Lecture

Mary Magdalene has captured artists’ and playwrights’ and novelists’ imagination, making her well-known, but also creating or perpetuating inaccurate images. She plays a part in key gospel moments, including at the cross and the resurrection, but her story starts with her healing. She’s introduced with several other women, including Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward.

Mary Magdalene enters the gospel story during Jesus’ Galilean ministry. She experiences His healing power that sets her life on a course of faithful discipleship. Luke tells us that she was a patron of Jesus. That is, she supported Jesus’ ministry with her own funds. Now in the Roman period, married women could hold property and wealth apart from their husbands and although Jewish women, as a rule, did not inherit from their fathers, they could receive gifts and both mothers and fathers gave such deeds of gift to their daughters.

Mary is linked with Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward. She’s also linked with Susanna and, as Luke tells us, many others who provided for Jesus and His group out of their own means. Mary and Joanna are connected in Luke 8, the beginning of that chapter, verses one through three, as well as during Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, as they witness His passion and His resurrection.

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources. (Luke 8:1-3 NRSV)

They are both healed by Jesus, which most likely led to their joining the group. But did they know each other before they were members of Jesus’ group? Intriguing details, including their names, and their need for healing, and their business activities suggest that possibility. Joanna is likely from a wealthy Jewish Galilean family. During Jesus’ ministry, the Herodians and the Galileans, they opposed each other. Earlier, in 38 BC, Herod defeated Antigonus, who was a Hasmonean prince, wanted to take back his family’s kingdom. Well then, in 29 BC, Herod murders his wife Mary, or Mariamne. She’s a Hasmonean princess. Her name became very popular in Galilee where so many of the Hasmonean supporters fled. Perhaps naming their daughters Mary was a gesture against Herod’s rule. Joanna’s name is related to the Hasmonean named John. So her family could have been pro-Hasmonean as well.

Mary Magdalene, or Mary from Magdala, is identified by her hometown and not by her mother or her father. This suggests that she traveled, perhaps on business. Magdala, the city or town, was doing well economically in the early part of the first century AD. It had a thriving salt fish export industry. Their products could be shipped across the Sea of Galilee and then they accessed trade routes going north and east. Magdala is about three miles from Tiberius and that’s the site of Herod Antipas’s court. I mean, one could walk there in about an hour. Given the heavy traffic through Tiberius, it’s quite possible that Mary had business and clients or patrons in that capital city.

Jesus cures both Joanna and Mary, specifically casting out seven demons from Mary. We don’t know any more than that, but that has not stopped interpreters from guessing. Now, tradition connects Mary with a sinful woman, usually called a prostitute, that Luke mentions in the previous chapter, chapter 7. This is a woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and puts perfume on them. Now in the parable of the prodigal son, later in Luke, Luke 15, Luke uses a specific term for prostitute, but he doesn’t use that label when he talks about the “sinful woman” in chapter 7. It may be that Luke connects her with that group of tax collectors and sinners, which Jesus—who, by the way, is sometimes called a glutton and a drunkard—is said to befriend.

The church, in its visual arts, often portrays Mary as young, beautiful, alluring. However, when she meets Jesus, she’s probably a generation older than He. Now, some go so far as to say that this Mary earned her wealth—that is, the money she gave Jesus and the male disciples—through prostitution. But such sentiments reveal someone unable to imagine, or unaware of, women holding occupations similar to men in the marketplace at this time. Nor does such a comment recognize that family wealth was often given to daughters. However, this new Mary, the Mary connected to the sinful woman mentioned in chapter 7, she’s now connected with Mary of Bethany, who anoints Jesus before His passion.

Now, if Jesus was anointed only once, then the unnamed woman in Luke 7 can be identified with Mary of Bethany, that sister of Martha and Lazarus. And if one has already associated the unnamed woman of Luke 7 with Mary Magdalene, then Mary of Bethany must be Mary of Magdala. And in AD 591, Pope Gregory the Great, in his 23rd homily, identified Mary with this unnamed woman In Luke 7 and with Mary of Bethany. He expounded that the seven demons were actually seven vices, and that those vices would’ve been displayed in sexually promiscuous ways. And so, with an exegetical stroke of pen, Pope Gregory reduced three women to one.

But I suggest instead that we have three different women here. Luke 7, Mary of Magdala in Luke 8, and Mary of Bethany, who’s listed at the end of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John. All three of these women are stories of faithfulness and each deserve a full hearing.

Luke notes that Joanna and Mary travel with the twelve male disciples through Galilee as Jesus preached and healed in various synagogues and open spaces. How would the women do this? Now, Jesus taught and healed in Jewish areas, towns that might be a day’s walk or less between them, and Jews practiced hospitality, so that female disciples would’ve been welcomed into homes in the evenings. And it’s also possible that male relatives, husbands, sons, uncles traveled with these women. Perhaps Joanna and Chuza did so as a married couple.

Mary and Joanna were benefactors of Jesus and His ministry. That means they supported the group out of their own wealth. There was an expectation that if you had wealth, you should use it to benefit others and to increase your family’s honor. Both Jew and Gentile women supported Jewish teachers or sent funds to support the running of the temple and with their financial support likely came social influence. These women, especially Joanna, had access to political halls of power. In fact, it’s possible that Luke’s source for his unique story of Jesus’ interview with Herod Antipas during His trial at the end of His life, it came from Joanna or a source she provided.

Mary Magdalene did not desert Jesus at the cross. She stayed with Mary, His mother, and John, the beloved disciple, and other women. These women had followed Jesus during His ministry in Galilee, and they should be identified as His disciples. They cared for Jesus. And the same verb is used in Mark 15:41 and Luke 8:3, and the context suggests that these women financially supported Jesus’ ministry. They acted courageously in the face of public ridicule or bullying by the Roman soldiers or worse: Rejection, persecution from Jewish leaders who had condemned Jesus’ claims of messiahship.

After Jesus’ death, these women faithfully rest on the Sabbath and then as early as they can, they head out to His tomb. They want to anoint Jesus’ dead body as their act of love and respect. So strong was their devotion, that they were not deterred by practical issues such as how they might move the stone which blocked the tomb’s entrance. They were frightened by the angel’s words, but they did tell the good news of the resurrection to the other disciples. And in this they serve as role models for the male disciples.

The women are the first to testify to Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Now, John’s gospel focuses on Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Jesus at the tomb. Like so many others in John’s gospel, she doesn’t fully understand what is happening and initially fails to recognize Jesus. That is, until He speaks her name, and then she knows without question. She’s the sheep who knows her Master’s voice and she responds, “Rabbi.” Now, the only other person in the New Testament to identify Jesus with that is Bartimaeus, who answers Jesus’ question with the statement, “Rabbi, I want to see.” This is in Mark 10. Mary reaches out to embrace Jesus with thanksgiving that He is alive. Jesus asks that she refrain from holding on to Him, a better translation than the more “don’t touch me.” He means don’t hold on to me. Instead, He asks her to give the good news of His resurrection to the other followers. Her message, “I’ve seen the Lord,” is a model testimony to all disciples down through the ages.

Women’s testimonies were less valued then and sometimes now. However, the Lord overturned such prejudice by commissioning His faithful female disciple to be the first to testify to His resurrection. In the next session, we will look at Jairus’s daughter, and the hemorrhaging woman, and their miraculous healings.