Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Philip

There was an interesting little discussion a few days ago on the Crosstalk historical Jesus discussion list. See posts 20652 onwards, the thread titled Mary Magdalene as Jesus' Wife in the Gospel of Philip http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/messages/20652

John C. Poirier pointed out that discussion of the meaning of Mary being Jesus's "companion" (as most of the English translations put it) has focused on the meaning of the Greek loan word koinonos. But the Gospel of Philip also refers to Mary Magdalene using the Coptic word hotre, which has a tenuous connection to marriage in Crum's Coptic dictionary. The ensuing discussion suggests that this is no more a direct statement of Jesus being married to Mary than is the Greek koinonos. I feel that "companion" remains a good translation, since it preserves a certain ambiguity of meaning. In modern English one can refer to one's sexual partner as one's companion, but it's certainly not the primary meaning of the word.