Dan Brown and Nikos Kazantzakis are novelists, not historians.
Nor is the Bible reliable historical evidence.
Neither did they invent Maria Magdalena.
...joining a long tradition of storytelling about this person.
...some of which claim to be eye witness accounts, being weirdly restrained in describing the highly miraculous, placing these miracles against a backdrop of great received wisdom and mundane details, all the while sounding as if they actually have the personal backgrounds, sources and motives they claim to have.
Sure but some stories are a little more reliable than others.
I don’t know. The story that a charismatic 30 year old man has no sexual history is a story I find to be totally unreliable.
Reliability requires some fact checking. Rather impossible in this case
Which do you consider reliable?
especially the ones that talk about people performing magic...