Loading...In my previous post I was answering the following question: “where did the origin of Mary Magdalene as an escort/ sex worker come from?” I began my answer by citing a passage from my book on Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, where I explained that a number of passages in the New Testament in which women are said to appear are often said / assumed to be about Mary Magdalene, even though she is not mentioned in them. That is where I will pick up the conversation here, to show that these stories are almost certainly *not* about her; I will then show how they all got mushed together in the popular imagination, largely because of a famous sermon preached by a famous pope in the sixth century. Here is where I resume:
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None of these New Testament stories, however, deals with Mary Magdalene — except in popular imagination, which has kept blissfully removed from a careful reading of the texts themselves. But the New Testament texts actually tell a different tale. Mary Magdalene is not the person she is sometimes said to be.
(a) Mary Magdalene cannot be the sinful woman who anoints Jesus in Luke 7. This woman, I should repeat, is not called a prostitute. Anyone who assumes that a “sinful woman” must have been someone who was paid for sex is simply misogynist (what else could a “sinful” woman be, if not a whore?). In fact, for particularly strict Jews of the first century, a “sinful” woman could be someone who ground her grain on the sabbath or who ate a bit of shrimp cocktail — for this would be someone who did not assiduously observe the law of Moses. But in any event, this sinful woman who anoints Jesus in Luke 7 is not Mary Magdalene, because Mary Magdalene is actually introduced by Luke in his very next story (Luke 8:1-3), where he gives her name (Mary), her identification (of the town of Magdala), and describes something about her (“from whom seven demons had gone out”). As New Testament scholars today all agree, if the earlier story of Luke 7 were about Mary, he would have introduced her for the first time there — not later.
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This question is off-topic a bit, though it does mention Mary Magdalene.
I have an Internet friend, James David Audlin, who’s revision of his two volume book on the Gospel of John was just released by the publisher. I ordered Vol. 1 yesterday in which he has his translation of that gospel and a presentation of his analysis of John’s gospel, sources, author, origins etc.
In a Facebook exchange we had today he said the following in response to a question I asked him regarding the authorship of the gospel:
*** “I think you’ll find the question of single/multiple authorship thoroughly answered (in my book), but, in a nutshell – the GOJ was written by John the Presbyter, a former priest in the Second Temple who got his university education at the Musaeum in Alexandria (Egypt) with the great Philo. It relies primarily on the eyewitness memories of Lazarus, the Beloved Disciple, with additional memories from Mary “Magdalene”, Mary Jesus’s mother, and the Presbyter himself.” ***
Due to the gross misuse of John’s gospel by Fundamentalists, I tend NOT to read it, since parts of it arouse negative thoughts within me, but I probably should read it more seriously.
I don’t know if what David Audlin says about the authorship is true and I am not familiar with the person, of “John the Presbyter.”
Questions:
***what do you think of his comment and could you do some posts sometime regarding this issueof John’s authorship and the Gospel of John in general?***
I think your friend has a vivid imagination! We know about an “elder” (or “presbyter”) John from Papias, and he’s later mentioned by the likes of Eusebius. But we have almost no historical information about him, and there is no credible evidence that he had anything to do with the Gospel of John (which, of course, was not called “John” — so why imagine that a John, let alone one we know so little about, wrote it? To say John the presbyter was a priest educated in Alexandria and, well, all the rest of what he says, is just pious legend.
If I may jump in.. Was the elder John that Papias mentions the same John that Polycarp seems to have known? I’ve read that Irenaeus (as a child) saw Polycarp preach and was highly influenced by that. I’ve read that Papias and Polycarp were companions. Am I out of line wondering if these connections are the reason we have a Gospel of John at all?
Polycarp allegedly knew John the Evangelist (the disciple, John the son of Zebedee), not John the Elder. I don’t buy that he did (since in his letter he quotes all sorts of books that became the NT, but not the Gospel of John!), but that was the early rumor. Papias doesn’t mention Polycarp or Polycarp Papias, so it’s hard to know if they ever knew each other either, though later sources *claimed* they did. I think the Gospel of John predated all these guys and is unrelated to them….
I’m sorry.. I meant to make it that Irenaeus (assuming he named the gospels), named the 4th gospel “John” because of Polycarp.
Your response begs another question. If John didn’t write the gospel to begin with, how would quoting the gospel prove he (Polycarp) knew him? Was the gospel named before Polycarp died? In your studies have you read of a time frame in which the apostle John died?
Sorry for all the questions 🙂 But I love using you as my source in debates.
Ah, good question. I (well, we) don’t know when they started calling it John. Irenaeus was indeed the first on record, but he’s not the one who originated the idea. Who did? Who knows? My comment on Polycarp/John was predicated on the common ideas that: John wrote the fourth Gospel; Polycarp was a companion of John. The second is usually predicated on the first, but there is, of course, no need that it be.
I appreciate every single post on your blog, but I am specially fond of the ones in which you start at the historical/factual sphere of centuries ago and then, to our great surprise, here you are in today’s times touching on the same issues that, unfortunately in this case, still permeates our lives.
That Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, or an adulteress, was one of the (many) teachings of the church that I never bought into. A demoniac, on the other hand, yes, I have and do believe (to a certain extent) that’s what she was, prior to her encounter with our charismatic and for the most part, laid back Jesus, who eased her mind and calmed her troubled soul, in doing what it was he did, all in keeping with what he said was the greatest of all commandments: to love God above all else and one’s neighbor as one’s self. He dedicated himself to that.
“No greater love hath man than this, that he lay his life down for his friend.”
In the profession I am in, it doesn’t always take meds or some special unearthly spiritual power to alleviate the manifestations of certain psychosis. Every now and then all it takes is a bit of genuine caring and a calm, persistent and patient, voice of reason – characteristics that I believe were the better/greater part of Jesus that gave him the ability to do what he did, and I believe that what he did was oftentimes misconstrued as miraculous, and as such the stories were written, long after the events that inspired them.
There seems to have been a whole lot of demonic possession going around, back in the days of Jesus. Back in the day, such things as epileptic seizures were oftentimes believed to be manifestations of demonic possession, which isn’t to say that in such places as Hatti such beliefs don’t still thrive.
Thank God for science, and even the science of the mind, psychotropics and phenobarbital. Where are all of the diabetic episodes, the epileptic (and related) events, the manic depressants, bipolars and even the schizoids of the day? I fear far too many of them were believed to be cursed or possessed and dealt with as such.
So what might it really have been about Mary Magdalene that benefited from one as charismatic as Jesus, and why would she not have fallen in love with him, if, in fact, he offered her hope and provided her comfort; and who’s to really say he didn’t fall in love with her too?
Is it really so inconceivable?
You are most welcome to chalk this all up as being born of my vivid imagination, if you will. 😉
This was a very well-written and interesting comment! Whether Jesus was divine or not, he obviously showed love to Mary and she followed him based on his incredible moral teachings. As you noted, Jesus eased her mind and calmed her soul and that’s something that surely caused her to follow him. Who wouldn’t want to follow a teacher like that? We need more people like Jesus in the world (even if a person doesn’t believe he was divine!)
If by church you mean the catholic church, there is no doctrine that she was a prostitute, despite the quoted sermon. Popes say a whole bunch of stuff that are not necessarily church teachings.
It looks like poor Mary Magdalene was just in the wrong sermon at the wrong time…
Thank you for sharing a few facts regarding the legendary accounts of Mary Magdalene, Bart. I had heard the conflated versions of Mary Magdalene before, and became somewhat suspicious of the linkage, but didn’t know they were true until reading your post. As Pope Gregory the Great was obviously speaking infallibly for God, now I know why the legendary accounts have persisted.
Thanks too for the previous posts on Jesus as a sexual being . . . which had been another curiosity to me. Although potentially he might have been married to a rich Jewess (widow?) who lived a short ways from Nazareth but who had a liking for traveling carpenters, and always had work to do on her house (credit that screenplay to Reza Aslan as well). Kids? I don’t think so . . . at least not teenagers. Had Jesus had kids and particularly teenagers, we would have heard the Sermon in the Valley instead of the Mount. But then again, praying for “thy Kingdom come” may be a hint that he did.
Thank you for this post, Dr. Ehrman. I am going to share this with some of my friends, Christian and non-Christian, in case they still believe Mary was a prostitute. Mary Magdalene certainly does not deserve this reputation, since scholars say otherwise. In my personal opinion, Mary was one of Jesus’ closest followers and one of the most important. After all, she was present at Jesus’ crucifixion and the first one to see him after he left the tomb (or at the least that’s what the Bible says). Regardless, for her to be mentioned the way she is seems to indicate she truly cared about Jesus of Nazareth and was a serious follower of him.
Hi, one of my FB friend asked
“Listening to Dr. Ehrman’s books. Confused about the story about the woman caught in the act of adulty.
I believe Ehrman said that the story does not appear in any manuscript of the Bible until the 12th century CE. But I noticed today listening to one of his lectures, he said Pope Gregory in the 6th century ( I think) mentions the story as part of the pope’s belief that she is Mary Mary Magdalene. Am I missing something?”
I think Pope Gregory mentioned Mary of Bethany (John 11, 12) not John 8.
Nope, that’s not what I have said. It first appears in the fifth century manuscript Codex Bezae (and very rarely after that till many centuries later) It does not occur in any Greek father *commenting* on the Gospel of John until the 12th century.
I know this is extremely late but I’ll ask nevertheless in the hope of an answer. I know about the Pope’s C6th ascription of prostitution to Mary Magdalen. I had a tutor on a course saying that the tale comes from a mistranslation of the Aramaic into Koine Greek. Looking at the NT pericopes which mention her, I cannot see how that could possibly be true. Was my tutor wrong and my instinct right?
Hmmm… I’m afraid I don’t know what he’s talking about!
Thanks, Prof. I pointed to your reference to Pope Gregory as the source, and the tutor (she) just asked to move on. Odd and disconcerting on a course which was supposed to be about the history of ideas. When they arose, I thought, was surely foundational.