The Mary We Forgot
By Jennifer Powell McNutt (Brazos Press)
Mary Magdalene was among the last to leave the crucified Jesus on Golgotha and the first to bear witness to the resurrected Christ at the empty tomb. Even so, she has received a bad rap for nearly 2,000 years, author Jennifer Powell McNutt asserts.
The Gospels present Mary Magdalene both as one whom Jesus delivered from demonic oppression, and also as one who supported Jesus’ ministry financially and was numbered among his followers. However, that is not the image most Christians have of her.
In part, she has been the victim of the “Mary muddle”—so many women named Mary in the Gospels that readers have struggled to keep them straight. Even some Church Fathers and Popes mistakenly conflated Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany.
Mary Magdalene also has been confused with the “sinful woman” in Luke 7 who anointed the feet of Jesus and unfairly has been labeled as a prostitute, McNutt maintains. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ didn’t do her any favors in that regard. Webber and Scorsese perpetuated that misinterpretation of Mary as a reformed prostitute with a romantic interest in Jesus, but they were neither the first nor the last to do so.
McNutt, a professor of theology and Christian history at Wheaton College, insists Mary Magdalene rightly should be remembered and honored both as “the apostle to the apostles” and an “apostle among the apostles.” Christ himself commissioned Mary to “go and tell” others he was risen from the grave. Ancient church traditions not only attest to her witness to Jesus’ inner circle of disciples, but also to missionary activity of her own.
Christians long have wondered about the decision by the apostles in Acts 1 to select Matthias as a replacement for Judas Iscariot. Some believe they may have acted prematurely, because God already had in mind Saul of Tarsus as the apostle in waiting.
But in reading The Mary We Forgot, I found myself asking a different question. What if the apostles failed to recognize Christ himself already had named and commissioned Mary Magdalene as an apostle? How would views about women in ministry have been different if Peter, James, John and the others had recognized fully the apostleship of Mary Magdalene?
Ken Camp, managing editor
Baptist Standard
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