Mary Magdalene (c.10 BCE-c.74)
Image by Tony Scherman
Essential in our list of women who bore witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was in Jesus’ close circle of friends. She was the first to see the resurrected Jesus, and the only person to whom Jesus made an individual appearance after his resurrection. All four Gospels put Mary Magdalene at the tomb the morning of the resurrection (Matt. 27:55-56, Mark 15:40-41, Luke 23:49, John 19:25-27).
Despite her importance to the telling of the gospel, Mary Magdalene’s legacy has been wrought with misinformation. Describing Mary Magdalene requires separating her from her wrongful associations. It is possible she has been overlooked or looked down upon because of her likely mistaken association with prostitution and ill repute. For those wanting to know the history of Christianity in general and the history of our Mothers of the faith in particular, an accurate report of Mary Magdalene and her true legacy is essential.
This mistaken identity foible regrading Mary Magdalene can be traced to Pope Gregory the Great (?-604) who in 591 preached a sermon in which he assumed that Mary Magdalene was the penitent sinner who washed Jesus’ feet and dried them tenderly with her hair, the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11), and Mary of Bethany. Odo, the second abbot of Cluny (878–942), in the tenth century has also been identified as the one who melded these Bible characters together. Sixteenth-century theologian and biblical scholar Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1455–1536) tried to correct this error and separated Mary Magdalene from the women prostitutes. He was excommunicated for this “heresy.” It was only in 1969 that the Vatican officially corrected Gregory, separating the two Marys, and the penitent sinner (a third person), from one another. By then Mary Magdalene had been identified as a sinner and prostitute for more than one thousand years.
Peter is frequently celebrated as the Father of the Church, but it is Mary Magdalene presented as the model for discipleship in John’s Gospel (John 20:11-18). At the time when Peter and the other male disciples fled, Mary stood loyally at the foot of the cross. She was not only the first witness to the resurrection but was directly commissioned by Jesus himself to carry the message that Jesus had risen from the dead to the disciples. New Testament scholars have long puzzled about the reasons for the two endings in the Gospel of John with Chapter 20 highlighting the role of Mary Magdalene as witness to the resurrection, and chapter 21 highlighting Peter. According to one recent proposal, Chapter 21 was appended at a time when the Johannine community was seeking to integrate with the Christian community that saw Peter as its head, and thus they emphasized Peter’s leadership in this way. Unlike Peter and John, Mary Magdalene has not been celebrated for her closeness to Jesus in the history of Christianity. Instead, she has been cast with suspicion and confusion around her legacy.
The Gospel of Mary is a second century noncanonical document that was officially discovered first in 1945 among a collection of manuscripts at Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt. Two other copies of it were discovered in other places corroborating the document’s authenticity and legitimacy. What is interesting about this document is its presentation of Mary Magdalene as equal to the disciples. It also presents Peter as Mary’s opponent. There is a particularly notable exchange in which Mary is questioned by Peter, then defended by Levi:
In this book [Gospel of Mary], Mary has seen the risen Lord, who has conveyed deep understanding to her. She tries to share this with the men apostles, who are terrified and discouraged. She teaches them assiduously until Peter interrupts in anger, asking, “Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Troubled at his disparagement of her witness and her relationship to Christ, Mary responds, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Saviour?” At this point Levi breaks into mediate the dispute: “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against this woman as if you were Satan himself. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you, indeed, to reject her? Surely the Lord knew her very well. And he loved her more than us.” The result of this intervention is that the others agree to accept Mary Magdalene’s teaching and encouraged by her words, they go out to preach.
While scholars do not believe this exchange actually took place, it may be indicative of a time when a struggle over women’s leadership in the church was happening. The response of the disciples following Mary Magdalene’s instruction is to go out to preach the gospel, at her instruction they go out to make disciples just as Jesus commanded them.
Diligent biblical interpretation, and accurate and truthful retelling of the stories of the women who surrounded Jesus are critical. Instances of problematic interpretation have echoed throughout history and done damage to the image of Christ the church seeks to reflect. For example, it has been suggested that Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to touch him after she met him resurrected from the grave because she was not worthy as she was the second Eve, guilty of sin. This misinformation has tainted how the church has remembered Mary Magdalene. In Elizabeth Gillian Muir’s A Woman’s History of the Christian Church, she gives a case to reflect upon:
While Mary the Mother was the recipient of such worldwide devotion, another biblical Mary, Mary Magdalene, was being held up as the penitent prostitute par excellence. Her name graced penitential facilities such as the church-run prison-like Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, Australia, Canada, and England where thousands of girls and young women who had been raped, girls who were too pretty “for their own good,” single mothers, and other “wayward” women were incarcerated, often for life, under the pretence of being reformed. These laundries operated until the late twentieth century.
As Christians, our knowledge and belief in the resurrection are based on the witness of Mary Magdalene who has been remembered as the Apostle to the Apostles. Inaccurate reports of Mary Magdalene’s legacy and witness to Jesus have allowed her name to be plastered across oppressive institutions. Had her story been known and accurately told, perhaps instead, these women could have been the recipients of Christian love and service in the name of the same saint who showed such devotion to Jesus.
All people should have examples they can observe, learn from, and aspire to emulate. A recent flurry of writing on Mary Magdalene by academics and laypersons alike indicates a desire to know her and her legacy, too. Just as we desire to know, learn from, and emulate Jesus’ male disciples, there is a need also to know the women amongst whom he spent so much of his time. This brings us to the example of the woman who anointed Jesus in all four gospels, she is our disciple for next week.
Sources:
Getty-Sullivan, Mary Ann. 2001. Women in the New Testament, 190. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, quoting Sandra M. Schneiders, “Encountering and Proclaiming the Risen Jesus,” in Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1999) 189-2001, at 200.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. 2019. “‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’: Women on the Road of Ministry.” Theological Studies 80, no. 1: 211-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400563918819800, see also the Gospel of Mary.
Muir, Elizabeth Gillan. 2019. A Women’s History of the Christian Church: Two Thousand Years of Female Leadership. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 70.
Swartley, Willard M. 2013. John, 86-87. Waterloo, ON: Herald Press.
Torjesen, Karen Jo. 1995. When Women Were Priests. New York, NY: HarperOne, 34.