She was the first to witness the resurrection. She was the first to carry the message. And for fifteen hundred years, the Church called her a prostitute. Mary Magdalene is one of the most recognisable figures in Christian history — and one of the most deliberately distorted. What the earliest gospel texts actually record is a woman of means, a faithful disciple, a healer's devoted follower who stood at the cross when the male disciples had fled, and the singular first witness to the event that became the foundation of the Christian faith. So why was she buried? This book goes back to the earliest surviving evidence to recover the real Mary Magdalene — the woman the texts actually show, before centuries of institutional decision-making replaced her with something more convenient. What the evidence reveals: The canonical gospels name her first among all disciples at the crucifixion, the burial, and the empty tomb She was sent by the risen Jesus himself to carry the foundational proclamation — before Peter, before the Twelve, before anyone The lost Gospel of Mary portrays her as a visionary teacher whose authority Peter actively feared In the Pistis Sophia she asks more questions and receives more answers than any male disciple Pope Gregory the Great's 591 sermon — not scripture — created the prostitute myth that dominated Western Christianity for fourteen centuries The Eastern Church never accepted the conflation and has always honoured her as apostle to the apostles The buried questions this book addresses: Who were the women who funded and travelled with the Jesus movement, and what standing did that give them? What do the Nag Hammadi texts actually say about Mary Magdalene — and what do they not say? How did the formation of the biblical canon erase alternatives that placed women at the centre of spiritual authority? What was the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene — and what can honestly be said about it? Why does her story still sit at the heart of the most unresolved arguments in Christian history? The burial of her authority was not an accident. It was a consequence of decisions made about power, gender, and who gets to speak for God. Her name was preserved. Her witness was recorded. And then, systematically, her meaning was changed. This is the recovery of what was lost.