Mary Magdalene has been a symbol for Christian penitents for almost 2,000 years.
She's often been confused with other women named Mary in the Bible, but Mary Magdalene
was quite a unique character on her own.
Here's the truth about Mary Magdalene.
The image of Mary Magdalene most people have in their head comes from centuries of misinformation.
If you know anything about her, it's that she was a prostitute who left her sinful ways
behind to follow Jesus.
But the prostitute in Luke's gospel who washes Jesus' feet with her hair doesn't actually
have a name, and there's no reason to think it was Mary Magdalene.
And no one probably ever would have conflated the two, but then Pope Gregory jumped in.
Based on pretty much nothing at all, he decreed that three people mentioned in various parts
of the bible were actually the same person: the nameless prostitute; Mary the sister of
Lazarus; and Mary Magdalene.
It wasn't until 1969 that the Catholic Church admitted they got it wrong, and those women
were really three different people.
Current Biblical scholarship paints a very different picture of Mary Magdalene, one that
is trickling down into the public consciousness through films like 2019's Mary Magdalene.
The Independent called her, quote, "a feminist figure."
She came from a thriving fishing village and appears to have been an extraordinarily independent
woman for her time, indicating she probably had a high social status.
Unlike most women in the Gospels, she isn't identified by her relationship to a father
or brother — she's just Mary, followi-ng Jesus because she wants to.
It's theorized she even had her own money and probably supported Jesus financially in
some way.
Far from the lowly penitent she's been portrayed as throughout history, she was a strong, important
disciple, whose name and reputation were belittled by men in power with an agenda.
"I will not be silent"
If you're familiar with the Gospels, you might have noticed that a lot of the time they don't
agree on things.
When you compare them, they seem to often tell very different versions of the same story.
But one thing that is consistent across all four gospels is the importance of Mary Magdalene.
While many of the apostles barely get name checked in the gospels — or are even missing
entirely!
— Mary Magdalene appears in all four gospels.
Both Mark and Luke say she started following Jesus after he cast some demons out of her,
and all four Gospels agree she was present at Jesus's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
That last bit is where she emerges as a hugely important figure.
Mark and John claim she alone was the first person to see Jesus return, while Matthew
and Luke have her as part of a small group of women.
Either way, she is also the first to tell people that Jesus had risen, leading to the
tradition of calling her the "apostle to the apostles."
"For that hour or two, Mary Magdalene was the only one who knew about the resurrection,
and so Mary Magdalene was the church."
The fact that Mary Magdalene is singled out as having this unbelievably significant role
across four books that are rarely so consistent really singles her out.
It makes her more than just a devoted follower; it indicates she was one of the first leaders
of the Christian religion.
Not every book about the life of Jesus and his disciples made it into the Bible.
Some of them were even lost for centuries and just turn up randomly.
According to the BBC, this happened in Cairo in 1896.
A German scholar was shopping in a bazaar and came across a papyrus book, bound in leather
and written in Coptic.
It turned out to be the Gospel of Mary.
The author is unknown, but Time says scholars think it was written in the second century
or even earlier.
The mysterious book isn't officially recognized by the church, so it's known as one of the
apocryphal texts.
Still, it tells an interesting story that makes Mary Magdalene's role even more significant.
The story says Jesus was insistent his disciples should go preach his teachings to the world,
but the men are scared they will be killed, too.
It's Mary who steps up and has to remind the apostles that Jesus will always be with them.
She brings up a private conversation she had with Jesus and explains his teachings for
them.
Then some of the guys get mad.
They can't believe Jesus would single out a woman like that, or that they should listen
to her since she's just a chick.
Peter, who would go on to be the first pope, even sees her as a rival for leadership.
The point the gospel hits home is that Mary Magdalene was the one disciple who really
"got" Jesus.
In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown introduced the world to the theory that Mary Magdalene
and Jesus were married.
But he certainly wasn't the first or the last person to speculate about their relationship.
The problem is, the four official Gospels have a serious gap in Jesus' life.
He goes from newborn to about 30 years old in a few lines.
That leaves room for people to speculate about what he was doing in between.
According to the authors of the 2014 book The Lost Gospel, he got married to Mary Magdalene
and they had two kids.
The Daily Beast says the authors made this assertion based on a sixth-century document
called The Story of Joseph and Aseneth.
On the surface, the book is about the Old Testament figure with the technicolor dreamcoat,
but the authors claim it's really about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, with the names changed
so the original writer wouldn't be killed for what was revealed.
Mainstream Christian scholars, though, have dismissed the book out of hand as a bunch
of bunk.
Leonardo da Vinci's fresco The Last Supper is a masterpiece.
It's also given rise to some weird conspiracy theories about Mary Magdalene.
All four of the gospels include the story of Jesus' final meal, but none of them mention
Mary Magdalene was there, just the Twelve Apostles.
In Leonardo's painting, the character to Jesus' right is John, caught mid-swoon after learning
one of them would betray Christ.
He has long hair, and a very feminine face.
This has led some people — most famously author Dan Brown — to believe it wasn't
actually John, but Mary Magdalene.
But Leonardo depicted lots of very effeminate-looking dudes in his other paintings and drawings.
Pretty guys were a hallmark of his work.
Plus, including Mary Magdalene would have been heresy at a time when the Catholic church
was on an inquisition bender.
Da Vinci would have been risking a lot, for no real reason.
He was an inventor and artist, not someone running around trying to challenge church
teachings.
Despite that, there's another theory Mary Magdalene is secretly in The Last Supper.
The Telegraph says in 2007, an "amateur scholar" found her hidden figure by superimposing the
fresco with its mirror image, then making them both partially transparent.
He said this reveals a woman, Mary Magdalene, holding a baby, but no one else seems to be
buying it.
Mary Magdalene was associated with hair for a long time because of the church's conflation
of her and the nameless prostitute who washed Jesus' feet and then dried them with her hair.
This gave artists an excuse to draw her with exquisite locks, but somewhere along the line
it took a weird turn.
Daily Art Magazine reports a legend grew that after she witnessed Jesus' crucifixion and
resurrection, Mary Magdalene went off into the wilderness.
She spent years there, all by herself, just fasting and praying.
Obviously, she didn't have time to go shopping or even think about something as mundane and
earthly as clothes, so eventually her clothes fell apart.
In order to protect her modesty, God made her hair grow like crazy.
Depending on which version you believe, this either meant her head hair grew crazy long,
or that her whole body grew thick hair like a wolf-lady.
For hundreds of years, artists depicted her both ways.
But this story also gets Mary Magdalene confused with a different Mary.
It was actually St. Mary of Egypt who lived in the wilderness, but since the church seems
to think everyone named Mary is the same person, the Hairy Mary Magdalene legend grew.
Other people think Mary Magdalene took an alternate journey once Jesus went up to heaven.
According to the Catholic Travel Guide, a different legend says she and about 70 other
early Christians were being persecuted for their beliefs and were eventually put in a
boat without sails or oars and pushed out to sea to die.
But God intervened and the boat ended up landing safely in France, where a kind local took
the refugees in.
After that Mary Magdalene traveled around spreading the gospel for a while before she
decided to go live in a cave.
Eventually, she died, and her bones stayed there for over 1,000 years.
The book The Making of the Magdalen relates that Charles II of France is supposed to have
been divinely inspired to find Mary's remains.
Well, he definitely found someone's bones in 1279 and gave them to the local Dominican
monks to look after.
They put her skull in a gold and jeweled holder, which is super creepy, but also recently allowed
artists to do a 3D rendering of her face.
So is it really Mary Magdalene?
We'll probably never know.
If you've ever wondered why you ran around looking for eggs when you were a kid, it might
be partially down to Mary Magdalene.
There are plenty of theories as to why Christians dye eggs, but the Catholic Archdiocese of
Melbourne reports that there are two colored-egg legends that involve Mary Magdalene, and they
come from the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
The first story says that when Mary went to Jesus' tomb to anoint his body, she brought
a basket of hard-boiled eggs, possibly as a lunch for her and the other ladies.
But then Jesus appeared to them totally not dead, and the eggs suddenly turned either
bright red or rainbow-colored.
The other tale says that after Jesus went back up to heaven, Mary decided to go to Rome
and see the emperor, Tiberius, to yell at him for crucifying Jesus in the first place.
Everyone who saw the emperor was supposed to bring him a present, so she showed up with
one of her trusty eggs.
She gave it to Tiberius and explained that Christ had risen.
The emperor wasn't having it, saying it was just as impossible for someone to rise from
the dead as for the egg to change color.
That's when the egg is supposed to have miraculously turned red.
Hey, makes more sense than some other theories.
Mary Magdalene has always been a fan favorite, but it wasn't until recently that the Catholic
Church recognized her as extra special.
She was a saint from the very beginning of the church, but her day on the Catholic calendar,
July 22, was just a "memorial."
The Catholic News Service reports that in 2016, Pope Francis finally elevated it to
a "feast day," or the kind of celebration reserved for the really important saints.
Within the Catholic church, it finally put her on par with the Twelve (male) Apostles
in terms of significance.
This was an official recognition of her role as the "Apostle of the Apostles."
The pope said she was a "true and authentic evangelizer," and called her out for her special
place in Jesus' life as well as her role in spreading the gospel after he was gone.
One archbishop, writing in the Vatican newspaper, said the elevation of her feast day was meant
to
"highlight the relevance of this woman who showed great love for Christ and was much
loved by Christ"
About time!
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