative literature, with a focus on scriptural texts and Medieval traditions. Her academic training is impressive. She completed both a BA and MA in Comparative Literature and German at the University of Maryland. After that, she studied for a year on a Fulbright Student Fellowship to Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany. She then pursued Doctoral studies in German, Comparative Literature and Linguistics at the University of Maryland. Following that, she studied at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Theological Studies.

Margaret taught university German as full-time faculty at the University of Maryland and North Carolina State University. Following that, she was faculty, teaching religious education and scripture course for a variety of schools, including U.S. Army schools and Roman Catholic parishes. While doing her academic work and teaching, she was moving across the globe with her husband, an officer in the military, and rasing their five children.

Margaret is the author of six or more books, some of which have sold many thousands of copies and been translated into several languages.

Margaret knows her scriptural texts, she has analyzed and compared them extensively, can quote or cite them at length from memory. She also has a gift of finding deeper paralells and meanings embedded in the texts. She excavates patterns and connections, opens new meanings previously locked within texts. She has an ability to connect stories, symbols, and traditions to a 21st-century mindset, making them live in contemporary society. She is not just a scholar, she's an inspired scholar.

It's easy to criticize others' work, but harder to produce something of meaning and value. Unless one is an author or scholar, one cannot appreciate Margaret's knowledge, skill, comfort with her area, nor her ability to speak about texts eloquently and inspire readers to find deeper meanings in them.

Margaret never claimed to be an historian; she does literary and theological interpretations of scriptural texts. She's not using historical method--she's doing feminist and rhetorical readings.

Meanwhile, even historians don't view biblical texts as literal history.

After reading "The Da Vinci Code," I started tracking down Dan Brown's sources, mostly to verify if his research is as sound as he presents it to be. Among the books mentioned were Margaret Starbird's two books dealing with Mary Magdalene. Knowing nothing about Ms. Starbird and judging by the title of "The Goddess in the Gospels," I expected a scholarly, historical and exegetical work which would shed light on biblical material.

Instead, I waded through page after page of painfully atrocious writing dealing mostly with Ms. Starbird's conflicted beliefs, crisis of faith, disappointment with the Catholic Church, struggle with mental illness, as well as some of the wildest connections ever made between unrelated events (e.g. the tragedy of the Challenger was a sign that the Catholic Church is corrupt). Along with these, there are plenty of so-called "prophecies," which basically consist of Starbird matching biblical passages to important events in her life, and of the "signs" that Emmanuel, the charismatic group she is part of, receives through the years. None of these, of course, have any scholarly or objective validity.

If you expect (as I did) to read new interpretations of obscure biblical passages or descriptions of historical evidence, you are out of luck. Since Ms. Starbird has little training as a theologian, biblical scholar, biblical exegete, etc., it is not surprising that all her information comes from already existing studies, so her contributions to the topic of Magdalene are minimal. She also makes grave, inexcusable errors, such as conflating Mary Magdalene with Luke's sinner, with the adulteress, and with Mary of Bethany. While some of these identifications were made by Gregory the Great, there is absolutely no evidence in the Gospels that Magdalene is all of these women, and serious scholars have long disputed the conflation. Ms. Starbird also seems to regard "Magdalene" as a personal epithet, without seeming to realize that it simply points to Mary's town of origin: Magdala or Migdol. Aside from these errors, there are references to books like "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," from which Ms. Starbird got the idea of the marriage; I will not deny that "HB, HG" is an entertaining read, but it is also based on a hoax (apparently, the authors themselves have realized that in the past years; maybe they should give Ms. Starbird a call).

The realization of the elimination of women from the structure of the Church is praiseworthy, but not new. If you want to learn more about it, and about the true, historical Magdalene, I highly recommend a scholarly book written by Dr. Susan Haskins - "Mary Magdalene - Myth and Metaphor." I was somewhat impressed when I saw that Starbird also consulted this book, but aside from ripping some of its more sensational discoveries, little of its serious research found its way into the pages of "The Goddess." For those interested in the Gnostic Gospels, I recommend Dr. Elaine Pagel's book.

All in all, "The Goddess" is a highly misleading book - it promises scholarly analysis and delivers the crazed autobiography of a self-proclaimed prophet (or, what ignorance does when allowed to run rampant).