What Can We Know About the Prominent Women of the Bible?

As a regular Facebook user, I came across one of their myriad quizzes tonight which tests the user to find out which “mighty woman” of the Bible they are most like. I took it and discovered that, despite some obvious anatomical issues, I am most like Ruth, a figure from the Old Testament. Other users found that they are most like Sarah and Mary Magdalene.

The explanations given with these findings are curious. Consider, for instance, what is said about Mary Magdalene:

She was forgiven much & loved much, and you certainly love much! You are a passionate person, who loves God & life. You have a tendency to count your blessings and be very grateful, even in small things. You are an overcomer, and will not allow any life circumstances to hold you down.

This, naturally, caused me to wonder just where the authors of this quiz were coming up with their information. What, in fact, can we actually know about the prominent women of the Bible?

Because an in-depth look at the prominent women of the Bible could take up a whole book, I will instead focus in this essay on Mary Magdalene, since together with Mary the mother of Jesus, she is the most prominent woman in the New Testament.

MARY MAGDALENE

Mary Magdalene appears exactly 13 times in the New Testament, with all occurrences happening in the four Gospels. Never is she mentioned in any other New Testament writing. In the Gospels, she appears almost exclusively in the death, burial, and resurrection accounts. In only one place is she ever mentioned being present during Jesus’ actual life ministry – that comes to us in Luke chapter 8, where Luke mentions that she had “seven demons” driven out of her (although Luke doesn’t say by whom) and that she was present there during Jesus’ teachings.

There are no scenes in the Bible that depict the living Jesus ever actually interacting with Mary. Mary’s interactions with Jesus are exclusively with the resurrected Jesus – and that only happens in one account.

Mary enters the Christian canon in the Gospel of Mark, written around 70 C.E., or 40 years after Jesus’ death. Mark mentions that she and other women were present at the crucifixion, and that this group of women were followers of Jesus who “cared for his needs.” The writer tells us that Mary and the other women saw where Jesus was buried, and then later went to the tomb to anoint his body. While there, they were met by a “man in white” who announced the resurrection to them, instructing them to go and tell the others that Jesus would meet up with them in Galilee. Mary and the others, however, are scared and instead “said nothing to anyone.” Mark’s Gospel actually ends right there, without any appearances of the risen Jesus to anyone.

Mary next appears, chronologically, in the book of Matthew. Using Mark as a source, Matthew simply repeats Mark’s assertion that Mary Magdalene and the others were followers who cared for Jesus’ needs and who were present at the crucifixion and then saw the burial.

However, Matthew veers from Mark’s account of Mary’s actions on Easter Sunday. Instead of coming to anoint Jesus’ body, Mary and the other women are simply coming to “look at the tomb,” as though to check up on it. This fits with Matthew’s account of the guards who were stationed at the tomb to ensure that no one tampered with the body – a story that only appears in Matthew’s account. When the women arrive, instead of seeing a man in white, there is now a great earthquake, and an actual angel of the Lord comes down from heaven, causing the guards to drop dead with fear. The angel gives an instruction to the women that is similar to Mark’s (“Go tell everyone; Jesus will meet you in Galilee”), but unlike in Mark’s account, the women actually follow the instructions, heading off to tell the disciples. On their way, however, Jesus actually meets them on the road, and they “clasped his feet and worshipped him.” Afterward, Jesus meets the disciples as promised in Galilee, giving them what is now known as “the Great Commission.”

Mary’s next appearance is in the aforementioned Luke chapter 8, where she is noted as being present as Jesus went around teaching, and that someone (not necessarily Jesus) had driven seven demons out of her. After that, she is absent again until the resurrection (Luke mentions only that “the women” who had followed Jesus were there at the crucifixion – one would assume Mary was included in this). For Luke, Mary and the others are once again heading to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. For the first time, the women actually see for themselves that the tomb is empty – in both Mark and Matthew’s accounts, the women never walk in to see the body missing. After this, two angels appear instead of one, and there is no accompanying earthquake. Their speech to the women is different from that of Matthew and Mark, and there is no instruction to go tell anyone. The women, however, do head straight off to tell the disciples – with no subsequent meeting of Jesus on the road, as we find in Matthew. The disciples don’t believe the women’s story, and Peter goes to see for himself. Mary and the other women are not mentioned again after this.

Mary’s final appearance in the Bible comes in the book of John. John agrees with the other three writers that Mary and the other women were present at the crucifixion; however, there is no mention of them necessarily seeing the burial place. On Easter Sunday, Mary goes by herself, instead of with other women, to the tomb. John does not tell us why she went. When she arrives, there are no angels or earthquakes, but Mary simply sees that the stone has been rolled away. She does not look inside, but immediately runs to tell the disciples.

After Peter and the unnamed disciple see the empty tomb for themselves, they go back home, leaving Mary there at the tomb, crying. At this point, two angels appear, asking her why she is crying. “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him,” is her famous response. At that moment, Jesus appears to her, but she mistakes him for the gardener. She assures the gardener that if he knows where they’ve put Jesus’ body, she’ll go and retrieve it. Jesus then says her name, and she realizes it who it is. Jesus, however, instructs her not to touch him (unlike the scene in Matthew, where Mary and the other women clasp Jesus’ feet when they meet him on the road). After this, she goes back to the disciples and tells them that she has seen the resurrected Jesus.

And that’s the last we hear in the New Testament of Mary Magdalene.

From these accounts, we can take only a very few things about Mary.

1. She was a follower of Jesus who, among other things, “cared for his needs.” This is probably a way of saying that she and the other women helped to finance his ministry. If true, then she was a woman of financial means.

2. She had demons driven out of her. We can take this one of three ways: A) it is a 1st century legend born from ignorance about illness or prejudice against women; B) Mary had a legitimate illness (such as epilepsy or porphyria) which she overcame, and was thus said to have been cured of demon-possession; or C) we can take it as a literally true statement – Mary had literal demons inside her, which someone exorcised. Either way, beyond Luke’s parenthetical statement, we know nothing of the circumstances surrounding Mary’s demon possession, or who cured her.

3. Mary was present at the crucifixion, and may have witnessed the burial of Jesus. All four Gospels agree that Mary and the other women were at the crucifixion. This is significant not only because all the Gospels agree (often a rarity, especially in the crucifixion and resurrection stories), but also because the disciples were not present. It was clearly well-remembered in the Christian community that the male disciples had fled and abandoned Jesus. His female followers, however, stayed by his side. This would not have been a happy thing to admit – that the women, who were second class citizens, were more faithful than the men – so it seems likely to be historically accurate.

4. Mary went to the tomb on Easter Sunday, perhaps to anoint Jesus’ body, or perhaps simply to check on the tomb. Again, all the Gospels agree on Mary’s presence on Easter Sunday, implying that whatever the resurrection was (physical or metaphorical), Mary and the other women were at the center of it. This, of course, has dramatic theological implications that are beyond the scope of this particular essay.

5. Mary, along with other women, was the first to discover the resurrection, and may have been the first to see Jesus in resurrected form. Again, this has dramatic theological implications that I won’t go into here.

Based on these things, consider again what the Facebook quiz had to say about Mary Magdalene:

She was forgiven much & loved much, and you certainly love much! You are a passionate person, who loves God & life. You have a tendency to count your blessings and be very grateful, even in small things. You are an overcomer, and will not allow any life circumstances to hold you down.

1. She was forgiven much and loved much. Nothing in the Bible would support the idea that Mary was any more “forgiven” or any more “loved” than anyone else. Medieval theology suggested Mary was a prostitute, which is in no way supported by the earliest texts, and this, no doubt, is where the idea comes from in modern Christian circles that Mary was somehow “forgiven much.”

2. Mary was a passionate person, who loved God and life. Mary’s crying scene in the Gospel of John might support the claim that Mary was “passionate,” but such a claim is tenuous at best. “A weak-willed woman” would probably make more sense in the 1st century context. Otherwise, there is no evidence to suggest that she loved God and life any more than anyone else.

3. Mary counted her blessings and was very grateful even in small things. Again, nothing really exists in the Biblical text to support this as a description of Mary Magdalene. It’s simply an idea that seems like a pretty way for a good Christian woman to act.

4. Mary was someone who overcame adversity and would not allow life circumstances to hold her down. This is perhaps the only thing in the quiz that might be linked to something in the text. While I think that this impression of Mary comes, again, primarily from the medieval idea that Mary was a prostitute-turned-Christian, one could argue that overcoming demon possession (whether that should be understood as a physical illness or an actual spiritual attack) indicates that Mary indeed overcame adversity and bettered herself. The problem, of course, is that we have only one source for this demon possession story – the parenthetical remark that Luke makes in chapter 8. No other Biblical writer says anything about Mary having been cured of demon possession, even though this seems like a rather important nugget to leave out.

All in all, it seems apparent to me that what Christians commonly suppose about Mary Magdalene comes more from Church imagination rather than from the New Testament. In the New Testament, there is very little we can know about Mary, with the primary things being that she was a close follower of Jesus who may have been financially sound, she was somehow intricately involved in whatever the resurrection was, and she may have overcome a serious illness earlier in life.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Mary Magdalene is that she – along with Jesus’ other female followers – did not abandon him at his crucifixion, like his male disciples did. This sends me the message that Mary may have been a woman of great devotion, fearlessness, and faith.

Ironically, yet not surprisingly, none of these traits are included in the Facebook quiz’s explanation of what Mary Magdalene was like.