Welcome to season six of Enter the Bible, a podcast where we share "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Bible...but were afraid to ask."

Today, our theologians will answer the listener-submitted question, "Was Jesus in Love with Mary Magdalene?"

Guest Mary Hinkle Shore is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and a former professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary. Her work has appeared in The Christian Century, Journal for Preachers, Word & World, and on Working Preacher. She lives in Brevard, North Carolina, and continues to be a frequent speaker at church events.

Do you have Bible questions you would like answered? Go to our website at https://enterthebible.org/about to get started.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/txTIbQZCQFQ.

Mentioned in this episode:

Stepping Up to Supervision

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Welcome to the Enter the Bible podcast, where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker.

Katie Langston: And I'm Katie Langston, and today on the podcast, we are thrilled to be joined by Mary Hinkle Shore. She's a former professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary and now serves as a chaplain resident at Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina, which is one of the most beautiful places on the entire planet. So welcome, Mary. So glad to have you with us today.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Katie Langston: So today we're answering a question that came in, uh, on our website. And you, uh, dear listener, you may also submit your own question, if you'd like, by going to our website at Enter the Bible. Org and there's a little place where you can click on to, um, ask a question and we read and review all the questions and answer as many of them as we can. So today is a very exciting question that feels to me like a throwback to, you know, I don't know, 2004 or something when The Da Vinci Code was all the rage. Is that when that was that? That's when I remember reading it.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, maybe a little later, 2005.

Katie Langston: 2006 maybe. Yeah. I feel like anyway, it doesn't matter. I feel like I was like engaged to my now husband when I read it for the first time. I think that was in 2005. But anyway, here is the question: Was Jesus in love with Mary Magdalene? And now we can't probably know the, um, inner emotional life, let's say, of our Lord. Jesus.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Jesus was in love with everyone.

Katie Langston: He. Jesus. Yeah, that's that's what I heard.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Everyone.

Katie Langston: Yes, the Bible told me so. Um, so I think another way of asking this too is, is, was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene, right? I remember hearing that, you know, and The Da Vinci Code wasn't the first time I heard that. That was something that I always heard, like whispers of, like maybe Jesus like that. Maybe Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. And I remember thinking, I don't know, that sounds weird. So Mary, set us straight.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Well, yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Shows up in other pop culture, right? Even before The Da Vinci Code, like, uh, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Katie Langston: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Where whether or not Jesus is in love with Mary Magdalene, there's certainly attraction on her side, right? Right. So, yeah, as you say, this is not a new thing, but. Sorry.

Mary Hinkle Shore: No, no, that's that's all good. Uh, so the first thing I want to say is it would be so much more normal if Jesus had been married. Like the default setting in first century Judaism is for a young man to, uh, come of age and get married. So the fact that in Scripture, he isn't married. In a funny reverse kind of way. And I can talk about the historical Jesus rules of the game, if you like. Um, it's odd that scripture remembers him as not married and therefore, we think probably likely to be true. Uh, because he's not painted in just a kind of standard, cookie cutter, pious rabbi kind of way. Um, that's a, I really will get to Mary Magdalene, everybody, I promise. Um, but, um, he was connected to to John the Baptist, we know. And, and there is a sect of really pious people waiting for God to act in this awful experience of God's people being under the thumb of the Romans, those people known as the Essenes. And they're connected to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They did have celibacy as as part of their identity, at least for some of them. They were just so focused on piety and a and a need for God to act in a in a, um, I don't want to say apocalyptic exactly, but in a, in a way that would, you know, uh, John the Baptist says the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I am, right? And makes all these claims about the strength and power of this person and the power of God in them. And so that may be an explanation for why Jesus didn't marry. He was he was connected to this, way of being Jewish in the first century that was intent on, looking for God to act in history in a, in a compelling way. Um, so but it would be weird to make that up about him if it weren't true that he didn't marry. Nowadays, we might think, oh, we have to say that he's not married, because that makes a person more pious. If they're if they're don't have a family and they don't, you know, they don't, um, have a lover, then they, you know, they're all the better that they can be truly spiritual. But Jews in the first century wouldn't have thought that, uh, as a general rule. So Jesus doesn't seem to be married. Peter's married in the, uh, in the gospel of Mark, Jesus heals Peter's mother in law. So we know he's married. Um. And we also know that Mary Magdalene is important to Jesus and Jesus to her. So I guess I could say a word about that. I so I don't think they were married. I. I don't know. We don't know. The, um. When students ask questions like this, I will say things like it's a gap in the narrative or, um, the witness is incomplete on this. Uh, but what we do know from Scripture is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were close. Uh, I think of the story in John 20 where everyone else has left the tomb, the, Peter and the disciple Jesus loved. And, um, and Mary's left there in the garden weeping. And the risen Jesus finds her. And when he speaks her name, she, she has to embrace him. It's a Greek question, but, she just has, and he has to be saying not "don't touch me." Not like, don't touch me, I'm radioactive, but don't cling to me. Don't keep touching me. I've got to ascend to the father. But they they are, they are close friends. I think that's fair. Would that have been weird? Um. Probably a little bit, for, a single male and a single female to love one another, which I think they probably did.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: I think that first point you made me is, is really interesting, and I never really thought about it before. The fact that Jesus is not married, or at least that the Gospels don't, you know, seem to depict that he's not that he's unmarried is actually reason to think that that's true, because that would be the odd choice. That would be the unusual choice for a young Jewish man, in the, in first century Palestine. And, you know, and then you went on to talk about the Essenes. But it is like Jews in general don't have celibacy as a high value, or at least not at all. Yeah. Like the rabbis get married. Uh, they're expected to get married. You know, ordinary people are expected to get married too . And so, so that's that's really helpful, right? That it's not like The Da Vinci Code has it as this conspiracy that the church has been hiding, you know, has been hiding this fact for millennia. But it's just like, no, this is actually the odder choice. And so, um, that's why it's probably true. Anyway, so that was really helpful.

Katie Langston: Okay. So now I have like one question I'm going to maybe submit to the Enter the Bible org website, which is like "where did the whole ideal of celibacy come from?" But, but but I digress. The actual the thing I'm curious about is so do the Gospels explicitly say that he was single? Or are we just saying just because we know he's portrayed, he's never portrayed as having a wife, or it's never mentioned or whatever? Like, is there any place in the in the Gospels or in the scripture, anywhere where it's like, and he was single?

Mary Hinkle Shore: No, there isn't any place in the scriptures that say that, uh, they do mention his parents and his brothers and sisters.

Katie Langston: Yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore: And so, um, one imagines if there was a wife or children, you know, they would find their way into the story. But we're arguing from silence, as people say, and, uh, can't really be proven. Sure. Yeah, but we would.

Katie Langston: Yeah, but we would, we would expect, because they did talk about his family. That's true. We would expect to to to hear about them most likely if they were there. And so we, we're making the probably educated assumption that

Mary Hinkle Shore: yeah

Katie Langston: that it's no.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So the question of, or the figure, the person of Mary Magdalene. Um, maybe we could go a little further there. Um, I also I love that story in John 20 that you talked about that there is certainly, a connection there, an affection there, that Mary is weeping by herself at the tomb. And it's only when the risen Christ, the risen Jesus, says her name that that she recognizes him. And also, I love that it's not "Don't touch me." It's "don't keep holding on to me."

Katie Langston: I never knew that. Like that blows my mind. Like when I was growing. Anyway, when I was growing up, they were like, there was something very special about Jesus that Mary couldn't touch her. And I remember being so confused by that. But now that makes a lot more sense. Like, you gotta let me go, I gotta go, I gotta return to the Father. That means a lot more sense.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Yeah, it's I, I am doing this from memory. So, uh, we need a fact checker on this podcast, but, um, I think it's either that the verb is in middle is middle voice, or that it's imperfect. So it's not like, don't touch, but don't cling, don't touch and keep touching.

Katie Langston: It's an ongoing action. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Huh.

Mary Hinkle Shore: That's cool. And and Jerome gets it wrong in Latin. And then the King James Version gets it wrong. And so don't touch Me came out of that. History of track of translatation. Thank you. Yes. Uh, history of translation, which is another Enter the Bible podcast, probably about how do you know which translation or what to do with translations. Yeah. And that's a, you know, a complex question too.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Well, we'll have you back for that question.

Katie Langston: Yeah, that'd be great.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So before we started recording you, you mentioned, um, Mary Magdalene and other works, apocryphal works or whatever we want to call them. Right? Other books or works that did not make it into the New Testament, which is, of course, another part of these kind of conspiracy theories that say, you know, these the true gospels or whatever were repressed and and discarded and hidden by the church. That's again another topic. But, um, so the Gospel of Thomas, can you tell that?

Mary Hinkle Shore: Yeah, so the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings, that doesn't have a crucifixion and resurrection narrative. But it's got a lot of parables in it. It, you know, there's a family resemblance between the Gospel of Thomas and the and especially the Gospel of Luke. Uh, and also, um, a little bit of a competition between Mary and Peter for, like, who's going to be Jesus's favorite. And at the very end of the I love this because, you know, that's I would

Katie Langston: that's real life

Mary Hinkle Shore: be his favorite. Right. Um, and at the end of the Gospel of Thomas, Peter says, tell her to go away because she's following them. And Jesus, um, Jesus says kind of a mixed message here. He says, she doesn't have to go away because in the resurrection she will be male, which is. Yeah. You know, you just you're rooting for Jesus. And then that happens in this apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.

Katie Langston: Um.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: And that's why it didn't make it that one.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Maybe one part of one of the root of why it didn't. But yeah, male in the Greek world is, you know, the epitome. Think of all the, statues and so on that it's the epitome of beauty and, what the body is supposed to be. And, um, and so Mary will be that, or she'll be, yeah, somehow spiritualized and, it'll be okay. But, one of the things I like about the tradition of Mary Magdalene is she's, she's completely human. I mean, there we get some conflation of Mary and some other women in the New Testament, but, she is, in the tradition, a sinner and beloved. So that's a kind of nice combination for. Those of us who know ourselves to be both of those things, too.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: I think, uh, it would be important also to say that, as you say, Mary Magdalene is conflated with other women in the Gospels, particularly the, the, one of the women, particularly Mary of Bethany. Right. Mary and Martha and the woman who washes Jesus feet. And somehow, along the way, Mary Magdalene gets labeled as a prostitute, which is not in the Gospels. I think that's important to say. Right? It says Jesus cast seven demons out of her. Right, right. But it doesn't say that she's a prostitute. So it's just important to note that that is not actually in the Bible.

Mary Hinkle Shore: So, uh, yeah, I want to say something more about that if I can.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah. Go ahead.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Uh, in Luke seven, at the end of Luke chapter seven, one of the Pharisees gives a dinner and invites Jesus. And this is a kind of big deal because Jesus, doesn't always, you know, have that greater relationship with Pharisees. But he goes to dinner at the Pharisees house, and , and this woman comes in and she begins. Uh, she's she's at Jesus feet. She's weeping. She's wiping his feet with her tears and her hair and like, so is she sort of washing his feet? Uh, pause. Hit the pause button on that for a minute in, is it John? Mary of Bethany? Yes. Is the is the person who washes Jesus feet before his before his arrest, so. Right. Um, or are, um, and, uh, so both of these women are washing feet. So that's part of how they get conflated. Um, the other the other, um, I think it's in Luke where Mary of Bethany washes Jesus' feet because he washes his disciples feet in John. So again, we need a fact checker. Um. Uh, but so chapter seven, a woman comes in, she's making kind of a spectacle of this, adoration of Jesus. And the Pharisee sees it, and he says, if this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is who's touching him. Right. And from that story, we think tradition thinks, oh, she must have been "that" kind of woman, you know, a prostitute. Uh, it doesn't say it in the text. Uh, I sometimes say that the . You know, until very recently, interpreters of the Bible didn't think women could imagine anything but sexual sins. We those were really only only the the only ones we could commit. Uh, because it seems like that's what everybody's doing , who's female. But in fact, we don't know. She's a sinner. We know that. And Jesus forgives her and, uh, uh, commends her, saying, go in peace, blesses her in the very next verse. Uh, so that's the end of chapter seven. This is the beginning of chapter eight in Luke.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: In Luke, in Luke. Thank you.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Soon afterwards, he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The 12 were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources. So right next to chapter seven, the story of the woman anointing or weeping over Jesus and washing his feet. You have this mention of Mary Magdalene, and they just get fused in the tradition to the point where the Catholic feast days are. Uh, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany were celebrated on the same day until, I think, Vatican two. So until the 20th century, they each got their own feast day. But for a while people couldn't differentiate those two.

Katie Langston: That's really interesting.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, yeah. It is.

Katie Langston: So I think it's probably fair to say that Jesus loved Mary Magdalene. We don't have any indication that Jesus was in love or married to Mary Magdalene, and that a lot of people think that a lot of the other Marys are Mary Magdalene or other women, but they're not necessarily so.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Right.

Katie Langston: Is that fair to say? Also, I think it's fair to say that she will not be resurrected as a man in eternity. That's not actually our doctrine.

Mary Hinkle Shore: Katie. About that. Yeah, we can say that document did not make it into the to the New Testament. So and not that there's anything wrong with it, but it that and there is actually a Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which is another um, later.

Katie Langston: Uh, it's a Gnostic text, isn't it?

Mary Hinkle Shore: It is. Yeah. Our listeners may wonder what were we have secret knowledge about what Gnostic means. It's a yeah, it's a third century text, most likely. And it, the Gnostic Gospels feature a kind of, a theology of a divine spark that human beings have. But our bodies aren't, are kind of holding us back in Gnostic thought. And our spirit is what needs to seek the light, that it came from our spark. We hear this a lot in sort of popular culture, but it's not actually the doctrine that won out in in early Christianity. We, uh, my colleague Mark Throntveit used to say that that the Gnosticism is: God likes the gum and throws away the wrapper. And Christianity is actually God raises up the wrapper somehow. We don't know resurrection of the body. We don't know what that's going to be like. But God is attached to the wrapper.

Katie Langston: I love that

Kathryn Schifferdecker: As well as the gum. Yeah.

Mary Hinkle Shore: As well as the gum. Yes, indeed.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: That's that's a really good metaphor. Yeah. And it's important, I think, since we've mentioned The Da Vinci Code, maybe too much, but it's important to say this is not a, you know, there's a reason that the Gospel of Mary Magdalene or the Gospel of Thomas or other, you know, Gnostic gospels did not make it into the New Testament because they were deemed heretical. Right? Because, again, the God of the Old Testament, the God of the New Testament, the God of Israel, the God of Jesus, you know, the God we know in Jesus cares about bodies.

Mary Hinkle Shore: The material, the world and bodies.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: About the material, and the Gnostics wanted to discard that. In fact, many of them wanted to discard the whole Old Testament so that there's a reason that these so-called Gnostic gospels, were not accepted by the wider church. And it wasn't it's not a conspiracy. It's not.

Katie Langston: Nefarious

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Right. It's not nefarious. It's just this is not a true witness to the God we know in Jesus and the God we know through Israel. Right? And so, yeah, I just want to I just want to say that, that it's it's not a conspiracy of the church. It's, you know, whatever. Um, this is not a true witness. These texts are not a true witness to the God that we know in Jesus so well.

Katie Langston: Thank you so much, Mary. Thanks for being here. And thank you to the questioner who who sent in a really fun and interesting question. Um, and thank you to those of you who are listening or watching on YouTube, we we really appreciate you. Um, and, uh, you can get more, um, insights and information and courses and commentaries and videos and podcasts and all kinds of things at the Enter the Bible website at Enter the Bible. org. Um, please remember to, review our podcast. It really does help, especially in Apple and especially if you give us five stars. If you don't think we're worth five stars, you don't have to rate us. But if you do, go ahead and and and rate us there because it helps other people find the podcast. If you're on YouTube, like and subscribe. And of course, the very best compliment we can receive is for you to share a podcast with a friend. Thanks for being with us today. Until next time.