Mary Magdalene and Judas the Troubled

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Introduction

The tag for this post is Exegetical Fragments, but that is not quite right. There are actually a number of exegetical fragments laid out on the table in front of us here, but I have assembled them into what might be called a speculative reconstruction. I will be writing below as though the matter were settled and obvious to all, but that is just a literary device, not representing where I actually am. All of this could be applesauce, and so I am not being dogmatic about it. I don’t know that this is true, but if you bear with me, I am going to act like it is true as we go along. Let’s just try it on for a minute.

I’ll explain why at the end.

Two Women, One Woman

In Luke 7, a woman—a known sinner, a fallen woman—anoints the Lord’s feet with tears and precious ointment, wiping His feet with her hair.

We have a very similar incident in the gospel of John (as well as in Matthew and Mark), so similar that we would naturally think that they were all the same incident—if only the timelines and locations were not out of sync. The Luke episode happened earlier in the Lord’s ministry, up north in Galilee, and at the house of a Pharisee named Simon (Luke 7:40). The episode in John happened near the end of the Lord’s life, down in Bethany in Judea, and at the house of a man known as Simon the Leper (Matt. 26:6; Mark 14:3).

The accounts in Matthew and Mark leave the woman unnamed, but add the detail that she brought the ointment in an alabaster box, and the additional fact that she anointed the Lord’s head with it. If you compare the Luke episode with the one in John, in both places the Lord’s feet were anointed, washed with tears, and wiped with hair.

I am arguing here that these accounts represent two separate incidents, but the same woman. Some interpreters say that they represent the same woman and the same incident, but with the details garbled up by the gospel writers—but this is inconsistent with a high view of Scripture. I would also want to say that both incidents happened in the house of a man named Simon, but these were two different Simons. And I want to say that Simon the Leper is Simon, the father of Judas.

The woman in John is identified as Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. The woman in Luke is unnamed, but in the verses immediately following this incident, we are introduced to Mary Magdalene for the first time. An unnamed woman does this for the Lord at the end of Luke 7, and then at the beginning of Luke 8, Mary is named among the Lord’s followers. This harmonization I am proposing would also mean that Mary Magdalene and the sister of Martha were the same person. It would mean, in addition, that the common understanding of Mary Magdalene as a sexual sinner is correct.

But other details must be factored in as well. If this reconstruction is correct, she lived down south in Bethany but also apparently up north in Galilee (Magdala, where she got her name). This would indicate she likely had resources, a considerable degree of wealth. This would also be underscored by her two donations of very expensive perfume or ointment, given in a way that “wasted” the value. She would have given an exorbitant gift twice. Another revealing detail is that when Lazarus died, a number of important Jewish leaders came out from Jerusalem to commiserate with the family (John 11:19), indicating that this family was important and well-connected.

Put all of this together, and you should have the idea that although Mary Magdalene had been “a sinner” (Luke 7:39), she had been something of a celebrity, like a movie star, and not some cheap street walker. The morality of all this is not affected—whether hooker or high end courtesan—but social status is affected by such things. The former kind land politicians in very hot water and difficult press conferences while the latter sort wind up marrying the governor. But rich people have their troubles also, and we must not forget that Mary had had to deal with seven demons (Luke 8:2; Mark 16:9), from which the Lord had delivered her. She was eternally grateful for that.

Given how she loved the Lord, and seeing how her first anointing was well-received by Him, there is no reason why a woman like this wouldn’t do it again. Now you might say that doing this twice is kind of weird, but please note that for twenty-first century eyes, doing it once is kind of weird also.

Judas, Son of Simon

In several places in the gospel of John, Judas Iscariot is identified as the “son of Simon” (John 6:71; 13:26). He also appears to have been the only one of the Twelve who was from Judea—all the rest were from Galilee. Kerioth was the name of a Judean town, and Ish Karioth means “man from Keriot.” So he was a southerner. We know the other disciples were Galilean because . . . well, that’s what an angel called them at the Ascension.

Now the anointing in Bethany happened at the house of Simon the Leper (Matt. 26:6), and please remember that Simon was the name of Judas’s father. Bethany was a small town just a few miles from Jerusalem, and so this would make Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Simon, and Judas . . . all neighbors.

Discipleship Crackle

Now we also know that one of the spiritual challenges that the Twelve struggled with was in the area of ambition and competition. The Lord had to address this with them quite a few times.

This appears to have been the hardest lesson for the disciples to grasp. It came up during their three years with the Lord time and again. Peter is still struggling with it after the Resurrection (John 22:21).

Now we know that the group that followed Christ around obviously included His disciples, but it also included an entourage of women. These women had substantial means—which would include Mary Magdalene—because they were the financial supporters of the Lord’s ministry.

Now anybody who knows anything about ambitious and competitive men—which the Twelve most certainly were—should be able to anticipate what might happen next. The presence of a beautiful and wealthy woman in the company was only going to make that crackle a bit more pronounced. More than a bit, actually. What would have happened if the disciples had been cats, and somebody threw some catnip in there? So let’s pretend for a moment that Judas had asked Magdalene out three times, and she had turned him down flat. “You’re a great treasurer and all, but I would like to keep our friendship where it is.” Judas got friend-zoned.

Now when the anointing at Bethany happened, who was the leader of the indignant disciples? That’s right, it was Judas, trying to recover some of that wounded pride.

It says in Matthew and Mark that the disciples (plural) were indignant and denounced Mary also. But we know that Judas was the ringleader in criticizing Mary in two different ways. First, the account in John names him specifically as the one who protested Mary’s love offering. And second, in Matthew and Mark, even though Judas is not named in the protest, it clearly indicates that this incident was the thing that motivated Judas to go to the chief priests with the offer to betray Jesus (Mark 14:10-11). There was something about what Mary did there, and how Jesus responded to it, that made Judas go, “That does it . . .”

Which Leads to the Next Thing

The behavior of Judas here was actually a mystery, and I would argue that it was a mystery to him.

We have to remember that Judas had seen Jesus command the wind and waves. He had seen Jesus raise the dead, including his neighbor Lazarus. He had seen Jesus turn water to wine. He had seen meager amounts of bread turned into a meal for thousands. He had seen the fig tree wither. He saw Jesus raise the son of the widow at Nain. Judas saw it all.

So I don’t believe that Judas hated Jesus, wanting to see Him go down. If that were the case, then his behavior at the conviction of Jesus was inexplicable. Why go return the money, and why hang yourself when your plot was carried off successfully? That doesn’t make any sense . . . but it does make sense if your plot completely misfired. So what was the actual plot that misfired?

Let us say that Judas was really bright, and really ambitious. He was the smartest guy in the room, or thought he was. I think John was the smartest, but that’s for another time. Judas could see that Jesus had enormous power and authority, which He was inexplicably not using against the Romans or against the corrupt Jewish establishment. We know that he was already morally compromised in that he was skimming money for himself from the ministry treasury. And recall that this would include monies donated by Mary Magdalene . . . but instead of her next tithe check she went and bought that stupid ointment.

So Judas would force the Lord’s hand. He would paint the Lord into a corner, and the Lord would have to use His great power to do what obviously needed to be done. In the meantime, Judas would make a little extra on the side—plundering gold from the Egyptians, as it were—and after the Lord had caused the kingdom of God to be manifested with power, He would commend Judas for being the only one who saw what needed to have happened. The Lord had even encouraged him with a wink and a nod at the Last Supper—”what you do, do quickly”—and when it all came together, everybody would see what a dude he was. Even Mary. Especially Mary. Then she’d be sorry.

But the whole thing derailed. The Lord went quietly, as a sheep before its shearers is dumb. Judas thought Jesus was underestimating and under-utilizing His own power. But because Judas had no grasp of the coming resurrection, or the transformative authority that would be displayed there, and so he was the one who did not understand the nature and extent of the Lord’s power.

Conclusion

Like I said earlier, I am not being dogmatic about any of this. I would be unwilling to go to the stake for the sake of this interpretation. That would be insane. So I was quite frank about it, right from the beginning.

But let me finish with a mild defense of my behavior. The gospels are not biographies exactly, but are rather a genre to themselves. They are, well, gospels. But these gospels certainly have strong biographical elements, and we have four of them, side-by-side. Three of them, the synoptic gospels, have many parallels, and one, the gospel of John, stands apart. Only a few episodes from the Lord’s life are in all four gospels—examples being the feeding of the 5,000 and the betrayal by Judas.

The accounts do not contradict, but there are interesting gaps and discrepancies, and this means that a regular Bible reader has only two choices. He can either keep all the pericopes floating in midair, copied to his mental clipboard, and never pasted, or he can put them in a tentative arrangement.

John has the Lord cleansing the Temple at the beginning of His ministry, while the others place it just prior to His death. You have to arrange that in some way. I arrange it by saying that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. Like the priest in the Old Testament who examined a house for mold, He declared the Temple unclean. When the priest came back for his follow-up visit, if the mold were still there, then the house had to be dismantled, not one stone left on another. Hence the condemnation on the Lord’s second cleansing.

Or here’s another one. Jesus heals blind Bartimaeus coming out of Jericho (Mark 10:46). Jesus also heals two unnamed blind men going out of Jericho (Matt. 20:29-34). And then He heals another blind man as He was approaching Jericho (Luke 18:35-43). So how do we arrange these? Same incident, or different? One, two, or three incidents?

And the fact that Mary Magdalene is the first witness of the resurrection is typologically significant. We should pay closer attention to this woman.

God gave us the gospels this way for a reason. Some assembly is required.