While the former honorific goes uncontested, the latter, Bourgeault argues, has been conflated with lust or prostitution, although nowhere in the Gospel of Luke is this explicitly stated.1 A dramatic event that unwittingly led many to this conclusion concerns the woman with the alabaster jar. The story, mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tells of a woman who anoints Jesus with an expensive perfume. John's is the only one to name her, and he calls her Mary of Bethany. Only in the Gospel of Luke, however, is it intimated that the woman is a sinner, and with the Pharisee's comment about "what sort of woman this is," one might be inclined to believe her sin is lust.2 In conjunction with the other three Gospels, Bourgeault remarks that this prompted the belief that "since this woman is also identified as Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany must be the same person."3 This image of Mary Magdalene is later solidified in 594 by Pope Gregory the Great who preached, "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be Mary from whom seven demons were ejected according to MarkThis woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts."4 This seemingly logical hypothesis would stand to divide Christians' image of Mary between "penitent whore" and "apostle to the apostles." The confusion of Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene being one and the same serves as the cornerstone of the conspiracy evidenced in The Da Vinci Code, which postulates the clandestine union of Jesus and Mary of Bethany. Toward the end of her examination, Bourgeault articulates her support of this conspiracy, but states that theirs is a union purely spiritual in nature and devoid of physical progeny, which she defines as "Fifth Way" love, a "kind of intense and transforming love, which is really the birth-pangs of union at a higher plane.
