MAGDALENE (Mapfa st Ma-y.3aNnv7j). Each of the four Evangelists mentions Mary Mag dalene by name, and in each case she is referred to as being in attendance on our Lord. She is first mentioned with two other women whom he had healed of certain infirmities, and who, like her, tes tified their gratitude by ministering to him of their substance. Hence it appears that they were women of some means, which in the case of one of them is accounted for by her being the wife of Herod's steward, a position of great trust, and which no doubt gave to its possessor large means of acquir ing wealth. Whatever Mary's wealth may have been—and we may suppose her, as being first men tioned, to have been distinguished in some way above the others—her cause of gratitude to the Lord was greater than theirs, for he had released her from an aggravated form of that mysterious affliction, pos session by evil spirits. He had cast out of her seven devils. Was this affliction necessarily or usually connected with moral guilt ? Lightfoot tells us that the Jews sometimes called vices by the name of devils, as an evil affection is Satan. Drunk enness by new wine is a devil. See also the Hom. in Evang. of Gregory the Great, 25 and 53. And we know that the man possessed of a legion of devils was thereby prompted to acts of extraordinary violence ; and the daughter of the Syrophcenician woman is said specifically to have been possessed with the spirit of an unclean devil ; and it is very likely that a deadening, and an apparent obliteration of the moral sense may have been an accompani ment of diabolical possession. But one can hardly suppose that so distinctly mental an affliction would allow scope for that exercise of the understanding and the will which is necessary to constitute a per son pre-eminently a sinner ; and it would seem especially to incapacitate from that independent life of sin which has been traditionally, and we may almost say authoritatively, ascribed to Mary Magda lene. We should be disposed rather to consider her as a person of some worldly importance, anxiously watched during the period of her infirmity by friends and attendants, if not by relatives, and devoting all her time and means after her deliver. ance to the service of that Saviour who had made her whole.
This, however, is not the inference which has been drawn by the general assent of the Christian church, and is sanctioned by our own A. V. of the N. T. In the heading of the 7th chapter of St. Luke the name of Mary Magdalene is given to that woman whom Simon knew to be a sinner, who presented herself unbidden among his guests, who washed our Lord's feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and anointed them with ointment, and by so doing gave occasion for one of the most touching and instructive acts of our Lord's ministry ; and it would certainly not be surprising if we should find the person who had been so pardoned, and so restored to a life of inno cence as she was, devotin; herself to an assiduous attendance upon him from that very hour. Nor is
it improbable that the evangelist, in speaking of her good works, at the beginning of the 8th chap ter, should purposely disconnect her in thought from the woman whose conversion from a life of sin he had mentioned at the end of the 7th ; and besides the general verdict of tradition, some evi dence for the common belief is to be drawn from an independent source. Little reliance is to be placed on any direct assertions of the Talmudists, but the indirect evidence which they give is some times valuable, and it is certain that they speak of some one—in connection with certain calumnies against our Lord, under the name of Ben Satda whom they call ?'V7 NS-ran diary, tht gaiter of 7VOIllell'S word which indi cates the plaiting or curling of the hair being Mag dila ; and they speak of this person as having been shut up under suspicion by her husband, and having in consequence broken out into adulteries. This has been supposed not only to confirm the common opinion as to Mary Magdalene's previous life, but also to suggest the derivation of her name ; and it must be granted that such an expression as Maple 47 saXoviL4.77 May3aXnpii (Luke viii. 3), is a manner of phrase rarely used when persons are named after their country (Lightfoot, Hebrew and Tzlnutd. Exercit., Matt. xxvii. 56.) Still, the more obvious and commonly received derivation of her name is from Magdala, originally a tower or fortress as its name indicates, the situa tion of which is probably the same with that of the modern village of el-Mejdel, on the western shore of the lake of Tiberias (Stanley). But Lightfoot starts another supposition, both with regard to the place of residence and to the identity of Mary Mag dalene. He shows that there was a place called Magdala very near Jerusalem, so near that a per son who set up his candles in order on the eve of the Sabbath, might afterwards go to Jerusalem, pray there, and return and light up his candles when the Sabbath was now coming in (Talmud. Exercit., John xii. 3.) This place is stated in the Talmud to have been destroyed on account of its adulteries. Now, it is argued by Baronius, that Mary Magdalene must have been the same person as Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, and on this point Lightfoot entirely agrees with him, and he thinks that, Bethany and Magdala being both near Jerusalem, she may have married a man of Magdala, and acquired the dissolute morals of the place ; or that Magdala may have been another name for Bethany.