Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 28, 2017
The years between 1976-1985 were declared by the United Nations to be the “Decade of the Rights of Women”. Within the framework of the related activities which were undertaken at the time, it was claimed, among other things, that religions bore the responsibility for the suppression of women’s rights. In response to this challenge, the Christian world, through the World Council of Churches, (WCC) promoted its own, world-wide decade of “Churches in Solidarity with Women” (1988-1998). But even before then, in its General Conferences and its various distinct activities, the WCC had involved itself with this particular problem. Indeed, between the years 1978-81 a programme of study was arranged, entitled “The Community of Women and Men in the Church”. The culmination of this particular effort was the International Consultation in Sheffield, England, at which the famous “Letter from Sheffield” was drawn up. During the course of all these discussions, the opportunity was given to the Christian academic community to re-examine many related subjects, such as, for example the influences on the social life of the Western world of the theology which was formulated in the West at the beginning of the 5th century, with the theory of original sin, by perhaps the greatest personality of the Western world, Saint Augustine of Hippo. Another very important issue which was examined historically and theologically in the Christian world, for the same reason, was the person of Saint Mary Magdalene.
Outside the Orthodox Church, the name of Saint Mary Magdalene, artistically, philosophically, and, until recently in the West, ecclesiastically and theologically, has been identified, one way or another, with the broader area of eroticism. Various artists or authors of narratives with a mythological veneer, such as, for example, Dan Brown, William Phipps, Chris Gollon, Martin Scorsese and many others, seek, or wish to invent, a mistress for Jesus of Nazareth and curiously, absolutely all of them, latch on to Mary Magdalene. This is not strange, because, for a very long time, even within Church literature, Magdalene was presented as the most attractive and bewitching female personality in the New Testament. Many, indeed, even to this day, think of her as a former prostitute, who, of course, repented as a result of her existential encounter with Christ. In the case of one of the modern British artists, Chris Gollon, whom we mentioned above, in his painting The Pre-Penitent Magdalene, Mary is portrayed as a provocative femme fatale, adorned with all the trappings you’d expect and heavily made up. On the same wave-length, but with a serious, symbolic, poetic background, there is the short text entitled “Magdalene”, in Dinos Christianopoulos’ collection Εποχή των ισχνών αγελάδων (Thessaloniki, 1950).
And yet, nowhere in the reliable historical sources, particularly the most ancient- that is those of the New Testament- is there any mention of all this. On the contrary, in three of the four canonical Gospels, Mary Magdalene is mentioned by name only in relation to the narratives of Christ’s passion and resurrection. In Mark, Matthew and John, she is referred to as a witness of the crucifixion (There were also women looking on from a distance: among them was Mary Magdalene…Mk. 15, 40). In John, she is placed last (standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene) and at His tomb (and Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid, Mk. 15:47, Matth. 27:61). Above all, however, Mary Magdalene is one of the first witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, i.e. of the new tomb, and in John, in fact, the first (Mk. 16, 1; Matth. 28, 9; Luke 24, 1-12; Jn. 20, 14-18).
It is only in Saint Luke’s Gospel that the name of Mary Magdalene is also mentioned in relation to the public activity of Christ before the passion and resurrection in all four Gospels. At the beginning of chapter 8 there is a description of how Jesus: “went on through towns and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out… who provided for them out of their resources” (Luke, 8, 1-3).
The epithet Magdalene, which always accompanies her name, at least in the Gospels, is an indication that she was not married, because in that case her name would also have that of her husband attached. “Magdalene” shows that this particular Mary came from the commercial town of Migdal (Taricheae) on the west bank of the Sea of Galilee or Tiberias. She must have been a well-to-do woman, provided, of course, we can trust Luke’s information, since she played her part with generous material assistance in what was for the age the revolutionary work of Jesus and His twelve disciples. According to the same source, she had had personal experience of the healings powers of Jesus, probably through a kind of exorcism. But on the basis of a strictly historico-critical approach to the evidence in Luke, modern science has reservations, since in this particular Gospel, there is a clear tendency to minimize the role of Magdalene, in stark contrast, in fact, to the other three Gospels. We should note that Luke is the only one of the Evangelists to report that the risen Christ appeared exclusively to Peter (Luke 24, 34; see also I Cor. 15, 5). According to Ann Graham Βrock (Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 19–40), there is no reference in Luke to any appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene. It may be then, that the reference to seven demons derives from this prejudice, unless it has symbolic significance.
If this is the picture presented by the original sources of Christian tradition, then it is reasonable to wonder: “How has Magdalene been transformed over time into a penitent harlot and later, with a good dose of imagination into something even more?
Modern critical research has tended towards the conclusion that this may have happened as the result of conscious efforts on the part of later scholars of the history of the Christian message, to gradually reduce the importance of her role, at least as this was presented in the most ancient sources of the Gospel tradition. How this happened has to do initially with the gradual, and, of course, unsubstantiated identification of Mary from Magdalen with other women mentioned in the Gospels. First of all, with the anonymous woman from Bethany, who anointed His head with myrrh, an entirely symbolic act recognizing Christ as the Messiah shortly before he was given up to be crucified (Mk. 14, 3-9 and Matth. 26, 6-13). We should note that this action is interpreted as a “practical” confession of Jesus’ Messianic status, in the same way as Peter’s verbal confession in Caesarea Phillipi: “You are Christ, (the Son of the living God” (Mk. 8, 28).
In the later Gospels, the scene of the anointing of Jesus is brought forward in terms of time to the beginning of His public ministry (by Luke to 7, 36-50) and the most important difference is that it is not Christ’s head which is anointed but His feet (both in Luke and John, who does, however, retain the timing of the event as being with narrative of the passion, though he does identify the unknown woman with another Mary, Lazarus’ sister). Luke adds the motif of her repentance, which is followed by the forgiveness of her sins by Jesus.
Source: pemptousia.com
~Orthodox Christian Network (OCN), https://myocn.net/35467-2/.
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