Mary of Magdala

Mary Magdalene takes her byname not from a sin but from a place: Magdala, a fishing town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Gospel introduces her as a woman out of whom Jesus had cast “seven demons” (Luke 8:2) — a phrase denoting grievous bondage and complete deliverance, not a life of sexual sin. From her first appearance she is a healed and grateful disciple of means, and reading her rightly begins with reading these two facts, the town and the seven demons, exactly as Scripture gives them.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Byname “Magdalene”

In all four Gospels the woman is identified not by a husband or a father but by her town: she is “Mary called Magdalene” (Luke 8:2), “Mary Magdalene” (Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25; 20:1). The form Magdalēnē is an adjective of place — “the Magdalene,” the woman from Magdala — distinguishing her from the several other Marys of the Gospel narrative, above all the Mother of God, Mary of Bethany, and Mary the mother of James and Joses (Mark 15:40; John 19:25). The identification by town rather than by male relation is itself notable, and may indicate a woman of independent standing (Bauckham, Gospel Women, 2002).

Magdala (Hebrew Migdal, “tower”) lay on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, between Capernaum and Tiberias, in the fertile plain of Gennesaret. The Greek-speaking world knew it as Tarichaea, “the place of salting,” from its fish-processing industry; the historian Josephus, who fortified it during the Jewish revolt, describes it as a substantial town with a hippodrome and a fleet of boats (Josephus, Jewish War 2.21.3–8; 3.10.1). Excavations begun in 2009 uncovered a first-century synagogue and a prosperous lakeside settlement, confirming Magdala as a real and significant town of Galilee in Jesus’ day (Taylor, “Missing Magdala,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 2014). That Mary came from such a place — a center of the fishing trade — fits the Gospel’s later notice that she and the other women “provided for them out of their means” (Luke 8:3): she was, it seems, a woman with resources of her own.

Joan Taylor has further argued that the byname may carry a secondary resonance, since migdal means “tower” and the rabbinic and patristic tradition occasionally played on the name — Jerome, for instance, glossing Magdalene as “tower-like” for her steadfast faith (Jerome, Letter 127, to Principia; Taylor, 2014). But the primary and certain sense is geographical: Mary of the town of Magdala.

“Out of Whom Seven Demons Had Gone”

The single fact the Gospels report of Mary’s life before the Passion is her deliverance. Luke introduces her in a list of women “who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out” (Luke 8:2, RSV). The longer ending of Mark repeats it: the risen Lord “appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons” (Mark 16:9). These are the only two references, and they agree: Mary was a woman whom Christ had freed from a sevenfold demonic bondage.

The phrase has been gravely misread. In the Western tradition, under the influence of the conflation that merged Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman of Luke 7 (see The Three Marys), “seven demons” came to be heard as a figure for seven deadly sins or for a life of sexual immorality. The text says no such thing. In the Gospels demonic possession is consistently presented as an affliction — a bondage of body and soul, often attended by physical and mental suffering — and not as a synonym for personal vice; the possessed are healed, not absolved (cf. Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39). The number seven denotes completeness and severity: a possession of the worst kind, and a deliverance of the most complete kind (Chrysostom does not moralize the number, treating it as the measure of her affliction; cf. Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 88). Nothing in Luke 8:2 or Mark 16:9 implies that Mary had been a prostitute or a great sinner; it implies that she had been gravely afflicted and was wholly healed.

This is the foundation of the Eastern reading, which keeps Mary Magdalene’s dignity intact. She is not the reformed harlot of Western art but the woman whom Christ delivered from demons and who, in gratitude, gave Him her whole life. The Orthodox liturgical books and the synaxarion present her precisely so: a woman freed from possession, who followed the Lord, stood by His Cross, and was first to see Him risen (The Great Synaxaristes, July 22). The “sinner” overlay is a Western importation that the East never received.

A Disciple of Means

From her deliverance flows her discipleship. Luke places her at the head of a band of women who travelled with Jesus and the Twelve through the towns of Galilee and “provided for them out of their means” (Luke 8:1–3) — women of substance who supported the ministry materially. Mary’s prominence in this list, named first, marks her as foremost among them, as she is named first in nearly every later list of the women at the Cross and the tomb (Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40; Luke 24:10; the order varies only at John 19:25, where the Theotokos and her kin are named). The consistency of this precedence is itself a small but telling datum: in the memory of the early Church, Mary Magdalene stood first among the women disciples as Peter stood first among the Twelve.

The Gospels thus give us, before the Passion, a clear and limited portrait: a woman from a prosperous Galilean town, delivered by Christ from a grievous demonic bondage, who followed Him in gratitude and supported His mission from her own resources, and who stood foremost among the women who would not leave Him even at the Cross. Everything else — the penitent, the prostitute, the contemplative of Bethany, the wife — is either later conflation or later legend. The Magdalene of Scripture is the healed and faithful disciple, and it is she whom the East venerates as Equal-to-the-Apostles.

See Also

• The Women Who Followed — the band of women among whom Mary is named first
• The Three Marys — why “seven demons” was misread in the West as a life of sin
• The Eastern Tradition — the Magdalene the East keeps undefiled by conflation
• At the Cross and the Tomb — the disciple of means at the Passion
• Holy Scripture — the Gospels as the sole first-century witness

References

• The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: Luke 8:1–3; Mark 16:9; Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25; 20:1.
• Josephus, Flavius. The Jewish War 2.21.3–8; 3.10.1. Trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library.
• Taylor, Joan E. “Missing Magdala and the Name of Mary ‘Magdalene’.” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 146.3 (2014): 205–223.
• Bauckham, Richard. Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
• Jerome. Letter 127 (To Principia). Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 6.
• Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Hom. 88. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 10.
• The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, July 22. Trans. Holy Apostles Convent. Buena Vista, CO, 2008.