The Misappropriation of Many Marys

Mary Magdalene has attracted a great deal of attention over the years. She features in early Gnostic writings as a disciple uniquely close to Jesus, and in the Middle Ages, she developed a reputation as a repentant prostitute, perhaps serving as the foil for the holy and virtuous ever-virgin Mary. In more modern times, she has been portrayed in works like The Da Vinci Code, The Last Temptation of the Christ, and Jesus Christ Superstar as having some sort of sexual tension with Jesus, either as his wife or his admirer.

This attention is not inexplicable. We know from Luke that she had seven demons exorcized from her by the savior. In all four Gospel accounts, Mary is at the empty tomb on the day of resurrection and runs to the disciples to relay the good news, leading some church traditions to deem her the “Apostle to the Apostles.” Yet despite her obvious importance in the Gospel narratives, very little other information is revealed about her life. This, combined with the fact that she is one of the few women of prominence in the Gospel tradition, has led to copious speculation about her life and place amongst the apostles.

A recent manifestation of the Mary fascination is Garth Davis’s 2018 film Mary Magdalene. The film, starring Rooney Mara as Mary and Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus, is an attempt at a new perspective on Mary of Magdala. It jettisons any explicit sexual tension between Jesus and Mary, while retaining a close friendship between the two. Mary understands Jesus and his teaching better than the other disciples, which introduces a character dynamic somewhat derived from the second century Gospel of Mary: one of enmity between Mary and the apostle Peter. 

A great deal of what can be said of the movie has already been said, with excellent (and divergent) reviews being found in publications like the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian. The movie was in some ways an intriguing artistic interpretation of the Gospel accounts, which fared far better than many of the recent portrayals of Mary. Its soundtrack, filmography, casting, and acting are worthy of some praise.

With that said, the film unfortunately fits into a pattern of Mary fascination that has pervaded the centuries, where the character found in the Gospel accounts is twisted to fit the cultural needs and desires of the society interacting with her. Like the Gnostics and the Medievals, Davis’s movie has fitted Mary to its own conceptual frame, allowing the prevailing cultural winds to not only fill in what the Gospels leave blank, but to also alter the existing details found therein.

The movie begins depicting Mary as a young woman living with her family in Magdala. She spends her days helping to deliver babies, mending fishing nets, and going to the Synagogue on the Sabbath. Her father expects her to marry the man of his choosing. Instead, Mary runs away from home with the teacher and miracle worker named Jesus and his band of all male disciples. At the start of the film Mary is endowed with many of the characteristics of a Disney heroine: her mother died when she was young, she feels oppressed and smothered by the expectations of her family and culture, and as a result of feeling made for a life beyond what is expected of her, she runs off on a forbidden adventure.

This may seem in many ways like the liberation of the character Mary Magdalene. Instead of being burdened with the title of prostitute or made to be a secret lover, Mary is the most perceptive and loyal of the apostles. In the end, she alone has faith in the promise and message of the risen Lord. But the fact of the matter is, this is not the Mary that we meet in the Gospels. The Mary of the Gospels was likely a wealthy woman who personally supported Jesus’s ministry. She stayed with Jesus in the hour of His death when the other disciples fled and ran to those same disciples with news of his resurrection.

“And just what is so wrong about that?” Not everything. It is right for us to be rid of the prostitute narrative, as well as the age-old myth about her romance with Jesus. With that said, Mary Magdalene is no more accurate of a picture of the Mary found in the Gospels than that of the Da Vinci Code. While Mary Magdalene certainly liberates its protagonist from the myths and slander of days gone by, it has also liberated her from many of the facts presented about her by the canonical Gospels, allowing her to be used as simply another political ploy in our modern arena.

All retellings of stories are interpretations. Just in envisioning Gospel character’s appearances, we read more into the story than is actually there. This is far from being a bad thing– in fact, it is often very useful. The problems arise when viewers are unaware of the biases and agendas that inform an artist’s interpretation of a story. Mary Magdalene is not a simple and generally faithful re-rendering of the story we find in the Bible. It is instead a Disney rip off, in which a biblical character is plucked out of her first century context and made to fit the mold of what a modern woman should be: free and independent.

While to many this rendering of Mary may seem harmless– and perhaps even an improvement upon former portrayal– it behooves the reader to remember that the Gnostics, medievals, and to a degree, Dan Brown, all considered their stories about Mary to be “improvements” that were far more interesting than the scant details given in the Gospels. Mary is indeed a fascinating character, but a lack of information does not serve as license to invent backstory, especially when the backstory is invented for the sake of a theological or political end. Good politics, and especially good theology are rooted in what is true and real, not what is invented to fill perceived plot holes.