There’s something about Mary Magdalene. Yet, despite her enduring appeal, we find surprisingly little information in the New Testament to flesh out the character who has captured the attention of scholars, believers, and creatives for centuries.

So much of what we think we know is attributable to Magdalene myth, compiled from a number of different sources. As a result of his Homily 33, Pope Gregory the Great is held egregiously responsible for two major misconceptions—namely that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the anointing woman in Luke 7 are one and the same, and that she was a sexual sinner. Though the woman in Luke 7 is described only as hamartolos (‘a sinner’; v.37), which does not in itself suggest anything sexual, the story has been commonly read as alluding to the woman as a sex worker. Gregory’s papal exposition set an authoritative precedent for this interpretation and the Magdalene’s link to sexual sin became, tenuously, anchored in scripture.

So, what do the Gospels actually tell us about Mary Magdalene? Unlike the other Gospels, Luke introduces Mary Magdalene during his account of Jesus’s ministry. In Matthew, Mark, and John, though we are informed that she was present sooner, her first narrative introduction is during Jesus’s Passion (in Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25). In these scenes, she plays a vital and critical role as myrrh-bearer and first witness to Jesus’s resurrection. At the opening of Luke 8, though, the reader is offered some tantalizing detail, almost in passing, about her role in the early Jesus community and her life before that.

Mary is introduced as part of a group of women who have been ‘cured of evil spirits and infirmities’ (Luke 8:2) as one from whom ‘seven demons’ (Luke 8:1) had been cast out (paralleled in Mark 16:8). There is no qualifying description of what this term means, though the tendency to read demonic possession as directly correlating with mental illness should be pursued with caution. In the aforementioned Homily 33, Gregory suggests the answer is obvious, asking, ‘And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices?’ (1990: 269). Given the symbolism of seven as a sign of completeness, it is not too much of an interpretive leap to assume that the seven demons are supposed to indicate something all-consuming—i.e. that she was totally sinful or totally ill. In fact, though, Luke only confirms that this was in her past.

Now, she is named at the head of Luke’s list of women disciples, alongside Susanna and Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’s steward Chuza. This description of Joanna gives us some indication of the socio-economic status of these women that is further corroborated by Luke’s affirmation that these women were helping to support the ministry ‘out of their own resources’ (Luke 8:3). Jesus and his followers were itinerant, leaving work and family behind, and lived from a common purse (John 13:29). It seems clear that these women were, to all intents and purposes, funding Jesus’s ministry. More than this, they were ‘ministering’ too (Luke 8:3). The nature of their diēkonoun has been a source of great scholarly dispute, but it is evident that they had a practical role to play also.

These tiny details arguably generate more questions than answers, but they are questions that, with the help of the works in this exhibition, can invite us to think more deeply about Mary Magdalene and trouble our preconceptions. With Frans Francken the Younger we can ask, ‘What does it mean for Mary to have been possessed by seven demons?’. With Janet McKenzie we can consider, ‘How did the Magdalene and other women enable the ministry of the early Jesus community?’. With Mary Beth Edelson we can wonder, ‘What does it look like to conceive of women as close disciples of Jesus?’. As with Luke’s passing mention, this exhibition invites you to think creatively about the things Scripture does not tell us and to reflect deeply on the things that it does.

References

Gregory the Great. 1990. Forty Gospel Homilies (Cistercian Publications: Kalamazoo, MI)