Mary Magdalene (sometimes called Mary of Magdala, or simply the Magdalene or the Madeleine) was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, travelled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to his crucifixion and resurrection.
Mary Magdalene is accepted by scholars, secular and religious, as a historical figure. Her epithet is usually taken to mean that she came from Magdala, though Elizabeth Schrader Polczer and Joan Taylor have argued that Magdalene ("tower") may instead have been an honorific nickname. She is seen as a prominent follower of Jesus who was believed to have been healed by him, supported his ministry financially, and was present at his crucifixion and burial. She played a key role among his female disciples. Overall, there is limited information about her life.
During the Patristic era, Mary Magdalene was mentioned only briefly by early Church Fathers, with her image evolving from a minor gospel figure to being conflated with other women in the Bible. Eventually she became viewed in Western Christianity, largely due to Pope Gregory I's influential 591 sermon, as a repentant prostitute, despite there being no biblical basis for this portrayal.
Gnostic writings often portray Mary Magdalene as a prominent, spiritually insightful figure favoured by Jesus, challenging traditional patriarchal norms.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has always viewed Mary Magdalene as a virtuous Myrrhbearer and "Equal to the Apostles", distinct from other biblical women. The Catholic Church historically conflated her with the repentant sinner in Luke 7 but later emphasized her role as the first witness to the resurrection and honoured her as the "Apostle to the Apostles". Many alleged relics of Mary Magdalene, including her skull, a piece of forehead flesh, a tibia, and her left hand, are preserved in Catholic sites in France and Mount Athos, with notable displays and annual processions honouring them.
Life Historians, secular and religious alike agree that, like Jesus, Mary Magdalene was a real historical figure. Nonetheless, very little is known about her life. Unlike Paul the Apostle, Mary Magdalene left behind no known writings of her own. She was never mentioned in any of the Pauline epistles or in any of the general epistles. The earliest and most reliable sources about her life are the three Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, which were all written during the first century AD.
During Jesus' ministry
Mary Magdalene's epithet Magdalene (; ) probably means that she came from Magdala, a village on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee which was primarily known in antiquity as a fishing town. Mary was, by far, the most common Jewish given name for girls and women during the first century, so it was necessary for the authors of the gospels to call her Magdalene in order to distinguish her from the other women named Mary who followed Jesus. Although the Gospel of Mark, reputed by scholars to be the earliest surviving gospel, does not mention Mary Magdalene until Jesus' crucifixion, the Gospel of Luke 8:2–3 provides a brief summary of her role during his ministry:
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus exorcised "seven demons" from Mary Magdalene. That seven demons had possessed Mary is repeated in Mark 16:9, part of the "longer ending" of that gospel – this is not found in the earliest manuscripts and is possibly a second-century addition to the original text. In the first century, demons were believed widely to cause physical and psychological illness. Bruce Chilton, a scholar of early Christianity, states that the reference to the number of demons being "seven" may mean that Mary had to undergo seven exorcisms, probably over a long period of time, due to the first six being partially or wholly unsuccessful.
The number seven may be merely symbolic, since, in Jewish tradition, seven was the number of completion, so that Mary was possessed by seven demons may simply mean she was completely overwhelmed by their power. In either case, Casey and Ehrman infer that Mary must have suffered from severe emotional or psychological trauma for an exorcism of this kind to have been perceived as necessary. Consequently, her devotion to Jesus resulting from this healing must have been very strong.
Because Mary is listed as one of the women who supported Jesus' ministry financially, Casey and Ehrman conclude that she must have been relatively wealthy. The places where she and the other women are mentioned throughout the gospels indicate strongly that they were vital to Jesus' ministry and that Mary Magdalene always appears first, whenever she is listed in the Synoptic Gospels as a member of a group of women, indicates that she was seen as the most important out of all of them. Carla Ricci notes that, in lists of the disciples, Mary Magdalene occupies a similar position among Jesus' female followers as Simon Peter does among the male apostles.
Witness to Jesus's crucifixion and burial
All four canonical gospels agree that several women watched Jesus's crucifixion from a distance, with three explicitly naming Mary Magdalene as present. lists the names of these women as Mary Magdalene; Mary, mother of James; and Salome. lists Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joseph, and the unnamed mother of the sons of Zebedee (who may be the same person Mark calls Salome). mentioned a group of women watching the crucifixion, but did not give any of their names. lists Mary, mother of Jesus, her sister, Mary, wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene as witnesses to the crucifixion.
Virtually all reputable historians agree that Jesus was crucified by the Romans under the orders of Pontius Pilate. James Dunn states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent". Nonetheless, the gospels' accounts of Jesus's crucifixion differ. Ehrman states that the presence of Mary Magdalene and the other women at the cross is probably historical because Christians would have been unlikely to make up that the main witnesses to the crucifixion were women and also because their presence is attested in both the Synoptic Gospels and in the Gospel of John independently. Maurice Casey concurs that the presence of Mary Magdalene and the other women at the crucifixion of Jesus may be recorded as a historical fact. According to E. P. Sanders, the reason why the women watched the crucifixion even after the male disciples had fled may have been because they were less likely to be arrested, they were braver than the men, or some combination thereof.
All four canonical gospels agree that Jesus's body was taken down from the cross and buried by a man named Joseph of Arimathea. lists Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of Josus (not Jesus, explicitly identified as a different Mary) as witnesses to the burial of Jesus. lists Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" as witnesses. mentions "the women who had followed him from Galilee", but does not list any of their names. does not mention any women present during Joseph's burial of Jesus, but does mention the presence of Nicodemus, a Pharisee with whom Jesus had a conversation near the beginning of the gospel. Ehrman, who previously accepted the story of Jesus's burial as historical, now rejects it as a later invention on the basis that Roman governors almost never allowed for executed criminals to be given any kind of burial and Pontius Pilate in particular was not "the sort of ruler who would break with tradition and policy when kindly asked by a member of the Jewish council to provide a decent burial for a crucified victim". Casey argues that Jesus was given a proper burial by Joseph of Arimathea, noting that, on some very rare occasions, Roman governors did release the bodies of executed prisoners for burial. Nonetheless, he rejects that Jesus could have been interred in an expensive tomb with a stone rolled in front of it like the one described in the gospels, leading him to conclude that Mary and the other women must not have seen the tomb. Sanders affirms Jesus's burial by Joseph of Arimathea in the presence of Mary Magdalene and the other female followers as completely historical.
Resurrection of Jesus
The earliest description of Jesus's post-resurrection appearances is a quotation of a pre-Pauline creed preserved by Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 15:
Unlike the gospel accounts, this does not mention Mary Magdalene or the other women as first to discover the tomb empty. N. T. Wright argues that since women were sometimes not recognised as legal witnesses in the ancient world, the formula omits them.
According to , the earliest account of the discovery of the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb just after sunrise, a day and half after Jesus's burial and found that the stone had already been rolled away. They went inside and saw a young man dressed in white, who told them that Jesus had risen from the dead and instructed them to tell the disciples that he would meet them in Galilee. Instead, the women ran away and told no one, because they were too afraid. The original text of the gospel ends here, without the resurrected Jesus making an appearance to anyone. Casey argues that the reason for this abrupt ending may be because the Gospel of Mark is an unfinished first draft.
According to , Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" went to the tomb. An earthquake occurred and an angel dressed in white descended from Heaven and rolled aside the stone as the women were watching. The angel told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then the risen Jesus himself appeared to the women as they were leaving the tomb and told them to tell the other disciples that he would meet them in Galilee.
According to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James went to the tomb and found the stone already rolled away, as in Mark. They went inside and saw two young men dressed in white who told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then they went and told the eleven remaining apostles, who dismissed their story as nonsense. Luke does not mention an appearance to the women. He recounts the appearance to Cleopas and an unnamed "disciple" on the road to Emmaus in and implies another to Simon in when the Emmaus travellers return to find that the other disciples already know. Luke's narrative also removes the injunction for the women to tell the disciples to return to Galilee and instead has Jesus tell the disciples not to return to Galilee, but rather to stay in the precincts of Jerusalem.