H. Proposed Identifications with other Females men- tioned in the N. T. — 1. The questions which meet us con- nect themselves with the narratives in the four Gospels of women who came with precious ointment to anoint the feet or the head of Jesus. Each Gospel contains an account of one such anointing, and men have asked, in endeavoring to construct a harmony, " Do they teU us of four distinct acts, or of three, or of two, or of one only '? On any supposition but the last, are the distinct acts perff)rmed by the same or by different jiersons, and if by different persons, then by how many? Further, have we any grounds for itlentifying Mary Magdalene with the woman or with any one of the women whose acts are thus brought before us V" This opens a wide range of possible combinations, but the limits of the in- quiry may, without much difficulty, be narrowed. Al- though the opinion seems to have been at one time maintained (Origen, Tract, in 3fatt. xxxv), few would now hold that Matt, xxvi and Mark xiv are reports of two distinct events. Few, except critics bent like Schleiermacher and Strauss on getting up a case against the historical veracity of the evangelists, could persuade themselves that the narrative of Luke vii,diflering as it does in well-nigh every circumstance, is but a misplaced and embellished version of the incident which the first two Gospels connect with the last week of our Lord's ministry. The supposition that there were three anoint- ings has found favor with Origen (/. e.) and Lightfopt (^Hurm. Evaiu/. ad loc, and Ilor. Ileb. in Matt, xxvi) ; but while, on the one hand, it removed some harmonistic difficidties, there is, on the other, something improbable, to the verge of being inconceivable, in the rejietition within three days of the same scene, at the same place," with precisely the same murmur and the same reproof. We are left to the conclusion adopted by the great ma- jority of interpreters, that the Gospels record two anoint- ings, one in some city unnamed (Capernaum and Nain have been suggested), during our Lord's Galikean min- istry (Luke vii), the other at Bethany, before the last entry into Jerusalem (Matt, xxvi; Mark xiv; John xii).
We come, then, to the question whether in these two narratives we meet with one woman or with two. The one passage adduced for the former conclusion is John xi, 2. It has been urged (iMaldonatus, hi ISlatt. xxvi, and Joan, xi, 2; Acta Hanctonnn, July 22) that the words which we find there ("It was that Mary v/hich anointed the Lord with ointment . . . whose brother Lazarus was sick") could not possibly refer by anticipa- tion to the history which was about to follow in ch. xii, and must therefore presuppose some fact known through the other Gospels to the Church at large, and that fact, it is inferred, is found in the history of Luke vii. Against this it has been said, on the other side, that the assumption thus made is entirely an arbitrary one, and that there is not the slightest trace of the life of Mary of Bethany ever having been one of open and flagrant impurity. There is, therefore, but slender evidence for the assumption that the two anointings were the acts of one and the same woman, and that -woman the sister of Lazarus. That she may have been in the later scene
is probable, but certainly not in the earlier. See No. 3, below.
There is, if possible, still less reason for the identifica- tion of Mary Magdalene with the chief actor in either historj\ When her name appears in Luke viii, 3, there is not one word to connect it with the histor}' that im- mediately precedes. Though possible, it is at least un- likely that such a one as the " sinner" would at once have been received as the chosen companion of Joanna and Salome, and have gone from town to town with them and the disciples. Lastlj', the description that is given — " Out of wliom went seven devils" — points, as has been stated, to a form of suffering all but absolutely incompatible with the life implied in afiaprioXuc, and to a very different work of healing from that of the di- vine words of pardon— "Thy sins be forgiven thee." To say, as has been said, that the " seven devils" are the " many sins" (Greg. Mag. lioni. in Evung. 25 and 53), is to identify two things which are separated in the whole tenor of the N. T. by the clearest line of demar- cation. The argument that because Mary Magdalene is mentioned so soon afterwards, she must be the same as the woman of Luke vii (Butler's Lives of the Saints, July 22), is simply puerile. It woidd be just as reason- able to identify "the sinner" with Susanna. Never, perhaps, has a figment so utterly baseless obtained so wide an acceptance as that which we connect with the name of the " penitent Magdalene." It is to be regret- ted that the chapter-heading of the A. V. of Luke vii should seem to give a quasi-authoritative sanction to a tradition so utterly uncertain, and that it should have been perpetuated in connection with a great work of mercy.