Mary of Bethany
The sister of Martha and Lazarus. Luke shows her sitting at Jesus’s feet to hear him, and John says that she anointed his feet with costly ointment at Bethany six days before the Passover.
In Luke, Mary sits at Jesus’s feet and listens while her sister Martha serves, and Jesus says that she has chosen “the good part” (Luke 10:39–42). In John she is the sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany. After her brother’s death she fell at Jesus’s feet, weeping, and he wept with her (John 11:1, 32–35); see the Raising of Lazarus.
Six days before the Passover, John says, she took a pound of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet and wiped them with her hair. Judas Iscariot objected to the cost, and Jesus answered that she had kept it for the day of his burial (John 12:1–8). Mark and Matthew tell of an unnamed woman who poured ointment on Jesus’s head at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, in the part of their narrative set two days before the Passover (Mark 14:1, 3–9; Matthew 26:2, 6–13). Luke has a separate story, set earlier, of a woman “who was a sinner” anointing his feet in the house of a Pharisee (Luke 7:36–38). The Gospels do not identify Mary of Bethany with that woman, or with Mary Magdalene.
In the timeline
- AD 30 or 33, estimated dateThe Raising of Lazarus
John reports that Jesus called his friend Lazarus out of the tomb at Bethany four days after his death. Many believed, and the council in Jerusalem, on the advice of the high priest Caiaphas, resolved that Jesus must die.