According to Luke 8:2, Mary Magdalene had been a severely demonised woman whom Jesus had healed.
David Instone-Brewer notes that Mary would have been a former social outcast, feared and despised by the rest of the community. She occupies a uniquely privileged place in the NT, however, since she is the only person to have witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection (Mt 27:61, 65; 28:1).
Later traditions developed around Mary:-
The Gospel of Thomas (about AD 100) includes her among the disciples. When Peter complains that she is female, Jesus says that he will make her male.
The Gospel of Mary (about AD 200) was discovered at a Cairo bazaar in 1896. It has Peter saying the Mary that “the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women”.
The Gospel of Philip (also around AD 200) has Jesus regularly greeting Mary ‘with a kiss on the …’ (a tantalising hole in the manuscript was left by hungry ants!). It would have been usual (and still is, in many Arab cultures) for men to greet each other with a kiss on the mouth: it is therefore anachronistic to regard such behaviour as erotic (and even more fantastical to build from this a picture of Mary as Jesus’ lover and father of his children).
Some ancient authors inferred that Mary was the ‘beloved disciple’ of the Fourth Gospel. But not only is this unlikely from the available evidence, in Jn 20:1f Mary appears with this disciple.
In some parts of the ancient church, Mary came to be regarded as a former prostitute. This came about through confusion between Mary’s story, that of Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus), who anointed Jesus’ feet, and an unnamed ‘sinner’ who also anointed his feet. The two anointing stories are strikingly similar in unexpected ways (anointing was usually of the head, not of the feet); but anointing was so common in those days that there is no reason to regard them as different versions of the same story. Nevertheless, the story of Mary as a former prostitute stuck: becoming official in a sermon by Pope Gregory the Great in 591 and remaining official Roman Catholic teaching until 1969. Mary Magdalene is still a Catholic patron saint for fallen women.
The Eastern Church did not amalgamate the various Marys in this way. Perhaps they realised that about a quarter of all women were called ‘Mary’ in NT times. But they did add the legend that Mary gained an audience with Emperor Tiberius. Holding an egg in her hand, she said, “Christ is risen”. Tiberius replied, “That’s about as likely as your egg turning red.” Whereupon, Mary’s egg did turn red. This legend is still remembered in the practice of painting eggs at Easter.
In the face of all this legendary material, we are still left with one notably scandalous fact about Mary Magdalene: that she had been severely demonised. The church would rather she had been a repentant prostitute than a former mentally deranged person. In recent centuries Christians have been at the forefront of providing help for the mentally ill. Who knows how much sooner they might have done this if they had told the true story of Mary and her healing.
Instone-Brewer, David. Jesus Scandals, The. Lion Hudson. Kindle Edition.
Joan Taylor notes that Mary is not described as being ‘from Magdala’, but is simply Mary Magdalene. She suggests that the epithet might be regarded as a nickname (possible given to her by Jesus himself, who, as we know, gave nicknames to several of the male disciples). Now the word ‘Magdalene’ is related to ‘migdal’, meaning tower. Taylor’s hypothesis, then is that this nickname was given to her by Jesus in acknowledgement of her strength of personality. Ian Paul points out what Taylor does not mention, which is that Jerome (not known as an advocate of women’s ministry!) made exactly the same connection:-
“Mary Magdalene received the epithet ‘fortified with towers’ because of her earnestness and strength of faith, and was privileged to see the rising of Christ first even before the apostles.”
To this observation of Jerome may be added the title for Mary as ‘apostle to the apostles’, which became popular in 12th and 13th centuries, and which was based on her being the first witness of Jesus’ resurrection and the first to tell the apostles about it (John 20).
While we may not accept Taylor’s analysis of the epithet ‘Magdalene’, we do agree that Mary had an important role as a witness to Jesus.