Mary Magdelene, Religious woman or prostitute? Options

[*paul murphy*]

Religious woman but this is a contreversial subject.

[hi-C]

Actually, Mary Magdalene wasn't a prostitute, at least they never mention it explicitly. She's gotten a bad rap because her story just so happens to follow that of a repentent whore.

Tradition as early as the 3rd century identified as Mary Magdalene the woman who was a sinner in Luke 7:36-50:

" 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,
38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment."

Though there is no connection made in the New Testament, nor is the woman in the house of the Pharisee given a name, the idea that Mary was "the woman who was a sinner", or that she was unchaste [read: whore], was developed by the Patristic writers of the 3rd and 4th centuries. This idea is rejected by most Protestants. Catholics, on the other hand, consider this one person to be, not only the sinner of Luke 7:36-50 but also Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and the resurrected Lazarus (Luke 10:38-42 and John 1:10); although the Roman Catholic Church withdrew from this linkage at the Second Vatican Council (1969) it survives strongly in folk Catholicism.