Two Millennia of Memorable Christian Women

MARY MAGDALENE


Mary Magdalene was a native of Magdala, a village on the western side of the sea of Galilee in ancient Israel. She is identified in Luke 7:37-50 as the one out of whom Jesus cast seven demons. Her grateful response was to minister to Jesus as he traveled and preached, making provision for him out of her resources (Luke 8:2-3L indicating that she was relatively wealthy.

In all four canonical Gospels, she is present at the crucifixion of Jesus, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, she was present at his burial. All four gospels identify her as first witness to Jesus' resurrection, whether coming alone or in a larger group of women. We read that Jesus spoke to her at that time, giving her instructions to tell his other disciples that he had risen from the dead. For these reasons, she has been identified in many Christian traditions as the "Apostle to the apostles" (Apostolorum apostola).

Mary has been mentioned in the subsequent Gnostic writings: The Dialogue of the Savior (139.11-
13;140.17-19;142.11-13L the Pistis Sophia (26.17-20; 218.10-219.2) the Gospel of Thomas (114L the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary (18.14-15). These texts portray Mary as Jesus' closest disciple and the only person who truly understood his teachings. However, they do not necessarily agree on details. For example, the Gospel of Thomas offers that Jesus offered to turn women into men, so that they might be a living spirit like his male apostles. In contrast, the Gospel of Mary suggests that women are on the same plain as their male counterparts, and so do not need to be changed.

In 591 AD (or CE, common era) Mary's reputation took a sudden turn when Pope Gregory I ("Gregory the Great") declared in a homily (#33) that Mary Magdalene was the same person as the anonymous sinner with the perfume in Luke's gospel and the same as Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Thereafter, the Roman church connected her with the act of penance, and it was common to place her in Southern Gaul during her last years of life, while others suggested that he joined John in Ephesus and was buried there. The reformers of the sixteenth century were not united in their treatment of Mary Magdalene.

In 1969 the identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and the "sinful woman" was removed from official Catholic calendars by Pope Paul VI. On July 22, 2016, at the request of Pope Francis, a new decree was issued, in which her memorial was declared a feast (annually on July 22).

One further note: Dan Brown's bestselling mystery thriller novel, The Da Vinci Code popularized a number of erroneous ideas about Mary Magdalene. These fictions included the suggestion that she was Jesus' wife, that she was pregnant at the crucifixion and that she gave birth to Jesus' child ("Juda"), founding a bloodline which survives to this day. There is no historical evidence for any of these claims, although the Gnostic Gospel of Philip (Antonov, 55 on p. 33) alludes to Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene often on her face and loving her more than his other students.

BIBLIOGRAPHY


Antonov, Vladimir, ed. The Gospel of Philip. Pdf e-books, 2008.


Ehrmann, Bart D. Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.


Grant, Robert. Gnosticism: A Sourcebook of Heretical Writings from the Early Christian Period.
New York: Harper and Rowe, 1963.


Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979.


Thompson, Mary R. Mary of Magdala, Apostle and Leader. New York: Paulist Press, 1995.





Stanley M. Burgess