The Women Who Followed

Mary Magdalene belongs to a company: the women who followed Jesus from Galilee, supported His ministry “out of their means,” and remained with Him to the Cross and the tomb. Luke names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna among “many others” (Luke 8:1–3); the Passion narratives add Salome and the other Marys (Mark 15:40–41). This file establishes that band — its named members, its material support of the mission, and its remarkable prominence in the Gospel record — as the setting within which Mary Magdalene must be understood.

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

A Company of Women in the Ministry

The Gospel of Luke uniquely pauses, at the opening of chapter 8, to record that Jesus travelled “through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means” (Luke 8:1–3, RSV). The notice is brief but weighty. It tells us that alongside the Twelve there travelled a company of women; that several were named and remembered; that they had been healed; and that they bore the material cost of the itinerant mission from their own resources.

The named women are worth attending to. Mary Magdalene stands first, as she will in nearly every later list. Joanna is identified as “the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward” — that is, the wife of a senior official in the household of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee; she was therefore a woman of rank and means, and her presence among the disciples reached into the court itself (Luke 8:3; she reappears at the tomb, Luke 24:10). Susanna is named only here. The “many others” indicates that the company was larger than the three named, a body of women whose support was integral to the ministry’s daily life (Bauckham, Gospel Women, 2002, on the named women as sources of the tradition).

That these women “provided for them out of their means” (Greek diēkonoun autois ek tōn hyparchontōn autais) is significant on two counts. First, it establishes that some of the women were persons of substance, able to underwrite the needs of a travelling band — consistent with Mary’s origin in the prosperous fishing town of Magdala (see Mary of Magdala). Second, the verb diakoneō, “to serve, to minister,” is the same root from which “deacon” derives; the women’s service is described in the language of ministry, not merely of domestic provision (cf. the later order of deaconesses, The Order of Deaconesses).

Women in the Gospel of Luke

The prominence of women in this band is part of a broader feature of Luke’s Gospel, which throughout pairs men and women and gives the women of the narrative unusual visibility — Elizabeth beside Zechariah, Anna beside Simeon, the widow of Nain, the woman healed of a hemorrhage, Martha and Mary, the women at the Cross and the tomb. Luke alone preserves the catalogue of Galilean women supporters at 8:1–3, and Luke alone names Joanna among the women at the empty tomb (Luke 24:10). This Lukan attention is not a modern projection but a datum of the text: the Third Gospel remembers the women of the ministry by name and by role.

The Fathers read this prominence as fitting and providential. The women’s constancy — their presence where the men were absent — is repeatedly drawn out in the patristic homilies on the Passion, where Chrysostom contrasts the flight of the disciples with the steadfastness of the women who “followed him, ministering to him, and were present even unto the time of the dangers” (Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 88, on Matt. 27:55). The very weakness ascribed to women by the ancient world is overturned in the Gospel, where the women prove the more courageous.

From Galilee to Jerusalem

The same women reappear, named again, at the decisive moments of the Passion and Resurrection, and the Gospels are careful to mark the continuity. Matthew, describing the women at the Cross, says “there were also many women there, looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (Matt. 27:55–56, RSV). Mark gives a parallel list — “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome” — and adds that these “when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem” (Mark 15:40–41, RSV). The phrase “followed him from Galilee” deliberately ties the women at Golgotha to the company of Luke 8: it is the same band, now standing by the Cross.

This continuity is the spine of Mary Magdalene’s story. The women who supported the Galilean ministry are the women who do not flee at the Passion; the women who watch the burial are the women who come with spices to the tomb; and from among them Mary Magdalene is sent as the first herald of the Resurrection. The Eastern Church gathers this whole arc under the title Myrrh-bearer and commemorates the band together on the third Sunday of Pascha (see The Myrrh-bearing Women).

Who the Myrrh-bearers Were

The lists across the four Gospels do not perfectly coincide — the Gospels name different subsets of a larger group, and harmonizing them exactly is impossible and unnecessary. [Disputed: the precise roster of the women at the Cross and tomb varies among the Gospels — Matthew names Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee (27:56); Mark names Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James the younger and Joses, and Salome (15:40); Luke names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary mother of James (24:10); John names Mary Magdalene, the Theotokos, Mary of Clopas, and the Lord's mother's sister (19:25). The "mother of the sons of Zebedee" (Matthew) is traditionally identified with Salome (Mark); "Mary of Clopas" with "Mary the mother of James and Joses." The Eastern tradition resolves the band into a fixed company of myrrh-bearers, but the Gospels themselves give overlapping rather than identical lists.] What is constant across all four is that Mary Magdalene is named, and named first among the women.

The Byzantine synaxarion fixes the company of myrrh-bearers at a set number — most often eight: Mary Magdalene, Mary of Clopas, Joanna, Salome, Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus, Susanna, and Mary the mother of James (with the Theotokos honored above all as the foremost myrrh-bearer); the count and membership vary by source (The Pentecostarion, the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women). The tradition thus gathers into one commemorated band the scattered names of the Gospel lists, with Mary Magdalene at their head.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: Luke 8:1–3; 24:10; Matthew 27:55–56; Mark 15:40–41; John 19:25.
  • Bauckham, Richard. Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
  • Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Hom. 88. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 10.
  • The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990. (The Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women.)
  • The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, July 22, and the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women. Trans. Holy Apostles Convent. Buena Vista, CO, 2008.