>>a very different picture of Mary Magdalene -- one of a disciple rather than a prostitute and supplicant, and a very different view of women in that time.

as always, the question to be asked is: why was this suppressed?

Author Laurie King, in one of her fiction series about
Sherlock Holmes and his heretofore-unknown assistant, brings up this very thing. In fact, the name of the book is
'A Letter of Mary'. The assistant stumbles across a letter supposedly written by Mary in which she refers to herself as a disciple.

I don't know what, if any, research Ms. King did, but her reason given in the novel was that it was suppressed in order to maintain male dominance (or the appearance of it).

I very much enjoy reading her books, incidentally, because she is an author who actually uses language that requires a higher than elementary-level education to comprehend.