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>In the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, the feminine incarnation of Wisdom, Sophia, is oppressed by a seven-headed dragon in the same way that Satan as the Red Dragon in the Book of Revelation stalks after the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet”, who is pregnant with child, and thus symbolic of the Virgin Mary. The apocalypse tells how the newborn is snatched by God or an angel before the great battle with Michael and the angels. The story is similar to a Greek myth about the newborn god Apollo shooting dead the dragon Python as it chased his mother Leto, the daughter of the sun and the moon. A Jesus sect known as the Montanists, led by a former priest of Apollo, were known to have used the Gospel of John and so may have helped shape the editing of John's apocalypse
>In the Toledot, Mary Magdalene is not the wife of Yeshu but his mother. The Toledot translates the Aramaic name Magdala as hairdresser, rooted in the word gadal, to weave. At the time, this was a popular euphamism for a prostitute. The Toledot's etymology for Magdala is somewhat corroborated by a tenth century Arabic-Syriac lexicon that substantiates the identification, saying the name Magdalene was given to her because her hair was braided. Since the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene both assume the role of the metaphysical fallen Sophia in Gnostic literature, it's possible to see how Mary the hairdresser could have been fictionalized by the Gnostics as the symbol for fallen wisdom, becoming the spiritual wife to Jesus as the Logos. Following this background, it is easy to see how later Literalist editors adopted the spiritual mother/wife Mary figure and, being confused by the dual role, split her as being a completely different person. Just as the early figure of Judas was split into Judas Iscariot and Judas Thomas in later gospels, so too did Mary Magdala split into the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene
