Mary Magdalene

Life and work

Mary Magdalene — meaning Mary "of Magdala," a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee — is introduced in Luke's Gospel among a group of women who traveled with Jesus and the twelve apostles and helped support the ministry "out of their own means," after Jesus had healed her by casting out seven demons (Luke 8:1-3). This is the extent of what the Gospels say about her life before she became a follower, and nothing in the biblical text describes her occupation or background beyond this healing.

Mary Magdalene appears repeatedly at the most pivotal moments of Jesus's final days. She is named among the women who stood watching the crucifixion, having followed Jesus from Galilee (Matthew 27:55-56; John 19:25), and among those who saw where his body was laid after Joseph of Arimathea placed it in the tomb (Matthew 27:61).

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away; in John's account, she runs to tell Peter and John, then remains weeping outside the empty tomb after they leave, where she encounters a figure she initially mistakes for the gardener (John 20:1-15). When he says her name, "Mary," she recognizes Jesus and calls him "Rabboni" (Teacher), becoming the first person recorded to see and speak with the risen Jesus, who then commissions her to go and tell the other disciples (John 20:16-18) — an episode that has led many later writers to call her "the apostle to the apostles."

Dating

Healed by Jesus of seven demons (Luke 8:2) and the first witness of the empty tomb and the risen Christ (John 20:11-18) — entrusted with the very first Easter proclamation. She should not be identified with the unnamed 'sinful woman' of Luke 7 or with Mary of Bethany, a conflation that entered Western tradition centuries later (popularized by Gregory the Great) and that most evangelical and Catholic scholars today agree is mistaken. Scripture records nothing further about her death.

Questions and debates

For over a thousand years, Western church tradition conflated Mary Magdalene with two other, separate women in the Gospels: the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet with her tears in Luke 7:36-50, and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Luke 10:38-42; John 11). This merged composite figure — a reformed prostitute — became the dominant popular image of Mary Magdalene in Western art and preaching for centuries. The conflation traces to a homily by Pope Gregory I in AD 591, which explicitly identified the three women as one person, despite nothing in the Gospel text itself supporting the connection. The Eastern Orthodox Church never adopted this conflation, treating the three as distinct women, and the Catholic Church formally revised its liturgical calendar in 1969 to no longer identify Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman of Luke 7. Modern biblical scholarship overwhelmingly rejects the conflation, regarding Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the unnamed sinful woman as three separate figures in the Gospel narratives.

Extra-biblical evidence

No contemporary extra-biblical historical source mentions Mary Magdalene. Later traditions about her later life — including legends that she traveled to southern France — developed from the medieval period onward and are not historically verifiable. A 2nd-to-4th-century Gnostic text known as the Gospel of Mary, discovered in the 19th century, presents a Mary (widely though not universally identified as Mary Magdalene) as a prominent visionary figure, but it is a later Gnostic religious composition, not a historical record of her life.

Scripture references

• Luke 8:1-3 — Healed and joins Jesus's traveling group of followers
• Matthew 27:55-56 — Present at the crucifixion
• Matthew 27:61 — Watches where Jesus's body is laid
• John 20:1-2 — Finds the empty tomb
• John 20:11-18 — First to see and speak with the risen Jesus

Further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Saint Mary Magdalene

Reflect

Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb after everyone else left, and so was the first to see — what has staying, when leaving was easier, given you?