Mary Magdelene: Apostle to the Apostles

[SolomonVII]

Here is the woman that never left Jesus and his mother during the crucifixion, and who was there for his resurrection as well.
If the Incarnation of Jesus came through Mary the virgin, the rebirth of Jesus was through Mary Magdelene.

It was through her perseverance, and her faith that Jesus became recognized, and through her belief that the apostles came to believe once more that in Christ, all things are possible, even rebirth from the most horrific death imaginable.

Starting with Pope Gregory the Great, Mary Magdalene became transformed from the person she was in the Bible, to the icon of a repentant sinner, a repentant prostitute even.

That of course was an unbiblical account of who she was, and in the twentieth century there began to emerge once more a clearer picture of who Mary Magdalene was, and the roll she played as the evangelist to the the evangelists, the first to bear the good news of the risen Jesus.

The simplification of the role of women are to play in the church, as either Virgin or penitent prostitute is now becoming recognized as unbiblical on both accounts. Mary Magdalene is emerging as a truer figure of the feminine in Christianity.
She was the Apostle to the apostles. Through her witness, the Risen Christ was born again into this world.

That is the role that women took on in the early Christian church. that is the role that women play more and more in the modern church, as the unbiblical ideas of femininity are fast becoming a thing of the medieval past.

 

[Kristos]

Your presumption that this view re-emerged in the 20th century is false. The east never subscribed to the view of Mary Magdalene as a fallen woman, thus it has always been there for anyone who cared enough to look. Your post also seems to imply that it was some sort of modern humanistic idealism that drove the "liberation" of the true Mary Magdalene. I would take great exception to this notion - nothing has enslaved women more than modernity.

 

[SolomonVII]

Your presumption that this view re-emerged in the 20th century is false. The east never subscribed to the view of Mary Magdalene as a fallen woman, thus it has always been there for anyone who cared enough to look. Your post also seems to imply that it was some sort of modern humanistic idealism that drove the "liberation" of the true Mary Magdalene. I would take great exception to this notion - nothing has enslaved women more than modernity.

It is not a false presumption since it describes the western Church. To the extent that the eastern Church turned inward and stopped being a part of the the church and Christian community as a whole over the centuries meant that for the larger part of the Christian world, this is the view that emerged, and had dominated.

I always love it when people direct their criticisms at a post at what the post seems to imply, rather than to what the post actually says. Since not once were the words "humanistic" " "liberation" " or "modern idealism" used, it is beyond me how you could have come to a conclusion that was just not there.

 

[Standing Up]

Interesting.

So, she wasn't the repentant prostitute idea, the antithesis of the ever-virgin?

 

[SolomonVII]

Interesting.

So, she wasn't the repentant prostitute idea, the antithesis of the ever-virgin?

I grew up with the idea that she was a prostitute possessed by seven demons. I assumed it was all biblical, and it was just me that would have missed it in any of my readings.

Not true. There came a tendency in the church where Mary Magdalene became personna for practically every un-named women in Scripture.

The show that I watched was not so critical of Gregory the Great for introducing the idea of the penitent Mary Magdalene as an icon of the penitent sinner. She became the icon of penitence for a church badly in need of reform.
However, his was simply not a biblical portrayal of her, and for centuries we have lived with that misinformation.

Going by the Bible alone, Mary indeed was the person very front in centre at the "birthing pains' at the cross, and and the moment at the opened tomb when Jesus was literally born again into the Spirit.

The birthing analogy was not something from the show by the way. It is just something that I thought I would put out there to wee what people thought.

 

[Kristos]

It is not a false presumption since it describes the western Church. To the extent that the eastern Church turned inward and stopped being a part of the the church and Christian community as a whole over the centuries meant that for the larger part of the Christian world, this is the view that emerged, and had dominated.

I always love it when people direct their criticisms at a post at what the post seems to imply, rather than to what the post actually says. Since not once were the words "humanistic" " "liberation" " or "modern idealism" used, it is beyond me how you could have come to a conclusion that was just not there.

I could say the same about your "simplification of the role of women are to play in the church, as either Virgin or penitent prostitute". This has no historical standing as a legitimate Christian view - east or west.

And this "the role that women play more and more in the modern church, as the unbiblical ideas of femininity are fast becoming a thing of the medieval past." is so fraught with misconception that I don't even know where to start.

So, it seems to me that you making conclusions that are not there, and I am merely pointing it out. But it doesn't seem like you are interested in listening.

 

[SolomonVII]

If you start out your conversation confrontationally, expect nothing but confrontation yourself.

Of course, reducing 1500 years of history from Pope Gregory to our day to one sentence involves simplification. Just because something is a simplification though does not make it necessary for a blanket condemnation of it being false.

What is not even Biblical is of course not legitimate Christianity. That does not mean that it does not exist, and has not coloured Christian impressions throughout the centuries.

What I have provided here is a more legitimate theology of Mary Magdalene. What you have provided on the one hand is to sniff that this has always been the view, and on the other to accuse me of implying some kind of humanistic, modern idealism of "liberation", whatever that means.
You put me in a double bind in other words, and now you play the victim card when my reaction was to confront you on that, with both barrels.

The problem is not that that I am not interested in listening, but that I was listening and responding to your confrontation in the same spirit with which it was delivered.

 

[Standing Up]

I grew up with the idea that she was a prostitute possessed by seven demons. I assumed it was all biblical, and it was just me that would have missed it in any of my readings.

Not true. There came a tendency in the church where Mary Magdalene became personna for practically every un-named women in Scripture.

The show that I watched was not so critical of Gregory the Great for introducing the idea of the penitent Mary Magdalene as an icon of the penitent sinner. She became the icon of penitence for a church badly in need of reform.
However, his was simply not a biblical portrayal of her, and for centuries we have lived with that misinformation.

Going by the Bible alone, Mary indeed was the person very front in centre at the "birthing pains' at the cross, and and the moment at the opened tomb when Jesus was literally born again into the Spirit.

The birthing analogy was not something from the show by the way. It is just something that I thought I would put out there to wee what people thought.

The 7 demon deliverance of MMagdalene was the same idea I was taught.

She is prominent amongst the women. Didn't she also annoint Him for burial? And was there at the cross. And perhaps was alone at first when He appeared to be the gardner (John).

It's an interesting contrasting motif between the "ever-virgin" and repentant sinner saved by grace through faith.

 

[Mary of Bethany]

The Eastern Church never equated St. Mary Magdalene with being a prostitute. She was healed of 7 demons by Christ. She is called "Equal to the Apostles" in the Church for her proclamation of Christ's resurrection, and as one of the Myrhhbearers is commemorated on the second Sunday following Pascha. She also went on to preach the Gospel in Europe. The Western Church has also confused her with St. Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus).

Maybe the "recharacterization" of her has more to do with the recovery in the West of the East's knowledge/traditions.

Mary

 

[WisdomTree]

The Eastern Church never equated St. Mary Magdalene with being a prostitute. She was healed of 7 demons by Christ. She is called "Equal to the Apostles" in the Church for her proclamation of Christ's resurrection, and as one of the Myrhhbearers is commemorated on the second Sunday following Pascha. She also went on to preach the Gospel in Europe. The Western Church has also confused her with St. Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus).

Maybe the "recharacterization" of her has more to do with the recovery in the West of the East's knowledge/traditions.

Mary

The Catholic Church no longer identify St Mary Magdalene as either the prostitute nor St Mary of Bethany, though the influence lingers due to St Gregory the Great...

 

[SolomonVII]

Pope Gregory has already been identified as the person most instrumental in the repentant sinner motif.
However, going back in history, the repentant prostitute motif originated in the East, in the Syrian church of St Ephraim, whose is the first recorded mention of that.

Misnamed a repentant prostitute [edit]


Mary Magdalene, shown in a painting by Guido Reni, repenting of her former sinful ways.[15] The Walters Art Museum.



It is almost universally agreed today that characterizations of her as a repentant prostitute are completely unfounded.[3][4][9] However, Mary Magdalene has long been confused with other women also named Mary and some anonymous women whose stories were mistakenly fused into one sensual young sinner. This conflation merging several women into one composite has incorrectly linked the Magdalene with the unnamed sinner (commonly thought to have been a prostitute) in Luke 7:36-50.[3] Though St. Mary Magdalene is named in each of the four gospels in the New Testament, not once does it say that she was a prostitute or a sinner.[4] Nothing in the New Testament even hints of her as a prostitute or a morally loose woman.[9] Contemporary scholarship is said to have restored the understanding of Mary of Magdala as an important early Christian leader.[16][17]

Yet, for many centuries the Western (Catholic) church taught that St. Mary Magdalene was the person mentioned in the Gospels as being both Mary of Bethany and the "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus in Luke.[Lk 7:36–50] The notion of Mary Magdalene being a repentant prostitute has been prevalent over the centuries at least from Ephraim the Syrian in the fourth century, Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, and many artists, writers and Scripture commentators who followed their lead. From the 12th century Abbot Hugh of Semur (died 1109), Peter Abelard (died 1142), and Geoffrey of Vendome (died 1132) all referred to Mary Magdalene as the sinner who merited the title apostolarum apostola (Apostle to the Apostles), with the title becoming commonplace during the 12th and 13th centuries.[18] Therefore, the repentant prostitute became the dominant persona in St. Mary Magdalene's reputation depiction in Western art and religious literature. In art, she is "often semi-naked, or an isolated hermit repenting for her sins in the wilderness: an outcast. Her primary link with Jesus is as the woman washing and anointing his feet. But we know her best as a prostitute".[4]

This identification was made official by the Western (Catholic) church in a homily given by Pope Gregory I around the year 591. He is described as one of the most influential figures ever to serve as pope. In a famous series of sermons on Mary Magdalene, given in Rome,[19] he identified Magdalene not only with the anonymous sinner in Luke's gospel, but also with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. The seven devils removed from her by Jesus "morphed into the seven capital sins, and Mary Magdalene began to be condemned not only for lust but for pride and covetousness as well".[3] Pope Gregory's homily on Luke's gospel made it an official interpretation of the church that Mary Magdalene was the woman of the “alabaster jar”—a prostitute:

<B>

She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts. What she therefore displayed more scandalously, she was now offering to God in a more praiseworthy manner. She had coveted with earthly eyes, but now through penitence these are consumed with tears. She displayed her hair to set off her face, but now her hair dries her tears. She had spoken proud things with her mouth, but in kissing the Lord’s feet, she now planted her mouth on the Redeemer’s feet. For every delight, therefore, she had had in herself, she now immolated herself. She turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance.
​

</B>

— Pope Gregory the Great (homily XXXIII)[19]​

With that, St. Mary’s conflicted image was, in the words of Susan Haskins, author of Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor, “finally settled...for nearly fourteen hundred years.”[20]

In 1969, during the papacy of Paul VI, the Vatican, without commenting on Pope Gregory's reasoning,[21] implicitly rejected it by separating Luke's sinful woman, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdala via the Roman Missal.[22]

Nevertheless, the reputation still lingers.[4]

 

[Kristos]

I can't find any evidence for this assertion concerning Ephraim the Syrian. This wiki article doesn't give a reference for this "fact". The bbc article referenced at the end of the paragraph doesn't mention it, neither does the book by Schaberg (p 88). In fact, St Ephraim dedicated an entire homily to the "sinful woman" (npnf2-13 p. 444) and never once calls her Mary. On the contrary, he contrasts the sinful woman with Mary and the woman with the issue of blood (ibid p. 433).

 

[SolomonVII]

Jesus in the Talmud - Peter Schäfer - Google Books




One of the first sources of the idea of Mary being a prostitute, not surprisingly actually, is Talmudic. Considering how the rumours even of mother Mary having her son Jesus through a liaison with a Roman soldier Pantera were Talmudic, it is true to form that the Talmud would be the source for the same kind of story about Mary of Magdalene.

The gnostic gospels also are a source of this kind of story. The Gospel of Philip is one that sexualizes her relationship.

A third source would be the tendency for Scripture to blend the various women that Jesus was involved with into one woman, a repentant Woman of Sin.