Hesed ES
Mary Magdalene and the Witnesses of the Resurrection
I

Mary Magdalene: A Woman With a Name and a Memory

Chapter 1 of 12

Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.

Mary.

Those two lines, in chapter 20 of John's Gospel, are the first documented conversation between a human and the Risen One.

The human who carries that exchange is probably the most poorly remembered woman of the New Testament in popular tradition.

Popular tradition tends to picture her as a repentant prostitute, an image that belongs to a homily of Pope Gregory the Great in the year 591 rather than to the biblical text. There the pope identified Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman of Luke 7 who anointed the feet of Jesus. Fourteen centuries later, that identification still dominates the popular imagination, even though no Eastern church ever accepted it, and even though the Vatican itself officially corrected it in 1969.

What the New Testament does say about Mary Magdalene:

...as well as some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out...

Luke 8:2, BSB

Mary was from Magdala, a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had freed her from seven demons, and from that point on she followed Him along with other women who supported the apostolic group materially.

That is what we know.

Setting aside both the prostitute of legend and Mary of Bethany, what remains is a woman of Galilee, healed by Jesus, who would become the first witness of His resurrection.