Where is mary magdalene mentioned in the new testament

The disciples Peter and Andrew are disturbed—not by what she says, but by how she knows it. That was the question not only about Mary Magdalene, but about women generally. Simultaneously, the emphasis on sexuality as the root of all evil served to subordinate all women. This was most efficiently done by reducing them to their sexuality, even as sexuality itself was reduced to the realm of temptation, the source of human unworthiness.

All of this—from the sexualizing of Mary Magdalene, to the emphatic veneration of the virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to the embrace of celibacy as a clerical ideal, to the marginalizing of female devotion, to the recasting of piety as self-denial, particularly through penitential cults—came to a kind of defining climax at the end of the sixth century.

It was then that all the philosophical, theological and ecclesiastical impulses curved back to Scripture, seeking an ultimate imprimatur for what by then was a firm cultural prejudice.

It was then that the rails along which the church—and the Western imagination—would run were set. Pope Gregory I c. It was a time of plague, and indeed the previous pope, Pelagius II, had died of it. When the saintly Gregory was elected to succeed him, he at once emphasized penitential forms of worship as a way of warding off the disease.

His pontificate marked a solidifying of discipline and thought, a time of reform and invention both. But it all occurred against the backdrop of the plague, a doom-laden circumstance in which the abjectly repentant Mary Magdalene, warding off the spiritual plague of damnation, could come into her own. Known as Gregory the Great, he remains one of the most influential figures ever to serve as pope, and in a famous series of sermons on Mary Magdalene, given in Rome in about the year , he put the seal on what until then had been a common but unsanctioned reading of her story.

It all went back to those Gospel texts. He established the context within which their meaning was measured from then on:. 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. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? He defined her:. It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts. What she therefore displayed more scandalously, she was now offering to God in a more praiseworthy manner.

She had coveted with earthly eyes, but now through penitence these are consumed with tears. She displayed her hair to set off her face, but now her hair dries her tears. For every delight, therefore, she had had in herself, she now immolated herself. She turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance.

Holy Writ, having recast what had actually taken place in the lifetime of Jesus, was itself recast. The men of the church who benefited from the recasting, forever spared the presence of females in their sanctuaries, would not know that this was what had happened. Having created a myth, they would not remember that it was mythical. Their Mary Magdalene—no fiction, no composite, no betrayal of a once venerated woman—became the only Mary Magdalene that had ever existed.

Eventually, Magdalene, as a denuded object of Renaissance and Baroque painterly preoccupation, became a figure of nothing less than holy pornography, guaranteeing the ever-lustful harlot—if lustful now for the ecstasy of holiness—a permanent place in the Catholic imagination. There was a harnessing of sexual restlessness to this image.

There was the humane appeal of a story that emphasized the possibility of forgiveness and redemption. But what most drove the anti-sexual sexualizing of Mary Magdalene was the male need to dominate women. In the Catholic Church, as elsewhere, that need is still being met. Ask Smithsonian A Smithsonian magazine special report. But, in truth, the confusion starts with the Gospels themselves.

Regarding Mary of Magdala, the confusion begins in the eighth chapter of Luke: Now after this [Jesus] made his way through towns and villages preaching, and proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom of God. This otherwise innocuous reference to Mary Magdalene takes on a kind of radioactive narrative energy because of what immediately precedes it at the end of the seventh chapter, an anecdote of stupendous power: One of the Pharisees invited [Jesus] to a meal.

Matthew gives an account of the same incident, for example, but to make a different point and with a crucial detail added: Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, when a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of the most expensive ointment, and poured it on his head as he was at table.

She was battered and bruised, injured and in agony from the suffering demon possession entailed. Mary lost all control, and dignity, along with everything she knew in her previous life.

Beauty and wealth did not spare her from the evil that assailed and attacked her every hour of every day. One can only speculate what it was like at the moment Jesus looked upon Mary in her state of desperation.

Only He could have seen who she really was regardless of her derailed state. Not only did he recognize her, but commanded the demons to leave her. Thus, when writing about her, it was necessary to clarify which Mary. Although the account is recorded in all of the Gospels, Mary Magdalene is never specified.

As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. These women were helping to support them out of their own means. How leveling it must have been to be struck with seven demons, regardless of her place in society.

In every stage of His steps on earth, He modeled love for all, even the least in society. The four Gospel accounts record the presence of women at the foot of the cross. Luke mentions the group but does not identify them.

Mary knew the path so well, that she was able to trace her steps back there in the dark days later. Mary went with her Lord into the shadows, and is thus represented as being among those who followed Jesus on His last sad journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. No longer is He on the road with crowds gathering and hanging on His words.

Fearless in His declaration and denunciations, He is arrested and tried for His life. Some of His intimate friends had deserted Him, but Mary and her band did not forsake Him. The poet reminds us—. She listened as Pontius Pilate pronounced His death sentence of crucifixion although he had found no fault in Him. She witnessed and wept as Jesus left the hall to be spat upon and ill-treated by the crowd thirsting for His blood.

Mary was one of the sorrowing group of holy women who stood as near as they could to comfort Jesus by their presence in the closing agonies of the crucifixion Luke In the renowned picture gallery in the Louvre, there is a painting of desolation, despair and love. The artist has depicted the night of the crucifixion.

It is Mary Magdalene with loving lips and hands pressing against the bleeding feet of Christ. The artist Rubens, in his masterpiece, The Descent of the Cross represents Mary Magdalene, and Mary the wife of Cleophas, assisting Joseph and Nicodemus in receiving the battered body from the tree, preparing it for burial, then placing the precious remains in the new tomb in the garden. Last at the cross, where Jesus died as the Lamb of God, Mary Magdalene was also the first at the garden tomb to witness the most important event in world history and the pivotal truth of Christianity, namely the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What a great honor God conferred upon the faithful Mary Magdalene in permitting her to be the first witness of that Resurrection! She was at the tomb early on that first Easter morning, and as the light of earliest day filtered across Jerusalem, she peered into the cave. Seeing it was empty, she wept. Then John, the inspired genius who wrote in unusually terse Greek, describes what happened in a way unparalleled in narrative literature. She stood at the door of the sepulcher weeping, and as she wept two angels appeared, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

Whom seekest thou? Mary, so full of her Lord, felt that all others must know Him whose body was missing from the tomb. Then Jesus commissioned Mary to become the first herald of His Resurrection. Only in Luke is Mary mentioned earlier in the story. Luke 8 refers to Mary, called Magdalene, as one of several women who travelled with Jesus and the disciples in Galilee. Immediately preceding this reference is the story of the woman described as a sinner who anoints Jesus with her tears and is forgiven by him.

In later Christian tradition, this unnamed woman was identified with Mary Magdalene, and all of these references were combined with references to Mary, the sister of Martha, in Luke and John, to construct the image of Mary Magdalene as repentant sinner, anointer, disciple, sister of Martha and Lazarus.

The image of Mary as repentant sinner became far more prominent in the history of painting than the Mary Magdalene of the empty tomb stories. Click on the link to the Gallery of Images to see a variety of images of Mary Magdalene in western painting. He has been raised; he is not here.