The Bible on Mary Magdalene

What the text says

Mary Magdalene is named in all four canonical Gospels. The detail given is sparse, and what the text does record is consistent across the four accounts in its essentials.

Luke 8:2 introduces her as a woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons. The text gives no further description of the condition, the exorcism, or what came before. She is grouped with several other women — Joanna, Susanna, “and many others” — who supported Jesus and the twelve “out of their own means” (Luke 8:3).

She is named at the crucifixion in Matthew (27:56), Mark (15:40), and John (19:25). Luke’s crucifixion account refers to “the women who had followed Him from Galilee” without naming her at the cross itself, then names her among those at the tomb (Luke 24:10).

She is the first named witness to the resurrection in all four Gospels. Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1, Luke 24:10, and John 20:1 each place her at the tomb on the first day of the week. The Gospel of John records the first post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to her alone (John 20:11–18):

Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. … She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not recognise that it was Jesus.

“Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus asked. “Whom are you seeking?”

Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

Her words at the tomb earlier in the same chapter — “They have taken my Lord, and I do not know where they have put him” (John 20:13) — are the text’s only record of her direct speech to anyone other than Jesus himself.

What the text doesn’t say

That she was a prostitute. There is zero textual basis for this identification. The conflation originates from a sermon preached by Pope Gregory I in 591 CE (Homily 33), in which Gregory identified Mary Magdalene with two other women in the Gospels: the unnamed “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’s feet in Luke 7:37–50, and Mary of Bethany, who anoints Jesus in John 12:1–8. These are three separate individuals in the canonical text. The Roman Catholic Church formally separated the three identifications in the 1969 revision of the liturgical calendar; the Eastern Orthodox tradition had never conflated them.

That she had a romantic or marital relationship with Jesus. No canonical text records this. The Gospel of Philip, a 3rd-century Gnostic text discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, contains a fragmented passage describing her as Jesus’s “companion” (Coptic koinōnos); the manuscript is damaged at the point where it describes Jesus kissing her on a body part the text does not preserve. Philip is not a canonical Gospel and is not part of the Bible.

That she was Mary of Bethany. Mary of Bethany — sister of Martha and Lazarus — is a separate person in the text. She lives in Bethany, near Jerusalem; Mary Magdalene is from Magdala, in Galilee.

Key verse

John 20:16–17, immediately after she recognises the risen Jesus:

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to My brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’”

The Greek phrase translated “Do not cling to Me” is mē mou haptou (μή μου ἅπτου). The verb haptomai (ἅπτομαι) covers a range from “touch” through “cling to” to “kindle.” The present imperative with the negative mē most naturally reads as “stop doing X” rather than “do not begin X” — so the construction can be read as “stop clinging to me,” implying she had already taken hold. The KJV reads “Touch me not”; the BSB reads “Do not cling to Me”; modern translations such as the NIV, NLT, and CSB render the construction differently again — each is making a different judgement about how to render the present imperative in English. The text does not resolve the question.

Read in other translations

The passages above use the BSB and KJV — both public domain. To read John 20:16-17 in copyrighted modern translations, follow the links to BibleGateway:

• John 20 — full chapter on Bible1.org →
• John 20:16-17 — NIV →
• John 20:16-17 — ESV →
• John 20:16-17 — NLT →
• John 20:16-17 — NASB →
• John 20:16-17 — CSB →

Original language note

Magdalene (Μαγδαληνή, Magdalēnē) is a place-name designation, not a title or character description. It comes from the Aramaic Magdala (related to Hebrew migdal, “tower”), a fishing town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Several women in the Gospels carry the name Mary (Hebrew Miryam); the place-name distinguishes her — “Mary from Magdala,” in the same way “Joseph of Arimathea” is distinguished by his town.

Related reading

• The Bible on Pilate’s Wife — another woman in the Passion narrative the text barely describes
• The meaning of “born again” — the conversation Nicodemus has with Jesus in John 3
• How we research — sources and methodology for separating text from tradition