Jesus at the table in the house of the Pharisee, receiving the visit of Mary Magdalene, depicted as a prostitute bowing at Jesus's feet. Some argued she was actually Jesus’ wife, or companion. “Of course, the other response was actually to elevate Mary. She couldn't have been a leader, because look at what she did for a living,” Cargill says. “By turning into a prostitute, then she is not as important. In 591 A.D., Pope Gregory the Great solidified this misunderstanding in a sermon: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark." To cast Mary as the original repentant whore, early church leaders conflated her with other women mentioned in the Bible, including an unnamed woman, identified in the Gospel of Luke as a sinner, who bathes Jesus’s feet with her tears, dries them and puts ointment on them (Luke 7:37-38), as well as another Mary, Mary of Bethany, who also appears in Luke. “And so there were two responses to this.
“There are many scholars who argue that because Jesus empowered women to such an extent early in his ministry, it made some of the men who would lead the early church later on uncomfortable,” Cargill explains. The Nubian Queen Who Fought Back Caesar's Army
In the Gospel of John, Jesus actually appears to Mary Magdalene alone after his Resurrection, and instructs her to tell his disciples of his return (John 20:1-13). “They are the ones that discovered that he had risen, and that’s significant.” “The women are the ones who go and tell the disciples,” Cargill points out. According to the gospels, she visited Jesus’s tomb on Easter Sunday, either alone (according to the Gospel of John) or with other women, and found the tomb empty. So the fact that she's named is a big deal.”Īfter Jesus’s crucifixion-which she witnessed along with several other women from the foot of the cross-and after all his male disciples had fled, Mary Magdalene also played a key role in the story of the Resurrection. There were apparently hundreds, if not thousands, of followers of Jesus, but we don't know most of their names. “She was named in the Gospels, so she obviously was important. “Mary Magdalene is among Jesus’s early followers,” says Robert Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. The crucifixion of Jesus with the Virgin Mary, Saint John and Mary Magdalene.ĭaniela Cammilli for Alinari/Alinari Archives, Florence-Reproduced with the permission of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Alinari via Getty Images