Theology in the Raw - Mary Magdalene: Myths and Facts with Dr. Jennifer McNutt

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Check out the Theology in the Raw Patreon Community for bonus episodes, event footage and more! Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt has a Ph.D. from St. Andrews University and is the Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College. She’s the author of several books, including her most recent: The Mary We Forgot: What the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the Church Today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's no clear explicit evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or a sexually immoral woman. There's no evidence of it at all. So you have to make a case for it rather than, I think, the other way around, even though that's been how the church has assumed it. And what we want to better understand is what it would be like for her to have experienced this demon oppression and what it means exegetically and theologically that a formerly demon oppressed woman, was the one to witness the resurrection. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology. My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, who has a PhD from St. Andrews University and is the Franklin Darnis Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies

at Wheaton College out there in Illinois. She is the author of several books, including her most recent book. Got it right here. The Mary, we forgot what the Apostle to the Apostles teaches the church today. So we're going to talk all about who was the real Mary Magdalene.

So please welcome this show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt. Thanks, Jennifer, for being a guest on Theology and the Raw. Really enjoying your book on Mary Magdalene. So let's just begin with the question. I know it's a big one, but who was and who wasn't Mary Magdalene according to the Bible?

Yes. Okay. So I love this question because it does invite us to think about how the church has shaped our understanding and reception of her. And it drives us to go back to scripture to think more biblically about how she is situated in this story, how the gospel writers highlight her presence and her role. And it's also a response, I think, to the popular culture, which wants to stress and emphasize that in order for us to know Mary Magdalene, we actually have to go outside of the Bible. We have to go outside of the canon. We have to go outside of the church because the church has been hiding these things about Mary Magdalene. And so when we ask this good question, I think it invites us to read scripture more carefully.

And so I love that part of it. But so for most people, I think, when they hear Mary Magdalene, they think of her as a prostitute who is restored by Jesus in her encounter with Jesus and maybe has a very strong connection or attraction even to Jesus. right? And she's kind of hanging around with him. And, you know, and then she happens to be in these, the most important places at the perfect moments to become a witness to the risen Christ or to the empty tomb, depending on the gospel account. And so starting with that premise, though, and that assumption of her backstory is really misleading us from, seeing how the gospel writers are highlighting her importance. And the way that the gospel writers highlight her importance is to say that she was delivered from seven demons.

And so that's a different story than prostitution. And sometimes the church has used prostitution as a way to explain why she has seven demons, which is understood to be extreme. I usually point to Matthew 12 where Jesus talks about the significance of seven demons and how to me in his account there that indicates that perhaps she experienced a failed exorcism that led to like an increased severity of her situation. And so it also highlights then that when Jesus comes in and saves her that he is so powerful. and able to definitively sort of release her from the grip of evil. And we don't actually get to know anything about that encounter. We don't know about her suffering.

We don't know about her, like, you know, backstory. We are invited by the gospel writers to remember her as healed. and then how her whole life pivots from that point on to see her following Jesus. And so I love to highlight Luke chapter 8. We were just talking about that, right? Luke chapter 8. And then John chapter 20, I think those two are really helpful. But it's worth noting that we can look and see some confirmation across all four gospels for

her story, right? She's named by all four gospels multiple times. We know that she's in Galilee with Jesus and then she is traveling to Jerusalem with him, that she's been delivered from demonic presence, that she is contributing her finances and support of his ministry, that they have a teacher-student relation, which later when she sees Jesus in the garden, she says Rabonai, so she is highlighting that relationship that they have. So that's why we can think about her as a disciple. And it's one of the reasons why early Christian theologians also thought of her as a faithful disciple of Christ. And then that she's at all these critical moments.

She's at the cross. She's at the closing of the tomb, which I think is really important, that ceiling of the tomb. she knows where the body is. And then she's there for the empty tomb. And then two out of the four accounts, she's there for the first witness or among the first to witness the resurrected Christ. So her witness, when she comes to the empty tomb,

and this is something I really want to stress, is this whole other part of Jesus' ministry. Right. She knows how powerful he is because she's experienced it herself. And she has been literally walking in his footsteps with him through throughout this entire time. So there's so much more, actually, than what we give, than we recognize. So in your kind of summary of what we know about her, just to be clear, is there any evidence that she was a former prostitute or a sexually immoral woman? And where did that? view come from because that seems to be pretty I grew up with that it seems to be widespread in early church and yes me too I grew up with that too

that assumption I heard that as well and I heard that through popular culture right Jesus Christ Superstar the last temptation of Christ the Da Vinci Code I can't not mention that I was a doctoral student when that came out

and it was like everywhere it was wildly popular people don't realize. That was, yeah. It was such a big deal. And so my answer is a little different than what is typically said. Because as a church historian, I am tracking the history of the interpretation of scripture through time and in its context. And what I discovered was that the, while the early Christian thinkers like Ironaeus and Turtolian, for example, are looking, at the, you know, John 20 passage or the Luke 8 passage and sort of understanding Mary Magdalene's role in clarifying some of the early Christological controversies and some of the early

Trinitarian controversies. The issue that comes into play has to do with the four different but similar gospel stories of a woman who anoints Jesus. And I noticed this in the 4th, 5th century that in their efforts to harmonize the Gospels, which I think is a good thing and one that we do in our work, but also today we think about the distinctions between the Gospels as well, that in their effort in Augustine, you can look at his commentaries on. this, but in his effort to harmonize the gospel stories, he basically collapses all four of those anointing accounts across the four gospels. He collapses them into the story of Mary of Bethany.

So three out of the four stories have a woman that is unnamed, an anonymous woman who anoints Jesus. In the fourth, John's gospel, it's Mary, who is in Bethany, right? We know that's the setting. And so that Mary is then identified with all three of those stories, but the issue is with the Luke 7 account, because in Luke 7, the woman is distinguished as a sinner woman. And even though Paul doesn't, I'm sorry Paul, excuse me, even though Luke doesn't use the Greek word for prostitute, though he could have because he does use it elsewhere, the church interprets that word sinner as a sexual sin as a euphemism. And so first it's actually Mary Bethany that is seen as having this lewd past until she comes to meet Jesus. And I think that fits into,

as well, some of the discussions about a woman's hair and modesty with her hair because in this account, the woman is using her hair to dry Jesus' feet or to wipe it with, you know, with the perfume. And so, um, so all of that actually comes into play with how Mary Magdalene is depicted when Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are then conflated. Um, and so one way we can understand this is in part the Mary's. So Mary Bethany's story is absorbed, I would say, into Mary Magdalene's story. And when that happens, Mary Magdalene also receives the Luke 7 woman's story as the sinner woman. And so this is all happening, you know, sort of gradually, I would say, because there are many other readings of Mary Magdalene at the same time. But then

it's formalized by the Pope in the 6th century. And I would say it becomes the enduring understanding of her in the Western tradition. But it's not, so it's consistent, but it's not exclusive. There are other remembrances of Mary Magdalene that are paired with this sense that she becomes a penitent prostitute. Okay. So let me try to just summarize just so I'm tracking. So all four gospels record an anointing story. Three are unnamed. One, it's Mary of Bethany in John 12, 12, I think. And the Luke version, Luke 7, and this is the same incident, right? Or is just some debates about whether this is a different incident, or do most people agree, this is, at least the early church agreed that Luke 7 is recording the same anointing scene?

It's hard for us to know. Is this a way that women show their devotion to Jesus? Perhaps, you know, that this is how they show it and Jesus receives it. He always receives the devotion of women. So it may be that. So it may be different accounts. There are some differences between the different accounts. So, but it's very hard to know.

And of course, this is also when Jesus says, we will remember her wherever the gospel is proclaimed. So it's kind of ironic. that she's also the one that has created some confusion about who is she. And I'll just add one point about that. The way we've received it in the English language is, and I was just looking at this Bible at the Lanier Library, the KJV 1611 in the paratex of Luke chapter 7. So right, you know, as you're getting to that passage, it names Mary Magdalene. It says Mary Magdalene is the woman of Luke 7.

So it's already doing that interpretive work for you. And it's one of the reasons why the reading extends into the 21st century. Yeah. Because, I mean, the other anointing stories, John 12 and Mark 14, those are like right towards the end of Jesus' life, right, right before the triumphal entry. Whereas Luke seems to be much earlier in his ministry. Now Noah Luke isn't always very chronological. But to me, that's where I'm like, gosh, yes, there's a lot of similarities, but it seems like there could be a case that that is a different anointing story. But to get back to my summary, so the early church correlated the anointing with Mary of Bethany,

which is explicitly stated in John. They correlated that with a sinful woman anointing. therefore Mary of Bethany is a sinful woman who anointed Jesus and then they correlated Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, right? To me that seems odd because she's called Mary of Bethany, not Mary Magdalene. And Mary Magdalene is from Galilee, not Bethany, which is outside of Jerusalem. Well, exactly. There's two totally different contexts.

And this is also the big debate about her location. And yeah. Yeah. So it's partly has to do with kind of bringing together stories of unnamed people in scripture and associating them with named people in scripture. So this is a very common. So for example, Martha and reading about Martha is associated with the story of the woman who won't stop bleeding, right? The bleeding woman. So they say, oh, this must be. Martha's backstory, and that's how we know who she is. It's very common to, in the medieval period, to consolidate these stories around names or to try to identify the unnamed figures in scripture.

And it's really the Renaissance. So Renaissance humanism is what begins to say, I don't think these are the same people. And it begins to unravel that story. And it's actually the exact same year as the 95 feces. are issued that the scandal over Mary Magdalene and untangling her, from Mary of Bethany and from the sinner woman of Luke 7 begins to take place. So. Okay.

Okay. So at best, there's no clear explicit evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or a sexually immoral woman. There's no. The Bible doesn't explicitly say that. Yeah, of it at all. So you have to make a case for it rather than, I think, the other way around, even though that's been how the church has assumed it.

So she's never associated with that. And what we want to better understand is what it would be like for her to have experienced this demon oppression and what it means, I think, exegetically and theologically, that a formerly demon oppressed woman was the one. to witness the resurrection. That's what scripture wants us to be thinking about. And we have been so distracted by these other, you know, these other readings coming from, you know, all these complex and convoluted spaces. Yeah. Talk to me about the name Magdala. I grew up believing, you know, I even went to Galilee and saw the ancient town of Magdalene, and this is where Mary was from.

But in my recent research, I realized, or I found out that that's not unanimously believed. Magdala, what does it mean like Strong Tower? And some people would say that it's not, her last name isn't associated with where she's from, but it's more of a description of who she is, kind of her character. Can you unpack that discussion? What do we know about Magdala and what that means? Right. So I think the first place to start is when we change.

track all of the references of Mary in the Gospels. So there's about 52 references to a Mary in the Gospels that the gospel writers take time to distinguish the Mary so that we know who that Mary is. And that Mary is typically associated with her son, her husband, her, you know, father, whatever, right? So that would be the standard of the time. And even so then, we look at all the places where Mary the Magdalene is emphasis or Mary called Magdalene is emphasized to see that she's being set apart. And that is really the best place to start, I think is that the gospel writers are setting her apart, highlighting her presence, associating her with the Magdalene. So now the question is, what does that mean?

And I really, that really speaks to me too when I look at the accounts of her at the cross, because there is another Mary at the, and then at the tomb with her. And the gospel writers write the other Mary. Right? To say like, you know, so they, you know, I think we want to understand, too, like the order of these texts. And when they're written and when they're writing this, they know how important she's going to be. But it should already surprise us, whether it's a nickname, a location or both, it's already standing out as something unusual. You just don't talk about women that way. Usually talk about their association with their family members. There's, you know, so it's just a rarity to see that. So I would say, though, that in the history of the church,

it's been a way to understand how she would have encountered Jesus. So the fact that Magdala is, you know, on the Sea of Galilee and near Copernum and there were these exorcisms happening in that nearby region. So it gives some, there's some geographical validity to how she would fit into the story. And then we're told that she is with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. And of course, as you already mentioned, Bethany is a totally different place. So, right? It's not close. You know, so I think that matters, right? That she's from Galilee to Jerusalem and going that way. And then if it's, if it is a nickname, then that's also very special and highlighting how she is set apart yet again for being associated with these traits, right, the strength of her faith.

And so, but the churches thought it was both that you could be references coming from a place. and that there's something about that place that speaks to who you are. And that can be like turned on its head. So right, Jesus of Nazareth, what good could come from Nazareth? Right. But then for, so then for Mary, she's a woman maybe. And it's like, but she's a tower of strength and faith. Right.

So maybe it's turning it on its head. Yeah, both. Both and that's how Jerome thinks about it. That's how Martin Luther thinks about it. And I don't really see any reason to not think about it that way personally. And in my reading of the text, and I think it's both. Yeah. As Mother's Day approaches, many of us are thinking about the women who cared for us

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Okay, so save up to $20 at storyworth.com forward slash t-I-T-R. That's storyworth.com slash t-I-T-R. If you've ever wanted to learn the Bible's original languages, now is the perfect time to start. Whether you're seeking a deeper understanding of scripture or simply curious about the roots of the text, learning biblical Greek and Hebrew can unlock insights you'd never imagine. After learning the original languages, I have never read the Bible the same. It really does make a huge difference. Kairos classroom has designed an entirely new curriculum that makes learning these ancient languages accessible and exciting for anyone, whether you're just getting started or already have some background in biblical studies.

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It's 100% free and is a great way to meet a teacher and gain a better understanding of how easy, convenient, and fun learning with Chiross will be. So Mary is, Mary Magdalene is listed among the wealthy women in Luke 8, 2 to 3, who basically were Jesus' patrons or at least benefactors funded his ministry. So we can be presumed that Mary Magdalene had access to wealth. And the fact that she isn't ever mentioned as married or connected to a man, can you help us reconstruct historical picture regarding that? Was she a wealthy widow?

Do we know? I mean, but we can presume she had wealth, right? She has wealth. And it's another reason that that just qualifies any association with prostitution because of the practice of prostitution was one that was reserved for slaves. And she is not a slave. So there's no indication in the text that she's a slave. She has access to resources. She has a level of independence that allows her to go where Jesus is going. And she can be with. him. So I do think, I mean, I'm looking at too Richard Baccom's work on this as well, you know, as a help for thinking through, you know, anytime we're reconstructing the past, we're trying to think of what's possible, what's plausible in that time. And so it is interesting to think about her as a widow and maybe older. That would challenge as well some of the, the ways we've tried to explain her like attraction to Jesus, right? In our modern era, we've tried to say, oh, she must have been Jesus's wife or she had a crush on him or something, whatever it might

be. As soon as you say, oh, she's a widow and maybe older, like, that it's like, oh, maybe, you know, it just throws you off a little bit to say, like, well, maybe actually she was transformed because he saved her when no one else could. And then his preaching and, his teaching and everything, she is truly his student. So that's one thought. And I think it highlights the way in which women were not just sort of receiving from Jesus, but that Jesus also received from them that they were contributing to the ministry and to the life of the church. And we see it in this early phase,

and then we see Jesus preparing her to contribute in such a powerful, right, the most significant moment in world history, really. I want to get to that, because that's a big part of Mary's contribution is her witness at the tomb and of the resurrected Jesus in a couple accounts. before, I do want to linger up just a little bit more on the significance of her patronage. And is that even the right word? You know, there's in the ancient world a patron client system that had some problems, you know, from a Christian perspective. So that's why I'm hesitant calling her a patron in the first century term. But she clearly helped contribute financially to Jesus' ministry.

What would that have signaled? What would that have been like in the first century for Mary, Magdalene, and other women to be funding Jesus' ministry? Would that have been abnormal? Would that have turned some eyes? Yeah. Turn some heads, you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as I understand it, I guess a third of the patronage system was directed by women in the Roman Empire.

And I'm drawing that from other scholars who would highlight. I just read that stat. Yeah. That's Susan Highland and others pointed that out. So that's so helpful because we often think that women in the first century had no choices, no access to authority or, you know, to make decisions for themselves. And it does challenge us to think in more granulated ways about their lives and about what was possible. even though the majority of women would not experience that kind of, you know, freedom.

So, yeah, so I think it does highlight for us the importance of also the multi-layers of society that Jesus is attracting in his ministry. We can see that in its fullness as we look at what stories and what people, the gospel, writers highlight for us that his ministry is encompassing everyone really in that time, right? The sick and child, the, you know, male, female, servant, patron, you know, centurion, right? All the different aspects of Jesus ministry. And that includes, yeah, that includes women. So. Yeah, yeah.

All right. So Mary, yeah, let's just get to the final days of Jesus, as is often noted. Maybe not as often as it should be noted, but it's often noted that, you know, women played a significant role. Their presence is pretty profound when it comes to Jesus' final days at the cross, at the tomb, at his resurrection. and some gospel writers highlight that, you know, the 12 or, you know, have scattered. They're gone. I know John has John, right, at the cross. Other writers say the men were just nowhere to be found.

And then even gospel writers that don't talk a lot about these kind of female disciples, they do at the end of his ministry. And Mary, if I understand correctly, she's. highlighted and she stands. So women had this vibrant presence around Jesus' final days, but Mary Magdalene seems to be highlighted beyond all the other women. Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's exactly right. So she is the only one who's named by all four accounts. So consistently as the one who witnesses the empty tomb. And then, as I mentioned before, as encountering Christ, the risen Christ, in two out of the four. So yeah.

So that's a point of consistency. It highlights for us. This is not a question for the early church at all. There is no debate about this that the women were critical. And they do run into a lot of risk to highlight that. And so I think a lot of our conversation on this topic has often grouped the women. I want to highlight how significant Mary Magdalene is in particular. particular because of when we change her backstory as well. And then when we clarify some of the

Greek, I think in John 20, I really love that chapter, that we begin to see just how significant she really is. Yeah. Yeah, that scene between Jesus and Mary Magdalene and John 20 is, you know, it's one of those that I've read it. I've been aware of it. But until recently, when I really lingered on it and studied it, it's like, gosh, this is an incredibly special, intimate moment between Jesus and Mary Magdalene for, you know, just the way John describes that scene. And that's where, I believe that's where Jesus tells her, go tell the other disciples. Yes.

Right. Is that where he commissions her? Yes. Is that where we get the moniker from the early church, that she is an apostle to the apostles. Apostle means messenger, right? So she is the first one to tell the disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Is that correct? Yes.

So both Matthew 28 and John 20 confirm this and Jesus' command also the angels as well. command to go and tell. John 20 has more of what Jesus wants her to relay, not just the fact that he is alive, but also this message. And I can talk more about the meaning of that and significance of that. But the, so the apostle to the apostles is interesting. It's a little tricky to get, you know, when do we finally get the moniker in that like very neat way? We get it in the medieval period. It's very like clearly stated in the medieval period. But in the early church talks with Irenaeus of Leon, he talks about Mary Magdalene is the first to worship and to witness. So I think witness too is functioning as, you know, apostolic witness. But he doesn't use the word apostle,

but he does use the word witness. And then, you know, the early church fathers are really just, I would say, trying to understand why a woman has been given this task. And so they're trying to think theologically. They're trying to think exegetically about what it could mean that she was given this honor and chosen by Jesus to do this thing. And so they have lots of different ways that they explain it. And so the moniker becomes more clarified, I'd say, in the Eastern Church early on than it does in the Western Church. The Western Church will really embrace it in the midst of its tug of war between the Eastern Church and the Western Church in the context of the Crusades.

And when it becomes clear to both the Eastern Church and the Western Church that whoever claims Mary Magdalene's relics has a claim to the apostolic succession. And so that's when we see really this strong emphasis. That explanation runs counter to many things that you will hear and see today about it because I think the work hasn't really been done. And that will often say that Mary Magdalene loses prominence over time as the centuries go on. But it's actually the opposite. She gains prominence because she represents the way that the Western Church

Christendom claims a lineage directly to Jesus. And so a lot of the apostle to the apostle language is actually rooted on even outside of scripture, these legends and stories about where Mary Magdalene goes after the, after Pentecost. And that's where she becomes known as evangelist and she's sort of depicted as a hermit. You know, she becomes very medieval, suddenly. Oddly enough. Oddly enough.

And so it's interesting then when the Reformation takes off, the Roman Catholic Church sort of goes back on that apostle to the apostles that Thomas Aquinas had formalized, kind of goes back on that and sort of pushes back. And it's not until really recently with Pope Francis that, for at least in the Roman Catholic Church that there's clarity about that moniker being associated with her in the tradition of Aquinas. For Protestant Christians, I think we just forgot that the Reformation was validating some of that thinking and interpretation. We just forgot it as the centuries went on that Mary Magdalene was seen through apostolic lens even in 16th century.

I want to linger here for a second, but I want to give you a little kind of quick summary of how I've kind of thought through this over the years. Because, you know, as you know, I've been wrestling with and thinking through the question of women and church leadership. And whenever I used to kind of think about the evidence that Mary Magdalene brings that conversation, I'm like, well, okay. So a woman passed on information to the apostles. Yes. You know, and I was like, I don't know, a single complementarian. Uh-huh. Well, maybe I could think of a couple.

But most complementarians would say, yeah, women could pass on information, you know, to other men. If, for instance, as an in act, you know, not a one-to-one analogy here, but I mean, if like, you know, the Pope for my Catholic listeners, if the Pope was visiting. visiting my hometown of Boise. And, you know, some women got wind of it and ran and told the elders of the church of a church, hey, hey, the Pope is in town. Like, let's go see him. Like, great, okay. You passed on information about, you know, a significant thing, obviously.

But it's like, that's not, that doesn't describe any kind of like leadership or authority or whatever to a woman passing on information. So that's how I use. how I used to kind of just quickly dismiss the significance of that. But what I looked into it and looked at the significance of her announcing the resurrection to the other disciples, as you've already hinted, the early church, throughout church history, they ascribe more significance to that event that simply passing on information. Yeah.

Her being the first witness proclaiming the resurrection to the disciples, she played a significant role in the most fundamental event in church in Christianity. In the world. In the universe. And they saw significance in that event. So first, I guess my question is that, can you maybe tease that out a little bit? And then I also want to, you know, the men who kind of called her the apostles of apostles and saw her, as you said, through apostolic lens, these same men were very much not for women in leadership of the church. So as far as I know, you're the expert on that.

So they struggle with. You understand around wrestling? Yeah. So how should we understand the significance of it? of Mary Magdalene announcing the resurrection to the disciples in terms of how the church reflected on that. Okay, wonderful. So I hope I have enough time to tell you all the things, because it's just so exciting. And I think that I was in the same boat as you insofar as like underreading John 20 and underreading the words there. And in part because I think we so often can lean into our English transatlantic.

and miss some of the nuance of the Greek terms and their significance and what that means. But so I think that while the early Christian fathers, you know, were, they're all trying to answer this question of why is a woman chosen for this? And that should lead us to understand this is surprising, right? It's surprising in its historical context. It's surprising to us today. it's surprising to kind of the whole history of the church. And so there's these different explanations that are used to highlight it. Sometimes there have been obstacles to seeing the meaning and significance to it. Some of the obstacles have been that Mary Magdalene was crying, that she was weeping.

And so her emotionality has been problematic. The fact that she doesn't recognize Jesus right away has been problematic for her. the reading of her not um so i have my own sense of that and i won't give away all my answers but anyway so um you know so that's been problematic for her but then the the biggest issue has been the question of touch does she touch jesus or not and if you think that she doesn't touch jesus and that jesus assues her touch in fact then that has implications for the significance of the moment and Jesus is commissioning. And so while the, what the early Christian theologians ended up doing is really thinking about

her in the context of the garden in a typological way and the first garden and understanding her as New Eve. And this has been a very consistent interpretation that crosses different branches and confessions of the church is to say that she is a new Eve and that it is fitting that she, that there would be, that this would be overturned. What Eve had announced to Adam and what she sowed in the garden would be undone by Mary Magdalene being sent by Jesus to proclaim the resurrection. And so it kind of though has often stops there to say it's overturning Eve.

And what we're doing then is we're just thinking about Mary Magdalene as representative of all women as a group and not really thinking very carefully about who she was in that moment and in that place. And I think in the modern era, right, we used this, the fact of women witnessing the resurrection as a claim for the validity of the, the, you know, the resurrection. So you wouldn't have given this witness to a woman. In fact, it's very risky for them to highlight this. And it actually, we know that they are ridiculed, right, for pointing to her. You know, Christianity's ridiculed for that. And so then that is said, oh, that's partly how we can trust that the resurrection is true. But I still think that that stops short of what is really happening with her in particular. And this is where I think it matters that she was demon oppressed. Because of how Jesus talks about what it means for him to deliver someone from demons

is evidence of the coming of the kingdom and of his kingship on earth. And so there is, I think, Theologically speaking and exegetically, that it illumines, she is really pointing as to who Jesus is in such a particularly powerful way, especially as he's just conquered death and just descended. I think about like what it would be like to have seven demons and it's got to feel like a descent into a kind of it. And so he's coming out of this, you know, he is ascending. out of this and she's the one there to witness it. And everybody knows this about her backstory. You know, so it's so powerful that she would be the one there to proclaim it.

And then she reaches for Jesus. And we've gotten very muddled from the Latin translation of the Greek, which has indicated in our Bibles that she does not touch Jesus. And in fact, the Greek shows that she's clinging to him. Yeah, he says stop clinging to it, right? Which is presumed she was clinging to it. It's happening. Yeah, it's happening.

And she's doing it not for faith, like what Thomas will do in the same section. She's doing it out of faith, right? She knows who she is because she's heard, you know, his voice. He's called Mary and she knows exactly who he is. So to me, all of these elements then are, we have been obstructed from seeing her apostolicity biblically because we have been confused. We have separated her from how the other gospel accounts have highlighted her story, her presence. And we have missed her touching Jesus. And when I look at 1st John 1 that talks about the basis for apostolicity that what we know

about the word of life is from those who have seen and heard. And then it highlights, touched with their hands, right, Christ. And so all of that is highlighting for you just how much this woman who used to be possessed by demons has been transformed, right, to receive the words of Christ in this witness. And then, sorry, can I add one more thing? Go for it. Go for it. No, this is so good.

It's so much fun to talk about. There's so many layers to it. But the other thing is we have just passed over the fact that she witnesses angels and that the angels speak to her. And when we look at the gospel accounts about how many people encounter angels and have a conversation with angels, that people are really just in Jesus' nuclear family or just like maybe his extended family. And then there's Mary Magdalene. And you think again, this is actually in part coming from John Calvin's theology in his commentary where he says, just think of how healed she was that a woman once possessed by demons is now greeted by angels. There's just no other story like that in the text. So her singularity is being highlighted.

And then the last point, or no, second last point I'll say about her singularity is that the one. word that Jesus, you know, when Jesus says to go tell his brothers. So it's not just about him being resurrected, but it's also this message of that I'm sending him to my father, your father, to my God, your God. And then it says that she not only says, I've seen the Lord, curious, so the divinity of Christ, but then also that she relays. this message about how we are part of the family of God. So she is now pointing us to Jesus. And in John 13, Jesus says that the one who I send, if you receive the one whom I send, you receive me. And when you receive me, you receive the father. So Mary Magdalene is pointing us, not just to Jesus,

but pointing us to the father. And the word that's used to highlight isn't tell. which is what our English Bible says, but it is Angoulosa, which is a hypoxlygamona, the feminine form of the masculine word for angel. So she is announcing as the mouthpiece of God, as this messenger, angelic messenger, the message of what I would say is the core of the gospel, that because of Christ's resurrection, we have been welcomed into the family of God. And that is just so marvelous. I just want to share it with the whole world. I love. I, you know, yeah, you're so excited. And it's like the excitement of somebody who just discovered Christ for the first time.

And it's so refreshing that a scholar who has stared at this stuff for years is still excited about it. I love that. So that, the way you frame that, the way you. unpack that that that describes a new level of significance that Mary played in the history of Christianity and the history of God's redemption at the fulcrum of the most significant event ever that even though language used to just to depict her activity is significant for lack of a better term I mean we can you know you know you don't want to read too much Into that, I guess we don't want to read too little into it.

Like, there's just a lot going on there. So you've used a phrase, I think you have, Mary Magdalene's apollic. Apostolicity. Apostolicity. Yes. Apostolicity. That's not a word I've used. Apostolicity. Now, we, can we let's unpack that a little bit?

So Mary was not one of the 12, clearly. Right. Yes. Neither was Paul, neither were other apostles. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that, but in what way should we understand her apolicity? And, you know, you referred to as a disciple.

And I point this out in my book that, you know, disciple, 12 apostles were disciples, but disciple is a broader term to refer, most generally to just people who believe in Jesus, but more specifically the people who were students of Jesus following him around in ancient Palestine. And the 12 were among them. And the 12 played, I think, a unique and significant role. But there's other people, disciples, including women, who followed Jesus around and participated in the same sort of activities of the apostles did. In some ways, often show up the apostles by doing things.

Jesus tells the apostles to do that they're not doing. What? Yeah. So I guess I've got a, yeah, one question. I'm not sure how to, well, I guess it's twofold. One, how should we understand the biblical portrait of Mary Magdalene into relation to her apolicity? And how did the early church understand that? And this is where I want to tee you up for some interesting things that Calvin and Luther said about.

that that I had to kind of read that a few times like when I reading this right you know you have quotes from Lutheran Calvert yeah yeah so Mary Magdalene so Apelicity how should we understand so just using like the term apostle is one who is sent and according to two of the four Gospels Mary Magdalene is directly sent by Jesus himself right too good so so so that's part of it and part of the reason. And there's there's a semantic domain of words that have been used and so that are using translations from these early texts. And sometimes it'll be messenger, which we may not understand the significance of that because we're not thinking about, maybe we're not thinking about angels that functioned as messengers. So thinking, thinking about

how important it is that she's being highlighted in this way. Some of our English, language can hide the significance of, you know, what's going on. And that's okay. You know, we, it has to be translated. It has to be interpreted. And that's the joy of commenting on scripture and digging deeply. So no, no criticism there. It's just the reality. But, but so this is where I think, you know, we can look at even some of the requirements that were being highlighted by Paul. I look at 1 Corinthians 15 and it talks about how Paul is the least of the apostles. And, you know, the things that he is mentioning for that first tier level of apostles, you know, Mary Magdalene qualifies. Right.

So she meets all of those standards. Even she could have met potentially the of the 12 when Matthias is elected to take the place of Judas. You know, when you look at that list as well, she's present. in those places and throughout. I love how Richard Bacham's work, too, highlights the 72, given that the Luke 8 passage shows, these are the people that are with Jesus. And by the way, I say this in my book,

not everybody who wanted to go with Jesus, got to go with Jesus. Jesus didn't welcome everyone who said, I want to be with you. There were some people that were turned away and said, go home. So these are the people that were with him. And then it talks about more than 12, you know, these other followers of Christ.

So there's, you mentioned it in your book. And of course, we're mentioning Nijey Gupta's book as well. So on that discussion. So that's great. Yeah. So. How did the early church? Tea me up in a lot.

How did the early church? How did, yeah. No, how did that? Well, just how did. How did. remembered in relation to her apolicity by the early church. How did they understand that category? They have an issue with the touch. Does she touch Jesus or not? And if Jesus doesn't want her to touch him, then that becomes very problematic for her, because then the interpretation comes in by

early Christian thinkers that she is unworthy to touch Jesus and then that unworthiness is ascribed to her being a female. So it is, it's a model, I would say. Like there are these really powerful claims, you know, these strong. So Jerome, he describes Mary Magdalene as the tower. And then he also says she was unworthy to touch Jesus. And I think partly because they're trying to figure out what Jesus is saying to her and what it actually means. And for some theologians, it means, oh, this is indicating that Jesus is distinct from the father. It challenges Gnosticism or it challenges like a modalism, a subalianism.

And so they're thinking very richly, I think, theoretically about her. And then just that she's honored because the male disciples were not up to the task. And so she's honored to pass this information on, you know, to them and that then the ministry develops from there. So the issue really does have to do with, is there a biblical basis for her apostolicity? I think there is actually no question personally. And the reason why it has been, you know, why it matters so much is the same reason that it matters when we think about someone like Junia, is it a woman or is she a woman or is she a man, right? Junia and because so much rides on whether a woman can be an apostle. How did Calvin and Luther understand the

phrase? Because they do think she was an apostle and again, not part of the 12, but having similar status as 12 is that sort of. I know. Yes. Sort of. Yes. So they do have some surprising readings. That was very fun to see. And especially, so Luther is engaging with this topic at a juncture in understanding her place, Mary Magdalene's place in scripture. And the juncture is they're starting to, Renaissance humanism is untangling Mary Magdalene's story from Mary Bethany. And, and the Luke 7 woman. But the liturgical calendar is still linking the feast day or the celebrate, the remembrance of Mary Magdalene with the Luke 7 passage.

So every church would be preaching on Luke 7 for Mary Magdalene's feast day. That's actually one of the things that the Pope is going to address is because you could have this exogetical conversation, but it doesn't trickle down into the life of the church until maybe change the practices of worship. So he's like, it's funny to read his sermon because he's like, well, I'm not really sure that this is the same woman. And, you know, they find different ways to criticize, you know, but also to highlight that Mary Magdalene represents the doctrine of justification. Justification by faith. So that she, yes, yes, they use.

And that's how Luther thinks about Jesus's mother, Mary, as well, is that they are evidence. the doctrine of justification by faith because they are the lowly who are, you know, nothing that they bring can, yeah, lead them to salvation. And yes, and yet God honors their faith anyway. So, but then Calvin, he does not even think about the Luke 7 woman. And so that shows by the second generation of reformers that that there's been a change in how her texts are reflected and interpreted. So he is thinking more about her demon possession,

and he's thinking more about that element, and he's highlighting especially how God uses the weak to speak to the strong and that the disciples, you know, betrayed Jesus and that the women, you know, were therefore elevated. And so it's always made, is kind of a way to shame the male disciples rather than as, you know, there must be some other reason or plan.

And the female reformers have a different view of this. Female reformers. I didn't know there was female reformers. Yes. There's female reformers. There are, yes. Oh, no. Okay, I'm going to send you some books.

Yeah. No, I've teed you up, obviously. But yeah, I love the section in your book where you talk about these female reformers, none of whom I've ever heard of. Okay. But this is your area of expertise. Yes, yes. Yeah. So, and they really see, they affirm the apostolicity of Mary Magdalene.

So it means in our Protestant tradition, we've had this. Oh, and I think I mentioned for Calvin, it's like a temporary apostolicity. Yeah. Yeah, do you want me to explain that? Yes, because that's kind of, oh, I read that and reflected, that's actually really significant. I know. Okay. Because it, yeah, yeah, explain it.

Yeah, sorry. So, so the reason for that in part, or at least in my reading, is that so he is in a context where he is pastoring refugees. And he is an exiled pastor in Geneva. And so he's also has all of these churches and Christians in, you know, in France who are looking to him for leadership. And those churches are called the desert churches. and there are some permissions in the desert churches because of the disorder of their circumstances

that allows for women to serve in emergency situations. It's kind of like how the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval period always allowed a woman to baptize a child because in an emergency situation that would be needed. So that was the only sacrament that a woman could ever administer. And so he allows in this emergency situations in the French Reformed churches for a woman to lead or preach or, you know, do different things. But this is, it's considered disordered, right, for him. And in Geneva, there's kind of this right ordering, which does include female deacons, but nonetheless, there is this right ordering. And so he perceives, yeah, that the male leadership has abandoned Jesus.

and consequently in this disordered context, she is made apostle. And it's intended to restore kind of this, the right ordering of the church as well. So he, so that's, so the logic of that, though, is that Calvin did see her on par with the 12th. She had to,

it was an emergency situation where she was temporarily made, what, an apostle or whatever, but that, he's saying she was on par with the 12. By making it temporary and disordered, that further substantiates his view that it was still on par with the 12. Whatever that means, you know, on par with the 12. Right, right.

And that's why it had to be temporary because because she's a woman, she can't be, you know, long lasting in this place, but that he's ascribing apollicistity to Mary. Yeah. And that's fascinating. And then Luther, did Luther, was he similar in that? Or did he? Yes, I think he was. I know, I have to review. I think he was. No, no, yeah. It's in the book. It is. I thought, because I think you have a couple of quotes, both from Calvin and Luther that were they saying something similar. For sure, Calvin had that kind of temporary. Yeah, for sure. Anyway. So, and then, yeah, so the women reformers, they do like, there are certain passages that they'll highlight. that will validate the words of women. You know, they're still having to claim being made in the image of God,

being made as good creations, that God can use them for good purposes. And so it's an ongoing conversation for them that you're still having today. Yeah. Well, you have wet our opportunity. And I'm sure people are like, what? Got a lot more to chase down. Your book, again, is the Mary we forgot what the Apostle to the Apostles teaches the church today for you on YouTube. That's what it looks like.

Nice yellow cover. Thank you so much for, gosh, giving us so much information that probably a lot of people didn't know about. I didn't know about. And, yeah, really appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much for having. Where can people find your work? Do you have a website or anything? I do.

Jennifer Powell McNutt.com. And then I'm on substack. I've got the McNut shell. Yeah, social media. So those kinds of things. Yeah, thank you so much for us. And it was really fun. So appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for being the guests on the Algera. I appreciate it.