Mary Magdalene is Not a Myth

22 July 2025  John 20:1-2, 11-18  

The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

“Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that He had said these things to her.” John 20:18

The Myth Theory is the most popular alternative to the Resurrection story current today. However, anyone who has spent enough time with ancient texts knows that the New Testament is not good enough to be a myth.

Ancient Roman and Greek myths were highly developed forms of literature and discourse. They had been told and retold so many times, passed through so many hands over so many generations that it is no longer possible to say who first wrote them. They have been scrubbed and polished to such a high luster that all awkward or embarrassing elements have been cleaned away, and what remains are sparkling gems of ancient literature.

The New Testament doesn’t meet any of these criteria. For one thing, it is written in a form of ordinary Greek which, while not exactly “street Greek,” was the kind of Greek that was typically used in rather ordinary conversations. Its language is not the high, literary Greek of a Plato, or a Herodotus. For another thing, the New Testament had reached its final form within the lifetimes of many of the original witnesses, almost certainly before the end of the first century A.D. Not only that, but many of the authors of the New Testament books can be confidently identified. It takes myths much longer to develop, and original authorship can never be identified. For a third thing, the New Testament is loaded with embarrassing and awkward elements, not least of which is the often uncomprehending and frankly dumb reactions of the disciples to the mighty acts of Jesus, and very significantly the fact that women, like Mary Magdalene, were the first witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus. The testimony of women wasn’t permitted in ancient Roman courts because women were considered unreliable witnesses. The English word “hysterical” is derived from an ancient Greek word which means “uterus.” The implication is clear – if you have a uterus, you are prone to wild exaggeration and irrational explanations. If the Resurrection story were a myth like every other self-respecting myth of the ancient world, The testimony of Mary Magdalene in John 20:18, “I have seen the Lord” would be the first thing that would have been buffed out.

And yet it is still there after all these years.

What this certainly means is that the author of John’s gospel didn’t think he was writing a myth. He thought he was writing history.

There is a lot we would love to know about Mary Magdalene. Traditionally she has been called a prostitute, but there is no evidence to support that. All we are told is that she had been delivered from the torment of “seven demons” (Luke 8:2 – seven is often used as sign of fullness or completeness), and that she was among the women who traveled with Jesus, supporting his ministry from their own resources. So apparently Mary Magdalene was reasonably well off. She is mentioned twelve times by name in the gospels, accompanied Jesus to Calvary, and witnessed Him at the Empty Tomb, so she was certainly recognized as a leader in the earliest Christian Church.

That’s about all we know.

But if a disciple like Mary Magdalene, who was deeply tormented by a squadron of demons and was healed of that, who was a witness to the most important event in the Bible at a time when the testimony of women was routinely ignored, if even she is mentioned twelve times by name in the New Testament and was obviously a leader of significance in the earliest Church, then who is it safe to ignore? From whom should we withhold the Good News? Is perhaps the Good News better and fresher than we think? It certainly is in Africa. There are already twice as many Christians in Africa (685 million, 281 million of them Catholic) than there are people in the United States, and that in spite of withering persecution. They certainly get St. Mary Magdalene. Is it possible that they should be evangelizing us?

St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us.