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The Woman the Church Misread for 1,400 Years · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr. Jordan Vale.
• 0:09
  In today's episode,
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  we're going to look at how Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's before sunrise.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: The city is still dark.
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  SPEAKER_00: Streets are empty.
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  SPEAKER_00: The air cold in the way Jerusalem mornings are cold in the early spring.
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  A woman is walking toward a tomb carrying spices she prepared
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  two days ago when
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  SPEAKER_00: there was still a body to anoint.
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  SPEAKER_00: She's not walking towards hope.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, she buried that on Friday.
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  She's walking towards grief,
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  which is the only thing she has left to give.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what happens next will be recorded in all four Gospels.
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  Her name will appear in those accounts more times than most of
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  the 12 men who were
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  SPEAKER_00: hiding behind locked doors in a room across the city.
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  She'll become the first person in human history to deliver the
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  message that
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  SPEAKER_00: everything has changed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for 1,378 years, the church will call her a prostitute.
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  SPEAKER_00: But she wasn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most people, if they know one thing about Mary Magdalene,
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  Know that she was a fallen woman,
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  a prostitute redeemed by Jesus,
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  a sinner turned saint.
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  And the story is so embedded in Western culture that it has
• 1:12
  generated paintings,
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  SPEAKER_00: operas,
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  SPEAKER_00: films,
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  SPEAKER_00: and theological arguments across 14 centuries.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there's one problem.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Gospels never say it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not once.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not in Matthew, not in Mark, not in Luke, not in John.
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  SPEAKER_00: The text is completely silent on the subject.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is no prostitute in Mary Magdalene's story.
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  SPEAKER_00: There never was.
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  SPEAKER_00: What the Gospels do say is this.
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  She was a woman from the town of Magdala,
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  on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
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  She had been healed by Jesus,
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  from whom seven demons had gone out,
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  as Luke describes it.
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  SPEAKER_00: After her healing,
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  she became one of a group of women who traveled with Jesus and
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  supported His
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  SPEAKER_00: ministry.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was present at the crucifixion,
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  SPEAKER_00: she was present at the burial,
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  and she arrived at the tomb on Sunday morning and became the
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  first witness to the
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  SPEAKER_00: resurrection.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is the actual historical story.
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  SPEAKER_00: So where did the prostitute come from?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: One Sermon 591
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  SPEAKER_00: His name was Gregory.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was the Bishop of Rome,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he was,
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  SPEAKER_00: indeed,
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  SPEAKER_00: one of the most capable administers the Church has ever produced.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gregory the Great, that's what they would eventually call him.
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  He was a brilliant theologian,
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  prolific writer,
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  and a reformer of the liturgy.
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  But he also preached a sermon in 591 AD that would reshape how
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  the world understood
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  SPEAKER_00: a woman who had been dead for five and a half centuries.
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  The New Testament contains several unnamed women whose stories
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  intersect with Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 7 describes a woman,
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  SPEAKER_00: called only a sinner,
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  SPEAKER_00: who enters a Pharisee's house,
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  SPEAKER_00: weeps at Jesus' feet,
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  SPEAKER_00: and wipes them with her hair.
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  SPEAKER_00: No name,
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  SPEAKER_00: no backstory beyond a sinner,
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  which in the context likely meant she was known for something
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  that had made her a
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  SPEAKER_00: social outcast.
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  SPEAKER_00: Separately,
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  SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 8 introduces a group of women who follow Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: including Mary Magdalene.
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  SPEAKER_00: And separately again,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Gospel of John describes Mary of Bethany,
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  SPEAKER_00: the sister of Martha and Lazarus,
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  SPEAKER_00: who anoints Jesus before his death.
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  SPEAKER_00: Three different women.
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  SPEAKER_00: identified differently across the texts.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Eastern Church, from the beginning, kept them distinct.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gregory looked at them and saw one person.
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  SPEAKER_00: In a single sermon,
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  SPEAKER_00: he declared that the unnamed sinner in Luke 7,
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  SPEAKER_00: the woman who wept at Jesus' feet,
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  SPEAKER_00: was Mary Magdalene.
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  SPEAKER_00: The seven demons he argued represented her seven deadly sins.
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  And therefore,
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  Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute or something like one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, he had no textual basis for this.
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  He was making an interpretive leap in a sermon,
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  not issuing a formal doctrinal decree.
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  SPEAKER_00: But...
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  He was the most influential churchman in the Western world and
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  once he said it,
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  it stuck.
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  And it would take the Catholic Church 1,378 years to officially
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  correct it.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what does the text actually say?
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  There is a woman in the Gospels who stands at the cross while
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  most of the disciples have fled.
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  SPEAKER_00: Matthew records her there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark records her there.
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  SPEAKER_00: John, you probably guessed it, he records her there too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Mary Magdalene.
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  SPEAKER_00: She watches where Jesus is buried.
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  SPEAKER_00: She prepares spices to anoint the body.
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  SPEAKER_00: She arrives at the tomb before dawn on Sunday.
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  SPEAKER_00: In John's account, when she finds the tomb empty, she weeps.
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  SPEAKER_00: A man she takes for the gardener asks her why she's weeping.
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  SPEAKER_00: She asks where the body has been taken.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says her name, Mary.
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  SPEAKER_00: She turns.
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  SPEAKER_00: The words she says in response is her pony, teacher.
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  SPEAKER_00: The risen Jesus then tells her to go and tell the disciples.
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  SPEAKER_00: She is, in the technical theological sense, the first apostle.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sent by the risen Christ to deliver a message.
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  The church father Hippolytus of Rome in the 3rd century and the
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  theologian Bernard
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  SPEAKER_00: de Clairvaux in the 12th gave her the title the Apostle to the Apostles.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's not a minor role.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is a positional role in the founding story of Christianity.
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  The resurrection,
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  without which the Christian faith is nothing,
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  according to Paul,
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  was first communicated by a woman from Galilee who had been
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  healed of something
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  SPEAKER_00: that had nearly destroyed her.
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  SPEAKER_00: The seven demons Luke mentions are not explained.
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  SPEAKER_00: Modern scholars generally read them as severe illnesses,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe possible mental illness,
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  SPEAKER_00: possible physical,
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  SPEAKER_00: just demonic possession.
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  SPEAKER_00: So why then did the false version persist?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because mistakes get corrected.
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  SPEAKER_00: Theological errors in the church, we love to argue over them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Councils get called, bishops gather, positions get refined.
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  SPEAKER_00: The church is not and has never been a static institution.
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  SPEAKER_00: It corrects itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, albeit slowly, sometimes very slowly, but it does.
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  SPEAKER_00: Particular error persisted for 13 centuries in the Western church.
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  SPEAKER_00: And part of the answer is probably rhetoric and storytelling.
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  SPEAKER_00: The image was too compelling,
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  SPEAKER_00: too artistically productive,
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  SPEAKER_00: too emotionally satisfied that we don't really examine it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The arc of a fallen woman redeemed.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a powerful narrative, and it appears in Rembrandt and Donatello.
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  Dan Brown put a version of it at the center of the most widely
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  read thriller of the
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  SPEAKER_00: early 21st century.
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  SPEAKER_00: And once a story has that much cultural momentum,
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  the correction has to fight for attention against centuries of
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  accumulated imagery.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there's another deeper layer.
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  The version with the prostitute is a story about a woman whose
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  significance comes
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  SPEAKER_00: from what she was rescued from.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her role is to be the object of grace.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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  SPEAKER_00: The actual version.
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  is a story about a woman whose significance comes from what she
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  witnessed and what
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  SPEAKER_00: she was trusted to carry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her role is to be a messenger, a witness, an apostle.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are not the same kind of stories.
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  SPEAKER_00: One keeps the woman in a supporting position, grace-covering scandal.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other gives her a defining one.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I don't personally think the church was consciously suppressing her.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gregory probably wasn't trying to rewrite
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  SPEAKER_00: Biblical History.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the version that reduced her persisted,
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  and the version that elevated her was available in the text the
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  entire time and was
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  SPEAKER_00: largely ignored.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1969,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Catholic Church revised its liturgical calendar,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it separated the feast days of Mary Magdalene,
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  SPEAKER_00: Mary of Bethany,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the unnamed sinful woman of Luke 7.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were acknowledging formally that these are three different women.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gregory had been wronged.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 2016,
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  Pope Francis elevated Mary Magdalene's feast day to the same
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  rank as the feast days
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  SPEAKER_00: of the apostles.
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  The decree issued by the Vatican described her as the apostle
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  of the new and greatest hope.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Eastern Orthodox Church,
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  SPEAKER_00: which had never made the mistake,
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  SPEAKER_00: observed the change,
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  SPEAKER_00: and as far as I know,
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  SPEAKER_00: said nothing,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is probably the appropriate response.
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  SPEAKER_00: And none of this received much coverage,
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  a 1,400-year correction to how the church had described one of
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  its most significant
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  SPEAKER_00: figures in
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  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't tend to generate headlines.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it matters because the authoritative version of her story,
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  SPEAKER_00: in the tradition that had told the wrong version the longest,
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  SPEAKER_00: is actually what the Gospels always said.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was not a prostitute.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was a healed woman who traveled with Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: funded his ministry,
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  SPEAKER_00: stood at the cross,
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  SPEAKER_00: went to the tomb,
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  SPEAKER_00: and became the first person the risen Christ chose to speak to and send.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a version of this story that ends with a takedown.
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  SPEAKER_00: The church got it wrong.
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  Patriarchy The suppression of women One more reason to distrust
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  the institution But
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  I don't think that's the most interesting version The most
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  interesting version is
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  SPEAKER_00: this The correction was always in the text Matthew,
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark,
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  SPEAKER_00: Luke,
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  and John never called her a prostitute They gave her a name
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  They gave her a
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  SPEAKER_00: hometown,
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  SPEAKER_00: a healing,
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  SPEAKER_00: a place at the cross,
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  and a role at the resurrection The actual record was available
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  to anyone who read
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  SPEAKER_00: it carefully for 2,000 years
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  SPEAKER_00: And the people who read it most carefully,
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  SPEAKER_00: the scholars,
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  SPEAKER_00: the eastern church,
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  SPEAKER_00: the careful exegetes,
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  SPEAKER_00: kept pointing to it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The question the story raises is not primarily about gender or power,
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  SPEAKER_00: though it certainly very much touches both.
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  It's about what happens when an image becomes more
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  authoritative than the text it's
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  SPEAKER_00: supposed to come from.
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  SPEAKER_00: When the accumulated cultural imagination and picture of something,
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  SPEAKER_00: the paintings,
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  SPEAKER_00: the sermons,
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  SPEAKER_00: the tradition,
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  SPEAKER_00: becomes so powerful that it starts to feel like evidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem that doesn't belong only to the medieval church.
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  SPEAKER_00: Any tradition,
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  SPEAKER_00: religious or secular,
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  can accumulate an image of something that diverges from its
• 9:00
  actual record and the
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  image becomes so familiar that interrogating it starts to feel
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  like this strange
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  SPEAKER_00: act rather than what should be an obvious one.
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  And what she actually was is more interesting than what the
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  legend made her.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was not rescued from disgrace.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was not a cautionary tale redeemed.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was a woman who had been completely broken,
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  SPEAKER_00: who was put back together,
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  who followed the person who had done that for her to the very
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  end and who was
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  SPEAKER_00: standing at the tomb when the story turned.
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  The risen Christ looked at the available options for who had
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  received the most
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  SPEAKER_00: significant news in the history of the world and he chose her.
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  The church spent 14 centuries explaining that away,
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  but the text never did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to The Theology Made Podcast.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: If this was encouraging or helpful,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: please like and subscribe on whatever channel you're listening on.