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Mary Magdalene

Three competing depictions of Mary Magdalene are at issue in current scholarship: 1) Mary Magdalene of the New Testament 2) The legendary Mary Magdalene, repentant prostitute, from the Roman church tradition 3) Mary Magdalene of the Gnostic texts which describe her as the first Apostle and leader of early Christianity.

The biblical texts have scant information about Mary Magdalene. “Magdalene” means woman from Magdala. She is mentioned as a follower of Jesus who provided for Jesus from the beginning of his ministry in Galilee (Lk 8:2, Mk 15:41). Most frequent is her depiction as witness to the crucifixion of Jesus (Mk 15:40, Jn 19:25, Lk 23:49, Mt 27:56) and as the first resurrection witness (Mk 16:1, Lk. 24:10, John 20:11-18, Mt 28:1). Two New Testament texts claim that Jesus cured her of possession by seven demons (Lk 8:2, Mk 16:9). There is no biblical or extra-biblical historical evidence to indicate that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.

The Mary Magdalene of legend, the repentant whore, was the creative result of conflating a number of New Testament texts about “sinning” women, anointing women, and several different Marys. The story of the unnamed sinner who anoints the feet of Jesus in Luke 7:36-50 was identified as Mary Magdalene, perhaps due to its close proximity to the text of Luke 8:2 which names Mary Magdalene as one of three Galilean women who supported the Jesus movement out of their own resources. The parallel text of John 12: 1-8 identifies the anointing woman as a Mary, but Mary of Bethany, not of Magdala. That the various women who go to anoint Jesus’ dead body were also named Mary is another factor in the conflation (Mk 16:1, Lk 23:55, 24:10). Two other Johaninne texts are frequently assimilated to legend of Mary Magdalene, the unnamed woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11 and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. This grand conflation of disparate texts was first made official by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition Mary Magdalene is not a prostitute. Feminist biblical scholars read the biblical witness against the later church legend to conclude that Mary was labeled a whore to marginalize her historical importance as an apostle and leader in early Christianity. This slander may have been a reaction in “orthodox” Christianity to the powerful role of Mary Magdalene in Gnostic (i.e. “heretical”) trajectories of Christianity.

Gnostic texts rediscovered in the 19th and 20th centuries portray a very different Mary Magdalene from the above portraits. Texts such as the Gospel of Phillip, the Gospel of Mary and the Pistis Sophia disclose a Mary who is Jesus’ successor, not Peter. Some texts even hint at an erotic relationship between Jesus and Mary who is described as Jesus’ constant companion whom he kissed often, the one he loved most of all, and to whom was given secret knowledge denied the other male disciples. 

Further Reading:

• Maisch, Ingrid. Mary Magdalene: The Image of a Woman through the Centuries. Translated by Linda Malony. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998.
• Meyer, Marvin with Esther A. de Boer. The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, the Companion of Jesus. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2004.
• Schaberg, Jane. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene. New York: Continuum, 2003.

Avaren Ipsen is a PhD Candidate in Biblical Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation is on biblical prostitution.