August 11, 2024 Reflection

Mary Magdalene is another one of those characters from our bible that many of us think we already know. If you ever been in church on Easter Sunday, you’ve heard at least one account of her arrival at the tomb three days after the death of her beloved teacher, Jesus, only to find him gone. We heard one of those accounts today. You’re probably most familiar with the version of that story in which Mary alone stays outside the tomb weeping and upon seeing the risen Christ mistakes him for the gardener.

It’s possible, however, that in addition to your biblical knowledge of Mary Magdalene, you carry some perceptions of her that may or may not be biblically accurate.  For example, I grew up thinking that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or a “fallen woman.”  When the movie Jesus Christ Superstar came out in 1973, and Yvonne Elliman delivered her sensuous version of “I don’t know how to love him” a vision of Mary Magdalene as Christ’s lover was firmly cemented in my mind’s eye.  Over the years, I have also associated her with the woman with the alabaster jar of oil who lavishly anoints Jesus for his burial, wiping his feet with her hair even though that Mary is never identified as being the Magdalene.  Sometimes, figuring out which Mary is which in the bible is as challenging as figuring out which Sarah has invited your child to her birthday party because there are four of them in her grade one class.

The truth is, there’s not many details to go on when trying to get a full picture of who Mary Magdalene actually was, at least not in the canon as we have inherited it.  More on that later. In the four gospels accounts we do have, she is mentioned a total of 12 times, usually as part of a list of Jesus’ female followers. The one thing we do know about her is that she was once possessed by seven demons. 

It’s probably the demon possession that left open the most room for speculation about her.  In order to get a handle on where that speculation really took root and flourished we have to go all the way back to an Easter weekend in the sixth century.  At a Good Friday mass in 591, Pope Gregory I, also known as St. Gregory the Great, gave a homily that began to cement an understanding of Mary Magdalene that has held firm even to this day.  It was Gregory the Great who said that Mary Magdalene was the unnamed sinner with the alabaster jar.  Soon after this, in another homily, he expanded on this proposition saying that of all the sins she had been forgiven of, her greatest sin was lust.  “It is clear,” he expounded “that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts.”  He went on to interpret Mary Magdalene’s seven demons as representing the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth which coincidentally (or not) Pope Gregory codified as the standard list of cardinal sins.

Even though the scriptures fail to identify the Mary with the alabaster jar as Mary Magdalene and there’s certainly no reference to what she may or may not have used the fragrant oil for in the past, and even though there is no scriptural support for Pope Gregory’s definition of the seven demons that possessed Mary Magdalene, it’s his version of Mary Magdalene that begins to overshadow everything else about her.  And what an incredible shame that is because by creating this caricature of her, he essentially silenced her and the significance she actually holds both in the books of the bible that we have today and in the writings about her that were not included in the canon.

Before we return to what we actually do know about Mary Magdalene, I was to address this question of the seven demons she suffered. Demonic possession  is commonly mentioned in the gospels alongside physical and mental illnesses but never as a suggestion that someone has lived a sinful life. It’s much more likely that Mary Magdalene suffered from seizures or some kind of psychiatric illness. Let’s not forget that at this time in history there would have been little understanding of such conditions.  If the number seven has any real significance, it’s probably because seven symbolizes completeness in the Jewish tradition suggesting that she had been entirely overwhelmed by her condition before being healed.

So, what do we know about Mary Magdalene from both the biblical accounts and from other writings?  We know that she is one of a number of Marys, so it’s not surprising that she has been misidentified as some of the others. We know that she was a Jewish woman from the area of Galilee and because of the relative freedom she seemed to have, she was likely wealthy and of high status. In Luke’s gospel it’s suggested that she along with some other women ministered to Jesus and his disciples “out of their own means.” We also know she was present at the crucifixion of Jesus.  She is part of a group of women who stayed and witnessed his death and of course, she is among those who first learn of Jesus’ resurrection. When more than one woman is mentioned in those accounts, her name always comes first.

In at least one case, John’s account of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene is the first to witness the risen Christ and in this beautiful story, she is also the very first person to preach the Good News thus becoming an apostle to the apostles.

It’s curious to me that Mary Magdalene doesn’t appear in any of the accounts of the formation of the early church, namely the Book of the Acts of the Apostles or the epistles. But we have to remember that those accounts were written down before the gospels were written, even though they appear later in our Bibles.  That makes me wonder if it is because the role of women in the early church was so substantial that they were given the honour of being the first witnesses to the resurrection when those gospel accounts were eventually recorded.

In the non-canonical gospels, the ones that are not included in our bibles, the ones that were rejected for one reason or another when the New Testament was being assembled in the late fourth century, we learn a lot more about Mary Magdalene.  There is an entire gospel named after her, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and she is also featured in the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Phillip.  In each of these she is described as being both the follower closest to Jesus, as well as the one who understands his message the most clearly. In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene ,she appears to be the leader of the disciples after Jesus’ death. In one account she is described as Jesus’ companion.  When questioned by the disciples about his favouritism towards her, Jesus hints at her being the one who sees him for who he really is.

In addition to these biblical and non-biblical portraits of Mary Magdalene, there’s been a recent development about her in scholarly circles that bears mentioning. Most of us are familiar with the story of the two sisters Martha and Mary found in Luke’s gospel. When Jesus comes to visit them in their home, one of them, Martha, is distracted by her many tasks, while the other, Mary, sits quietly at Jesus’ feet.  If you are also familiar with the story of the raising of Lazarus in John’s gospel, you will likely have come to know these sisters as the siblings of Lazarus because they appear in that story as well. Except that it is highly likely that they are not the sisters referred to in that story and here is why.

A woman by the name of Elizabeth Schrader, a PhD student at Duke University, has recently been studying the earliest versions of the New Testament dating back to the year 200.  She has had a particular interest in Papyrus 66 which tells the story of the raising of Lazarus.  As she was examining these texts, she noticed something no one else has noticed before. In the original Greek she read the sentence “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Mary.”  In our bibles that same sentence reads “the village of Mary and her sister Martha.”  What Libby Schrader saw was that in every instance that the manuscript referred to the sister Mary, one letter of the Greek had been altered changing the word Mary into the word Martha. The original word “his” had also been changed to read “hers” so that Martha became Mary’s sister instead of there being only one Mary in the story. Without going into further details around the scholarship, it has become apparent that this Mary could actually be Mary Magdalene.

Why does that matter?  It matters because in this passage as it currently reads in our bibles, Martha is one of only two people in the Gospels who makes a confession about Jesus being the Messiah.  The only other person who makes this confession is the apostle Peter. From the lips of Martha, a minor character, the confession is nice but doesn’t have a lot of clout.  On the lips of Mary Magdalene, who shows up later in John’s gospel to be the first witness to the resurrection, in other sources as Jesus companion who understands him better than anyone else and about whom an entire Gospel was written, suddenly, Mary Magdalene takes on even greater significance.

After Peter declares Jesus to be the Messiah, Jesus declares Peter to be the rock upon whom his church will be built. Throughout history, Peter has been known as The Rock. What’s not well known, is that in all likelihood, Mary Magdalene also has a title.  The word magdala in Aramaic means tower. For centuries, we’ve thought that Magdala was the place from which Mary came. With Libby Shrader’s discovery suggesting that Mary Magdalene came from Bethany, it’s very possible that Mary Magdalene is actually the moniker, Mary the Tower, Mary whose towering faith gives her eyes to see Jesus for who he really is, Mary, pillar of strength who is the first to announce the resurrection, apostle to the apostles.

If all this is true, I can’t help but wonder what a church built over the centuries on both Peter the Rock and Mary the Tower would have looked like.  What difference would it have made to have had both women’s and men’s voices honoured as the Christian church took root and grew.

On the one hand, it saddens me to think about what has been lost because of the way Mary Magdalene has been caricatured and silenced over the years by the patriarchy of the institutional church. On the other hand it heartens me to know that we can continue to reclaim her and learn from her and with her give voice to the many other women whose voices have been silenced over the years, so that we might have a fuller understanding of the Gospel and a fuller understanding of ourselves.

** This reflection draws heavily on the article “Unravelling the Myth of Mary Magdalene” by Anne Theriault which first appeared in the April 2020 issue of Broadview Magazine; and the sermon “All the Marys” preached by Diana Butler Bass at the Wild Goose Festival, July 17, 2022.