Mary Magdalene’s Bad Reputation

IN THE OPENING scene of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 silent film The King of Kings, a scantily clad but opulently accessorized Mary Magdalene reclines on a lush chaise lounge, caressing a cheetah. She’s an upper-class prostitute, and she learns that Judas, one of her clients, has left her to follow a carpenter. Furious, Mary demands, “Harness my zebras—gift of the Nubian King! This Carpenter shall learn that he cannot hold a man from Mary Magdalene!”

Before she mounts her chariot, someone wagers a purse of gold that she won’t be able to take Judas back from Jesus, because Jesus has magical power to heal the blind. Mary scoffs in reply, “I take thy wager—I have blinded more men than He hath ever healed!”

An angry, haughty Mary finds Jesus, but when he looks at her, she is shaken and steps back. Jesus begins to heal her of seven demons, which emerge one by one from her body like ghosts. After the demons have departed, Mary looks down at her partially naked body, picks up her cloak to cover her skin and hair, then kneels at Jesus’ feet. He pats her head, as if patting a child, and looks away, speaking not to her, but to a man beside him.

I had enjoyed Mary Magdalene’s exotic transportation via zebras, her fury at being scorned, her verbal sparring with the men who doubt her ability to win Judas back. But as I watched the “demons” drain out of her, I felt her life draining too. Now docile and meek, she responds to healing by clothing herself more modestly. The viewer, I take it, is supposed to feel amazed at her transformation. Instead, I felt horror, like I was watching Christianity’s centuries-long suppression of women captured in a 20-second clip, with Mary Magdalene standing in for all of us. The film was silent, but I could hear it speaking to women loud and clear: “Cover up. Lower your eyes. Kneel. Repent. Leave your body and your sexuality behind. Submit. That’s a good girl. You are allowed to belong now.”

Centuries of obsession

WHILE CHEETAHS AND zebras and Judas as Mary’s patron were new adornments to the Mary Magdalene story, the rest of the film’s portrayal was consistent with how Mary has been painted in popular culture for the last 1,500 years: Mary, the prostitute and sinner, turned repentant.

In the earliest accounts, Mary Magdalene is never called a prostitute. Luke 8 says she was healed of demons, but nothing is mentioned about her line of work. It is not until 591 C.E. that Pope Gregory I preaches a sermon calling Mary Magdalene a prostitute, and the misidentification has stuck. Sculptures and paintings throughout history depict her as repentant sinner, dressed in little to no clothing, accentuating her disreputable past. She eventually became the patron saint of sexual temptation. In Ireland, “Magdalene asylums” were founded to house so-called “fallen” women—sometimes prostitutes, but also girls or women rejected by their families or deemed unacceptable by the state for other reasons.

Public interest in Mary’s sexual life focuses not only on her past before meeting Jesus but also on the nature of her relationship with Jesus. The musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) andA.D. 16 (2022) depict Mary Magdalene in love with Jesus. The Da Vinci Code shows them married. In the 1955 novel and 1988 film adaption of The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis, Satan visits Jesus on the cross with a vision: Jesus sees what it would be like if he married Mary and raised a family instead of dying for humanity’s sins—meaning even after her conversion, Mary Magdalene is not an asset to the gospel but a liability.

The idea of a love affair between Mary and Jesus carries a certain intrigue. I like the way it humanizes Jesus, moving him beyond a sanitized figure and casting him as a regular man who experienced passion and desire like the rest of us. Besides, who doesn’t love a good love story?

Unlike the claims about Mary as a prostitute, Mary as Jesus’ romantic partner does have some historical plausibility. There is tenderness between Jesus and Mary in the garden after the resurrection. Even more evocative are the noncanonical Gnostic texts that repeatedly mention Mary Magdalene as a close companion of Jesus. A line from the gospel of Philip can be translated as “The Teacher loved her more than all the disciples; he often kissed her on the mouth.” If we are to imagine anything about Mary Magdalene’s sexual relations, it is certainly more in keeping with the historical witness to imagine her as Christ’s lover than as a reformed prostitute.

Yet I question our culture’s fixation on Mary Magdalene’s sexual relationships. No matter which version you adopt—the whore or the secret lover, the sex worker or the wife—she is known primarily through her relationships to men and their access to her body. In her groundbreaking book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “The shadow side of Christianity’s notoriously undealt-with issues around human sexuality and the feminine get projected directly onto her.” While it’s perfectly good to recognize women as sexual beings, are women not also so much more than what we do or do not do with our bodies for men?

I’m not against a Mary Magdalene who slept with men as her livelihood or a Mary Magdalene who was madly in love with Christ. But for the love of all things holy, can we please not reduce her to either?

Wise and worthy

PERHAPS JESUS SIMPLY preferred Mary’s company—intellectually, spiritually, emotionally. Why does Jesus’ attention have to be sexual? We rarely speculate that Jesus had a romantic relationship with the Beloved Disciple, who reclined upon his chest and “whom Jesus loved” in the gospel of John (though some have conjectured that the Beloved Disciple, who is never named in scripture, is Mary Magdalene). I am not aware of films claiming Peter was secretly married to Jesus and that is why Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom. We don’t make such assumptions partly because we’re conditioned to think heteronormatively about same-gender affection but also because we assume a man can be chosen as a leader or a confidant due to his intellect, his character, his wisdom. A man can receive favor from another man without it being sexual. What if Mary Magdalene was chosen simply because she was worthy? This is what the ancient texts suggest: She became apostle to the apostles by merit.

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The 2018 film Mary Magdalene gives us what so many books and novels and paintings have never managed to do: a Mary Magdalene favored by Christ without her sexuality on display. Gone are the references to any sordid past, gone are the hints at romance. Relying on biblical accounts as well as drawing from the noncanonical gospel of Mary, the film highlights Mary Magdalene as someone who understood Jesus’ true message. She baptizes people alongside Jesus and blesses them like a priest. Jesus confides in her and asks her advice. Predictably, the male disciples are not always comfortable with Mary, her wisdom, or her voice. Their inability to embrace Mary’s leadership fully is quite in keeping with the historical record. In the Bible, the disciples do not believe Mary’s testimony that Christ has risen. In the book of Acts, when they gather to find a replacement for Judas, they pick Matthias (who the heck is that?) even though Mary Magdalene herself, the first witness and preacher of the resurrection, is undoubtedly sitting right there when he is chosen.

In the gospel of Philip, when the disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” it’s not a romance question. It’s an access question. In Mary’s gospel, after she reveals her vision from Christ, Peter objects, “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Did He prefer her to us?” This is the real tension in Mary’s story, and it isn’t sexual tension. The disciples can’t handle that a woman received Christ’s favor. And apparently neither can history. Men have been discrediting her reputation ever since, and the gospels highlighting her spiritual authority were banned from the Christian canon.

It’s possible that Mary and Jesus had a thing for each other—even if so, I just don’t think it’s the thing worth noting. And clearly, neither did the gospel or apocryphal writers.

What’s notable about Mary Magdalene is her spiritual leadership. Her insight and wisdom. Her role as first proclaimer. Her devotion as tomb-tender. Her appointment as witness. She is the one Christ entrusts with his presence and his most precious news.

Unlike Peter, who denies Jesus, unlike Judas, who betrays him, unlike the disciples who fall asleep in the garden and the disciples who flee the scene at Jesus’ arrest, unlike the male disciples who lock themselves in an upper room for fear of the authorities, Mary Magdalene persists. She continues to follow Jesus even after he is dead. In all four canonical gospels, she is among the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection, and in John, Jesus appears first to her alone. The Gnostic text Pistis Sophia says this about Mary: “You are she whose heart is more directed to the Kingdom of Heaven than all your brothers.” She is the first to proclaim the resurrection to the disciples, making her an “Apostle to the Apostles”—a title officially recognized by the Catholic Church in 2016.

Revealing hope

I believe the task of reclaiming Mary Magdalene from the legends that cloak her real identity is an invitation to our own uncloaking. If Bourgeault is correct that we have projected our collective shadow, our “undealt-with issues about human sexuality and the feminine,” onto her, then re-finding the “real Mary Magdalene” is more than a history project. It’s a spiritual journey into the depths of our unconscious sexism—it’s an excavating of our shadow and bringing it into the light. It’s an intense gaze into all that is messed up about our gender constructs; it’s an exorcism, if you will, of our demons. It’s not simply about retelling Mary’s story without the sex, as if a virgin Mary (we already have one of those) solves the problem. This project to reimagine her is a profound confrontation with the powers that bind us all.

In the gospel of Mary, Mary has a vision in which the soul prevails against seven different powers. Mary’s seven demons and the seven powers she overcomes in the vision feel reminiscent to me of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna, who descends into the underworld to be reunited with her sister; at each of the seven gates, she is required to remove an article of her clothing, so that she enters the underworld naked and bare.

I reimagine that scene from The King of Kings in which Mary is healed and immediately covers herself up. This time she sheds her clothing—not covering her ornate costume but dropping it altogether. In my vision of her, discarding the cloak is a declaration, like those early Christians who stripped naked to be baptized, as if to say, “I am fully here.”

I think of Mary painted naked on so many canvases, intended to remind us of her supposedly shameful past. But what if the nakedness isn’t about shame? What if she is someone who brings her full, unadulterated self? Maybe Mary Magdalene makes us uncomfortable not just because she is a woman, but because she fought her demons and emerged fully human—something most of us are still too afraid to try.

Recently it was announced that a statue of a woman bought by a couple in Britain for their garden 20 years ago is in fact an authentic Canova sculpture of Mary Magdalene. It is expected to auction this summer for about $10 million. What if reclaiming Mary Magdalene is like discovering treasure in your own backyard, just waiting to be unearthed? What if not reclaiming her is like leaving a treasure to languish amid weeds and garden overgrowth? Reclaiming her, it seems to me, is about even more than confronting our collective shadow. It’s about witnessing resurrection.