It might come as a surprise to some Christians — and non-Christians familiar with such stories — that Mary Magdalene was not a reformed sex worker who shed her former life to piously follow Jesus around. Those with doubts can look to the official Bible itself, which depicts Magdalene as a recurring character who pops up at certain, important events in the life of Jesus. Rather than describe Magdalene as freed from a life of sex work, Luke 8 and Matthew 16 both say that Jesus cleansed Magdalene of “seven demons.” After this, she became a disciple of Jesus, and that’s that. While some might interpret these “seven demons” as representative of a biblically wayward lifestyle, that’s a figurative stretch without any grounding in the available evidence.
Besides this anecdote about Magdalene and her life, all four gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — describe Mary as present when Jesus was crucified. Mark 15 says that she and Mary, Jesus’ mother, saw the location where Jesus was buried, while Mark 16 describes an angel informing Magdalene that Jesus had come back to life when she went to visit Jesus in his tomb. Continuing in the narrative, but moving to another gospel, John 20 describes Magdalene being the one who goes back to the disciple Peter and informs him about Jesus’ resurrection. After this Magdalene vanishes from biblical events, but has only grown larger in our shared, cultural memory.
