Women of Scripture · Featured Study
Mary Magdalene
Titian, Noli me Tangere (c. 1514), National Gallery, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
THE ARTWORKTitian paints the instant John 20:17 records: Christ, newly risen, drawing back from Mary's reaching hand. His body still leans toward her, half turned from the gardener's mattock He is shown carrying; her whole weight is thrown forward, kneeling, arms open. The distance between His raised hand and hers is the whole content of the verse: not a rebuke, but not yet, a Lord already moving toward His Father and asking her to carry the news there first.
A Woman Named for a Town on the Sea of Galilee
Luke 8; John 20, told plainly
Mary, called Magdalene, most likely means Mary of Magdala, a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee's western shore. She first appears in Luke's Gospel as a woman Jesus delivered from seven demons, and from that point she travels with Him and the Twelve, one of a group of women who support the ministry out of their own resources.
Soon afterward, Jesus traveled from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with Him, as well as some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna the wife of Herod’s household manager Chuza, Susanna, and many others. These women were ministering to them out of their own means.The verb behind “ministered” means to serve, and “of their substance” means out of what belonged to them. These women had means, and they funded a traveling teacher and His followers.
She is named at the cross in all four Gospels, and at the burial in three. The Synoptics describe the women watching from a distance; John alone places named disciples close.
And many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to minister to Him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.Most of the Twelve had scattered by this point. She had not.
John's Gospel gives her the fullest scene of all: first to the empty tomb, weeping outside it, mistaking the risen Jesus for the gardener, and then hearing her own name.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.While it was still dark. She did not wait for daylight or for company.
He speaks her name; she recognizes Him and calls Him Rabboni, Teacher. Then He sends her with the first resurrection announcement in history.
Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). “Do not cling to Me,” Jesus said, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and tell My brothers, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what He had said to her.“Go to my brethren.” The risen Christ's first recorded words after the resurrection are an instruction, and He gives them to her.
Four Places the Legend Drifted from the Text
what the Gospels wrote, against what she became in popular memory
SEVEN DEMONS, NOT A SCANDAL
Luke 8:2 and Mark's longer ending both name a deliverance from seven evil spirits. Neither text says one word about sexual sin. The single most repeated fact about her in Scripture is a healing, not a history.
NAMED FIRST AMONG THE PATRONS
Luke 8:1-3 says these women “ministered unto him of their substance,” funding a traveling rabbi and His followers out of their own means. Mary is named first in that list, ahead of a Herodian official's wife.
SHE STAYED WHEN THE TWELVE HAD SCATTERED
All four Gospels place her at the cross. Mark records, in the same Gospel, that when Jesus was arrested “they all forsook him, and fled.” She is not in that verse. She is in the next chapter, watching.
FIRST NAMED, EVERY SINGLE TIME
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each give a different combination of women at the tomb. Every single account names Mary Magdalene first. That is not an accident of transmission; it is the one constant across four independent tellings.
Mary called Magdalene - So called from Magdula, the place of her residence. It was situated on the Sea of Galilee, south of Capernaum... Out of whom went - By the power of Jesus. Seven devils - The word seven is often used for an indefinite number, and may signify merely many devils... It has been commonly supposed that Mary Magdalene was a woman of abandoned character, but of this there is not the least evidence. All that we know of her is that she was formerly grievously afflicted by the presence of those evil spirits, that she was perfectly cured by Jesus, and that afterward she became one of his most faithful and humble followers. She was at his crucifixion and burial, and she was among those who had prepared the materials to embalm him, and who first went to the sepulchre after the resurrection; and what is particularly interesting in her history, she was the first to whom the risen Redeemer appeared, and his conversation with her is exceeded in interest and pathos by no passage of history, sacred or profane.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on Luke 8:2
Out of whom went seven devils - Who had been possessed in a most extraordinary manner; probably a case of inveterate lunacy, brought on by the influence of evil spirits. The number seven may here express the superlative degree. Mary Magdalene is commonly thought to have been a prostitute before she came to the knowledge of Christ, and then to have been a remarkable penitent. So historians and painters represent her: but neither from this passage, nor from any other of the New Testament, can such a supposition be legitimately drawn.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Luke 8:2
“Apostle to the Apostles”
an honorary title, named and dated, never a biblical office
A thirteen-century-old reading of John 20
On the strength of John 20's commissioning, the ancient church gave Mary Magdalene an honorary Latin title, apostola apostolorum, apostle to the apostles. The earliest surviving attestation is usually traced to Hippolytus of Rome in the early third century, in a fragmentary commentary on the Song of Songs; the title was then picked up across the centuries by Rabanus Maurus, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, who used the exact phrase in his own writing. Pope Francis raised her July 22 observance to a feast in 2016, and the Vatican's announcement used the title outright.
Scripture itself never calls her an apostle, the word means one sent, and John 20:17-18 does show Jesus sending her with a message. That is the textual basis later writers built the title on: not an invention, but a continuous, centuries-old reading of what the text already records.
A Real Town, and a Real Kind of Patronage
Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, and the women who funded a traveling rabbi
Magdala sat on the Sea of Galilee's western shore, a few miles north of Tiberias, known in antiquity for its fish-salting trade. Archaeological excavation has uncovered a first-century synagogue there, one of the oldest yet found in Galilee, confirming Magdala as a real, substantial town in Jesus's lifetime, not a legendary place.
A woman traveling with an itinerant rabbi, unaccompanied by husband or father, was socially unusual in first-century Jewish life. Luke's naming of the women who funded that ministry reflects real financial patronage; Joanna is named explicitly as the wife of Herod's household steward, meaning some of these women had access to real wealth.
Joanna the wife of Herod’s household manager Chuza, Susanna, and many others. These women were ministering to them out of their own means.Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, ministering of their substance.
It was a Jewish custom, nor was it thought blameable, according to the ancient manners of that nation, that women should afford of their substance food and clothing to their teachers. This custom, as it might cause offence to the Gentiles, St. Paul relates he had cast off. (1 Cor. 9:15.) But these ministered unto the Lord of their substance, that He might reap their carnal things from whom they had reaped spiritual things.
Jerome· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (1264), on Luke 8:3
What the Gospels Never Tell Us
the silences are worth naming, because each one has had something invented to fill it
Was she ever married? What became of her?
Scripture records nothing about her marital status, family, or age beyond her deliverance and her discipleship. No text says she was ever married, to Jesus or to anyone else. No text describes her death or her life after the book of Acts; she is not named again once the Gospels end.
What was she doing before Luke 8?
Luke introduces her already delivered, already traveling with Jesus. Where she lived before that, what her seven-demon affliction actually was, and how she first encountered Him are all unrecorded. The page will not guess.
The modern legends
Popular claims that she was secretly married to Jesus, or carried a bloodline to France, rest entirely on late, non-canonical, and largely medieval or modern sources with no claim to historical reliability. Serious historians of early Christianity, across the theological spectrum, do not regard them as historical, and this page gives them no more room than that one sentence.
What Her Story Shows About Him
three threads, all of them already in the text
The grace that freed her is the grace that sent her
The woman delivered from seven demons becomes the first witness of the resurrection. The same grace that broke her bondage entrusts her with the announcement that death itself has been defeated.
Faithfulness that outlasted fear
She does not appear in any Gospel as having fled Him. Her presence at the cross when most of the Twelve had scattered models a faithfulness that stays when it costs something.
Who Jesus counts trustworthy
The risen Christ's choice to appear to her first, and to send her with words for “my brethren,” is itself a statement about who He counts trustworthy to carry His word: not status as the world reckoned it, but presence at the tomb and love that stayed.
How the Commentators Read the Scene
the name He speaks, the reason He gives, and the honor no one else received first
The word that named her before He did
Clarke reads the single word that turns the scene: not a sight that convinces her, a voice that does. She sought Him more fervently than the rest, he writes, and so to her first Jesus shows Himself.
Mary - This word was no doubt spoken with uncommon emphasis; and the usual sound of Christs voice accompanied it, so as immediately to prove that it must be Jesus. What transports of joy must have filled this womans heart! Let it be remarked that Mary Magdalene sought Jesus more fervently, and continued more affectionately attached to him than any of the rest: therefore to her first, Jesus is pleased to show himself, and she is made the first herald of the Gospel of a risen Savior.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on John 20:16
Not a rebuke, a redirection
The King James renders it “touch me not.” Clarke's own note gives the Greek behind it, a present-tense prohibition most modern translations and commentators render as “stop clinging to me,” since the grammar more naturally forbids an action already underway than a single touch.
Touch me not - Μη μου ἁπτου, Cling not to me. Ἁπτομαι has this sense in Job 31:7, where the Septuagint use it for the Hebrew דבק dabak, which signifies to cleave, cling, stick, or be glued to. From Mat 28:9, it appears that some of the women held him by the feet and worshipped him. This probably Mary did; and our Lord seems to have spoken to her to this effect: Spend no longer time with me now: I am not going immediately to heaven, you will have several opportunities of seeing me again: but go and tell my disciples, that I am, by and by, to ascend to my Father and God, who is your Father and God also. Therefore, let them take courage.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on John 20:17
Not His mother, but her
JFB names the point plainly: of everyone who might have been first to see the risen Lord, it was her, and the text makes a point of saying so.
Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her. To a woman was this honor given to be the first that saw the risen Redeemer, and that woman was not His mother.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on John 20:18
None of MannaFest's cited voices carry a specific, named treatment of Mary Magdalene on record. The apologetic point on women's testimony above is a widely made argument in the historical literature, not attributed to any one of them here.
Read the Great Books
the works that have carried this teaching: go further than this page
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments
Albert Barnes · 1832-1869
Barnes states the correction most directly: “there is not the least evidence” for the prostitute legend, and then walks her whole story from the deliverance to the empty tomb in one note.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke names the legend and refuses it in the same sentence: neither this passage, he writes, nor any other in the New Testament, supports the popular image painters gave her.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · 1871
Short, exact, and unflinching: the wrong done to Mary Magdalene by the Luke 7 identification is called a wrong, in one clean sentence.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Exposition of the New Testament
John Gill · 1746-1748
Gill walks every verse of her story in sequence, from Magdala's location to the disciples' first disbelief of her resurrection report.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →The First Word of the Resurrection
A woman once bound by seven demons became the first person any Gospel records seeing the risen Christ, and the first sent to say so. Not because the world would have chosen her as its witness, but because He did. She stayed at the cross when the Twelve had fled, she came to the tomb before the light broke, and when He spoke her name, she was still there to hear it.
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