Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted disciple of Jesus. She is considered by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches to be a saint, with a feast day of July 22. Her name means "Mary of Magdala", a town on the western shore of the Lake of Tiberias. The life of the historical Mary is a subject of ongoing debate.

Mary Magdalene in the New Testament

In Luke she is mentioned as one of the women who "ministered to him of their substance". The book also tells the story of an exorcism on Mary that cast out seven demons. These women, who earlier "had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities," later accompanied Jesus on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matthew ; Mark ; Luke ) and were witnesses to the Crucifixion. Mary remained there until the body was taken down and laid in a tomb prepared for Joseph of Arimathea. In the early dawn of the first day of the week Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James, (Matthew ; Mark ; Gospel of Peter ), came to the sepulchre with sweet spices to anoint the body. They found the sepulchre empty but saw the "vision of angels" (Matthew ). As the first witness to the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene went to tell Peter and John, (John 20:1, 2), (gaining her the epithet "apostle to the apostles") and again immediately returned to the sepulchre. She remained there weeping at the door of the tomb. According to the New Testament, the "risen Lord appeared to her, but

This is the last entry in the canonical New Testament regarding Mary of Magdala, who now returned to Jerusalem.

Identification with other women of the New Testament

Tradition as early as the 3rd century s: Gospel of Mary

Assertions about Mary Magdalene

Some modern writers have come up with speculative claims that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus. These writers cite non-canonical and Gnostic writings to support their argument. Sources like the Gospel of Philip do depict Mary Magdalene as being closer to Jesus than any other disciple. However, there is no ancient document which claims she was his wife and Gnosticism was generally non-supportive of sexuality. The closeness described in these writings depicts Mary Magdalene, representing the Gnostics, as understanding Jesus and his teaching while the other disciples, representing the Church, did not.

Mary Magdalene appears with more frequency than other women in the canonical Gospels and is shown as being a close follower of Jesus. Mary's presence at the Crucifixion and Jesus's tomb, while hardly conclusive, is at least consonant with the role of grieving wife and widow, although if that were the case Jesus might have been expected to make provision for her care as well as for his mother Mary. Given the lack of contemporary documentation, this scenario cannot be proven, and although some consider the idea desirable to believe, most scholars do not take it seriously. On the other hand, there is no direct evidence that Jesus was unmarried either.

An argument for support of the married status of Jesus is that bachelorhood was very rare for Jewish males of Jesus' time, being generally regarded as a transgression of the first mitzvah (divine commandment)— "Be fruitful and

A counter-argument to this is that the Judaism of Jesus' time was very diverse and the role of the rabbi was not yet well defined. It was really not until after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 that Rabbinic Judaism became dominant and the role of the rabbi made uniform in Jewish communities. Before Jesus celibate teachers were known in the communities of the Essenes and John the Baptist also was celibate. Later, Paul of Tarsus was an example of an unmarried itinerant teacher among Christians. Jesus himself approved of voluntary celibacy for religious reasons and explicitly rejected a duty to marry: "There are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it." (Matt. 19,12)

The idea that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus was popularized by books like the pseudo-historical Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) and The Da Vinci Code (2003), a novel heavily influenced by the former book. These have found no acceptance from scholarly circles. Multiple books have been written debunking parts of The Da Vinci Code such as The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code (2004) written by Richard Abanes and The Da Vinci Fraud by Robert M. Price (2005) of the Jesus Seminar.

The Australian scholar Barbara Thiering claims that a full account of the marriage and children of Jesus and Mary Magdalene can be derived from the New Testament by use of the pesher technique. However, both her method and her findings have found little support from mainstream scholars.

Metaphysical marriage

Writers employing metaphysical analogy and allegory assert that Christ was already married— to the Church. This image goes back to Old Testament depictions of the covenant between God and his people as a marriage, especially in the books Hosea, Ezekiel and the Song of Songs. Imagery of marriage also appears in the Gospels and is applied to Jesus in the Apocalypse of John in the New Testament. This was later expanded by the Church fathers. Some writers, following an early tradition that Jesus is in a mystical sense the second Adam that began with Paul and continued with Irenaeus and others, embody this sense with literal parallels: like the first Adam, his bride was taken from his side when he had fallen asleep (died on the cross). In medieval Christian anagogic exegesis, the blood and water which came from his side when he was pierced, was held to represent the bringing forth of the Church with its analogy in the water of baptism and the wine of the new covenant. Thus Christ can be said in an allegorical sense to already have a wife in the Church. By shifting from the metaphysical analogy to a literal marriage, it can then be considered impossible or intolerable to believe that he was literally married.

See also

• List of ancient mysteries
• Saint Sarah
• Pistis Sophia

References

• Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority, Harvard University Press 2003: discusses issues of apostolic authority in the gospels and the Gospel of Peter the competition between Peter and Mary, especially in chapter 7, "The Replacement of Mary Magdalene: A Strategy for Eliminating the Competition".
• Birger A. Pearson, "Did Jesus Marry?" Bible Review, Spring 2005, pp 32-39 & 47 Discussion of complete texts.
• Jane Schaberg, "How Mary Magdalene Became a Whore", Bible Review, Mar/Apr V8, No.5 (No longer available from BR)
• Jane Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, Continuum International Publishing Co., 2004
• Stephen J. Shoemaker, "Rethinking the ‘Gnostic Mary’: Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala in Early Christian Tradition", in Journal of Early Christian Studies, 9 (2001) pp 555-595.
• Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation, Simon & Schuster, 1997. Presents evidence that Mary Magdalene was a priestess who was Jesus' partner in a sacred marriage. Maria Magdalene

Maria Magdalena María Magdalena Maria Magdalena مریم مجدلیه Marie de Magdala 막달레나 마리아 מרים המגדלית Maria Maddalena Maria Magdalena Maria Magdalena Mária Magdolna Maria Magdalena マグダラのマリア Maria Magdalena Maria Magdalena Maria Madalena Mária Magdaléna Magdalan Maria Maria från Magdala Mary Magdalene