Rival Sisters No More: Mutuality in Martha and Mary in Luke and John

Among the vignettes that the Four Gospels share, one curious story stands out: the woman who anoints Jesus. Noteworthy is that the Gospel of John recasts the story not in the house of Simon the Leper or the Pharisee but in an unnamed house in Bethany where Martha serves, Lazarus reclines, and Mary anoints. By doing so the Gospel doubles the comparison, leaving it to be read not only latitudinally across the Synoptics but longitudinally through to the house of Martha and Mary in Luke 10, where curiously another dinnertime kerfuffle surrounding Mary emerges. Why does the Johannine narrative center this story around the Bethanian family? Is there something special that this family signals that might otherwise go unnoticed if the woman remained nameless?

In this paper, I will interrogate Mary’s anointing of Jesus in John 12 by itself and in comparison, to Luke 10 using literary and redaction criticism. Although careful attention will be paid to feminist concerns, a feminist hermeneutic will not be the primary mode of analysis. I will first introduce important background information regarding the Fourth Gospel and familiar characters, then it will turn to Luke 10:38-42 first, and finally to John 12:1-8 in light of Luke. In doing so, I will argue that John uses multivalent symbolism in reworking the Lukan characters of Martha and Mary of Bethany and Lazarus to underscore the gospel’s ultimate essential message of mutual love and abiding between and among Jesus and the disciples. 

Background and Methodology: The Gospel of John—Redaction process and major themes

This paper primarily utilizes literary and redaction criticism to deconstruct John 12 with attention paid to gender, without employing a feminist critique as such. This analysis foregrounds concerns relating to character development, narrative composition, and motifs to understand the text as it stands.[1] Given the comparison with Luke, however, my analysis also queries redaction, specifically attending to how the Johannine narrative might have interpreted Luke’s Gospel to further its specific message. Unless otherwise noted, all translations follow the NRSV.

The Gospel of John is believed to have been written sometime between 80-110 CE, with many believing one person wrote it in the 90s, and another redacted it ca. 100-110 CE.[2] This likely places it a little after Luke, which is estimated at somewhere between 75-95 CE.[3] Though it is impossible to determine John’s dependence upon the Synoptics, Raymond Brown suggests that “Mark and John shared common preGospel traditions, oral or written; and that although the fourth evangelist had not seen the final form of Luke, he was familiar with traditions incorporated later into Luke.”[4] Interestingly, though the details differ, the anointing of Jesus by a woman is one of the few events which occur in all four Gospels. Thus, it is likely the Johannine community and the author(s) were familiar with the stories of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, in addition to a tradition of a woman anointing Jesus.

As for the Johannine community, according to Ruth Habermann in Feminist Biblical Interpretation, the community likely experienced exclusion and persecution, both internally from within the Jewish community and externally from the Roman Empire, which often led to defection. Therefore, Habermann suggests, the “authors [of John] wanted to exhort their readers and hearers to ‘abide’ and to place before their eyes what Jesus meant for them.”[5] This further relates to the gospel’s larger theme of mutuality, which “means believing not only in God but also in one another and in oneself…”[6] Here we see a further unique element of the Fourth Gospel, namely its multivalent symbolism, or as Harold Attridge calls it, the cubism of John. Symbolism in this gospel repeats—often nearby within the narrative—to reveal more complex and multilayered meanings that ultimately foreground an essence of the symbolism.[7]

It, therefore, seems reasonable to think that not only the author(s) of the Gospel of John knew the Gospel of Luke and his characters of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, but that, given what the Johannine community might have been experiencing, the author(s) grafted these specific characters into this story to ultimately give ultima dimension the gospel theme of mutual love. 

Familiar Faces: The Anointing Woman of the Synoptics and Martha, Mary, Lazarus Luke

Let us first establish the characters as they appear elsewhere to notice how John redacts them. As mentioned, the scene of the anointing appears in all four Gospels. Each time it is a woman who anoints Jesus and each time there is a controversy. In Mark and Matthew, she anoints Jesus’ head with costly perfume while he is dining at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany. The disciples fume at the waste but Jesus, rebuffing them, lauds her for doing what she can to prepare his body for burial. In Luke, the characters change. Though the anointing woman remains nameless, she now is described, albeit as “sinner.” She anoints Jesus’ feet, not his head, with a mixture of her tears and expensive oil, and she dries the feet with her hair. The event occurs at the house of a Pharisee revealed to be Simon when he silently expresses disgust and disbelief. Thus, the author(s) of the Fourth Gospel take a location in Bethany, an implication of a woman of with enough means to afford expensive oil, a home large enough to house many guests, and at least one instance of her at Jesus’ feet, to transform the unnamed woman into Mary of Bethany, who is seen sitting at Jesus’ feet in Luke, and along with her sister, Martha, is presumed to have financial resources. 

However, there’s one wrinkle that remains to be ironed out: Lazarus. Mary and Martha of Bethany as mentioned in Luke lack a brother. Outside of John, there remains only one other Lazarus in the Gospels, found in a parable in Luke 16. He is the only character in a parable to receive a name— ‘God helps’ in Hebrew. This Lazarus, besotted with sores, receives no help from the rich man while on earth, and upon his death is taken to rest comfortably with Abraham. As such, the dramatic reversal of Lazarus’ fortunes chiefly displays Luke’s concerns with binary oppositions and turnarounds. Of course, Lazarus’s sores also recall the leprosy of Simon, the host of Mark and Matthew. Thus, it seems likely that the author(s) of John transposed Simon the leper of Bethany with the Lukan Lazarus, thus adapting a symbol already known for new life in Christ.

Among the gospel writers, it is Luke whom many call “the ‘women’s evangelist’,”[8] noting he has generally been regarded as positive toward women within the community: Mary’s Magnificat marks her as the first disciple, Anna shows her prophetic skills, women witness the resurrection, and Mary Magdalene becomes the first evangelist, and so forth. Though they may not be apostles, women seem to take up important space within the community. However, in the wake of Elizabeth Shüssler Fiorenza’s 1983 In Memory of Her, feminist scholarship has taken this claim to task, showing the patriarchal Hellenistic backdrop of Luke, erasure and silence of women, and the meager number of women when compared to men.[9] Yet, as Claudia Janssen and Regene Lamb warn, “every statement must be studied on its own; hasty generalizations are to be avoided.”[10] Nowhere is the debate more hotly pursued than in Luke 10:38-42, where we shall turn.

In addition to being the only other Gospel story about the family from Bethany, the story in Luke 10:38-42 follows a similar structure as the anointing in John 12:1-8. Both stories begin with Jesus entering the village defined by one of the family members: Martha in Luke, Lazarus in John. Martha serves in both (Lk 10:40, Jn 12:2), while a sibling reclines near Jesus (Lk 10:39, Jn 12:2). Then something that Mary does upsets the peace: in Luke, Martha is displeased by Mary’s lack of help and asks Jesus to send to her help (v. 40); in John, Judas Iscariot is displeased by Mary’s extravagant act and wonders why the money was not donated (vv. 4-6). In the final scene, Jesus comes to Mary’s rescue, defending her actions and chastising the complainant with an oddly vague prophecy (Lk 10:41-42, John 12:7-8).

As Allie Ernest demonstrates through Martha from the Margins, this story has suffered throughout the ages, both from poor translations and contextual misunderstandings. Luke begins with the Martha, who has a sister, Mary, serving Jesus and his disciples in her home. From this first point, we should understand Martha as a central figure, rather than a mere foil. While there are numerous ‘Marys’ across the New Testament and Hebrew Bible, there is only one Martha, the same one seen here in Luke and John. Further, her name is of Aramaic origin, meaning ‘Lady’ or ‘Mistress’,[11] thus aligning with the sense that not only is she an important character within the story, but she is a prominent figure in Bethany. Further, as Ernst says, “Mary is introduced in relation to Martha, not only as her sister, but also in a grammatical construction that retrains the focus on Martha… ‘and she had a sister’ (10:39).”[12] Lastly, based on the word “sister”, feminist scholarship following Schüssler Fiorenza, D’Angelo, and Ernst has shown this pair can be understood similarly to either itinerant missionaries Paul and his “brother” Sosthenes, or leaders of a house church like Prisca and Aquila.[13]

From the context, it is assumed Martha is serving a meal. However, the term here translated as “serve,” Greek diēkonei, takes center stage in debates by feminist and philological scholars.[14] As there is no unequivocal understanding of this word, one can read this story as Martha serving a banquet at her house with insufficient help, as is often read; or one can read this as Martha as serving in a deacon or ministerial role with insufficient support from her partner minister; or one can even read Martha serving in a debased role as a slave might. For our purposes, the precise meaning of the word is less important than that it demonstrates the possibility to understand Martha as a disciple figure. Even if she is only serving a meal, meals are central to the Lukan way and providing such table service is precisely the kind of discipleship Jesus asks of his disciples in Luke. 

Two further points complicate the reading of Luke 10:38-42 as it relates to John 12. First, Mary sits at Jesus’ feet learning. Whatever can be said of her silence, sitting at the feet in Lukan language refers to a student-teacher relationship so her placement at his feet hearing the word indicates she is a female student.[15] Second, the scene occurs directly after the parable of the Good Samaritan and immediately before the food-focused Lord’s prayer and the parable of the persistent friend. Its placement alone would then suggest that Martha’s activity is valued, or should be valued according to Jesus’s own heuristics. Yet neither the narrator nor Jesus values her service.

Thus, the more troubling aspect of Martha and Mary in Luke is not that whether Martha is acting as a disciple, but why her service is discarded and why Mary’s is preferred. First, the narrator marks disdain for her work as Ernst notes that “[w]hile Mary is listening to the word, Martha is periespato: ‘drawn away,’ ‘busy,’ ‘overburdened.’”[16] She asks Jesus for help in getting Mary to help. She receives help from neither. Instead, her work is denigrated in comparison with Mary’s: “‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord replied, ‘you are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken away from her.” If only one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen the good part, by implication Martha has not. Whatever potential rivalry laid dormant within this pair, the author of Luke now activates and solidifies their opposition. Let us turn to John to see how he redacts this story.

Comparison: John 12:1-8 Contrasting View of Discipleship and Love

John 12:1-8 details Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet. Six days prior to Passover, following the death and resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus goes to Bethany, Lazarus’s hometown where Jesus is honored with a dinner at which Martha serves, Lazarus reclines at table with Jesus, and Mary anoints and wipes Jesus feet with expensive, fragrant nard to the chagrin of Judas Iscariot, foreknown betrayer, who asks why the perfume wasn’t sold as charity for the poor. Jesus rebukes him and defends the silent Mary while alluding to his future death and departure, and curiously reminding them the poor will always be with them. Immediately after this pericope the chief priests conspire to kill Lazarus so others might stop believing in Jesus. The raising of Lazarus is the last great sign of Jesus’s ministry and marks a turning point in the gospel, as Jesus moves away from his ministry and towards his crucifixion, and this story represents the turn toward death.

Introducing Lazarus, Mary, and Martha

Lazarus, Mary, and Martha are introduced carefully over the first three verses, allowing the action of each to linger. However, this is not their first introduction; they first appear all together one chapter earlier.[17] Noteworthy is the temporal inconsistency across these chapters: Mary’s future anointing is mentioned in this earlier chapter (John 11:2), and Lazarus’ prior raising is mentioned again in the later chapter (John 12:1). As a result, Dorothy Lees suggests this flashforward and flashback suggests the evangelist intended these stories to be read as one longer story.[18] If this is so, then the parallelism in the introductions belies a few important insights into the family and the redaction. 

First, Lazarus is defined three times as ill (John11:1, 2, 6), reprising the dire illness of the Lukan Lazarus and foreshadowing his death. And it must be a life-threatening illness as Lazarus dies while Jesus tarries a little (v. 17). His illness contrasts sharply with his later leisurely reclining at a feast in John 12:1, and again recalls the imagery of Lazarus with Abraham in Luke. His illness also reveals the vulnerability of his masculinity: he silently suffers, silently dies, and silently emerges from the tomb still bound after Jesus resurrects him. Thus, we can see how John recasts Lazarus to further his message; the effect isn’t to notice opposition between two males, one rich and one poor, but rather between life and death. Lazarus loses his masculinity but gains mutuality with Christ that might result in eternal life. 

Additionally, the siblings appear rather interconnected. Lazarus is of Bethany, but that village is defined in relation to the sisters— “the village of Mary and her sister Martha.” Here we further note the importance Mary commands in 11:1-2: the village is her village, she has a sister, it is her brother who was ill, she anoints the Lord. Yet by verse 3 Mary recedes into the plural generic, “sisters.” And by verse 5, Mary is known only generically by way of Martha— “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” The interpolation of names is not merely stylistic, nor does it suggest one sister is in competition with the other. Rather, it symbolically points to the mutual love and abiding of the siblings within one another. Further, this family appears rather close to Jesus who loves them equally in return. They can get word to Jesus that the man he loves is ill (v. 3). Note, also, this family is not defined by a paterfamilias, nor even by a strong male figure. It is co-defined by a sickly brother and two active sisters who love each other and are loved by Jesus. All this operates in the background of when John 12 introduces the characters again. 

However, to compare the similarity of the anointing story with Luke 10:38-42, we must further interrogate how Martha and Mary are presented vis-à-vis discipleship in John 11. Then we can better understand lingers behind the text in John 12 when it says “Martha served” (v. 2) and Mary “anointed Jesus’s feet” (v. 3). The proximity of their actions might further point to their collaborative discipleship if they were indeed itinerant missionaries or leaders of a house church.

Martha: The Authoritative Disciple Who Truly Understands and Serves

Let us turn first to Martha. In John 11:20-27, Martha immediately goes to meet Jesus as he approaches Bethany, while Mary stays. She laments her brother’s death and engages in an extended theological discussion with Jesus. The confidence of her activity parallels the authoritative stature with which she approaches Jesus in Luke 10:40, where Ernst says, “Martha’s standing therefore appears mist akin to the authoritative standing of those who speak the word of God or act in God’s name: Anna (Lk 2:38), Jesus (Lk 4:39) and Ananias (Acts 22:13).”[19] Whereas in Luke she “discovers that the ground shifts beneath her [and] the position which she had presumed divinely authorized is corrected by the Lord,”[20] Martha in John finds herself authoring the divinity of the Lord. Martha properly identifies Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God (John 11:27), a role performed by Peter in the Synoptics.[21] Importantly, as Ernst notes, Martha’s confession occurs before the resurrection miracle.[22] Thus the Johannine Martha appears as a confident, leading female disciple who is respected by Lord, rather than an overburdened one who is corrected by him. She need not sit at his feet to understand his teaching; instead it is precisely through her feet that she understands and abides in Jesus her Lord. 

Thus, when John 12:2 says, “Martha served” we know there is more lurking. In fact, the parsing of this verb in Greek implies continuous action and is contrasted in tense with the other verbs in the verse—being better understood as “was serving.”[23] Even further, this is the same Greek root used in Luke 10:40, diēkonei, which caused much consternation among interpreters as already discussed. Martha’s serving, or ministering, here displays her steady discipleship with neither the overwork nor the depreciation seen in Luke. Curiously, the root only appears three times in John, [24] once here and twice in John 12:26 where Jesus says, ‘Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” Thus, when Martha is disclosed in 12:2 as serving him, she has already followed. John’s narrative, therefore, desires more to show the importance of mutual service, rather than the primacy of one form of discipleship. 

Mary: The Complex Disciple Who Knows Just What to Do

Turning now to Mary, two noteworthy observations must be made. First, Mary can be seen to symbolically mirror Jesus here, a motif that continues into John 12. Like Jesus, Mary tarries in approaching the one she loves (John 11:20) waiting until the Lord calls for by name (John 11:28). However, unlike Jesus, she rushes when she is called. This rush mimics the hurriedness with which Martha approaches Jesus in Luke 10:40, while it contrasts Mary’s own motionlessness in Luke 10:39. Upon reaching Jesus, she falls at his feet weeping thus alluding not only to the future foot anointing, but also her position at Jesus’ feet in Luke 10 and Jesus’ sacramental foot washing in John 13. Mary’s weeping at Jesus’ feet so disturbs him that he moves towards Lazarus’s decaying body and weeps. Thus, it is her tears at his feet initiate Jesus’ weeping. Of course, he weeps not only over his friend, but over his own future death as this last sign will be the one that gets him executed, and further threaten Lazarus’ life even after his resurrection.[25] This heightens the sense of mutuality—between Mary and Jesus, and Jesus and Lazarus—present in Mary’s action. The love between Jesus, Mary, and Lazarus flows so freely that one might ask whose tears are whose and whether they are weeping over the present loss of Lazarus, the future loss of Jesus, or the threat against Lazarus. 

Thus, when John 12:3 says “she anointed his feet” there is again more occurring. If only verses prior it is her tears at his feet that disturbed Jesus to tears himself, her placement again at his feet might recall a residue of distress that permeates the otherwise joyful scene and overhands it like a cloud of suspense. Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive nard and wipes the feet with her hair. The sensual delight of such an action is hardly hidden. The evangelist tells us the “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” Not just the room, but the whole house is filled with the aroma. This is no doubt meant to immediately contrast the stench of Lazarus’ four-day-old dead body Martha anticipated to have filled within the tomb in John 11:39. However, that is not the only allusion. In Song of Songs 1:12, a bride, her bridegroom, and their friends sing sweet nothings to each other, and the bride says, “While the king was at his table, my perfume (“nard”) spread its fragrance.” The similarity in the setting cannot just be easily waved away: a king, a dinner-table, a fragrance-spreading spark-nard. Given the infrequency of references to spikenard within John, such a reference necessarily brings with it such a joyful, bridal association. When also paired with allusions to Jesus as the bridegroom by John the Baptist, the entire dinner itself takes on the additional symbolism of a wedding banquet. This indicates that there must be a kind of elation at the Lazarus feast, doubly celebrated not just because Lazarus lives, but because of the love of this family and Jesus. If anything, that the structure of Song of Songs leaves it to the reader to determine who is speaking solely based on gendered grammar alone thus suggesting a mutually-sung love-song, only further underscores the sense of mutuality and love present in the scene. 

While the sensuality of Mary’s anointing often gets the most attention, there is more to this story. Interestingly, Mary’s anointing prefigures Jesus’ sacramental humble foot-washing in John 13. It similarly causes a disturbance with Peter protesting, “never shall you wash my feet!” He is disturbed that Jesus’ inverts the hierarchical structure of their society by debasing himself as a slave, and a female one at that.[26] But such is the activity Jesus requires of his disciples: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (John 13:14-15). However, it is Mary who first sets this example. This raises multiple questions: is her action understood as appropriate for her status as a woman despite her wealth, given the norms of their patriarchal society and Jesus’ position as Lord and guest? Does the extravagance of her expensive deed undermine or enforce the distance between them? And does it matter that she knowingly prepares the Lord’s living body for death? However, I view these— that Jesus performs this same action later, that Mary’s extravagance is admired, and that her prescience lauded—as destabilizing the hierarchy present in the foot anointing. This allows the anointing to further represent the mutual abiding of Mary in her Lord. She is not a mere disciple here. Without a need for his command, she prefigures the Lord and the type of service he requires. 

As a final point on the feet, of course in being near the Lord’s feet Mary’s discipleship here bears resemblance to her discipleship in Luke 10 as well. She is again silently present at his feet performing some form of discipleship which remains mysterious to those who object. Though Mary remains silent, she is more active. Whereas feminist critiques of Mary in Luke 10 often note that “the text does not say that Mary acts on the word but depicts her only as a hearer,”[27] in John one infers that Mary’s former position at Jesus’ feet translates into action. 

Just as Martha objects in Luke, so too does Judas object to Mary’s actions. On its face, his objection to Mary’s waste seems well-grounded given that the biblical apparatus tells us the value of the spikenard at three hundred denarii would reflect a full year’s wages. Wasting it on the feet of a healer seems hardly appropriate when indeed the resources could be better distributed to others in need. Thus, in contrast to Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ foot-washing, Judas is disturbed not because Mary acts as a slave, but rather for precisely the opposite reason: her activity reflects the opulence of supreme wealth. However, the evangelist warns the reader to distrust Judas, parenthetically noting, in John 12:6, “ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)” Thus, here we notice the difference in the objections between Martha and Judas. Whereas Judas attempts to get rich off the economic activity of Mary, Martha desired additional help in ministering. 

What is interesting, then, is Jesus’ reaction: “‘Leave her alone,’ he replied. ‘She was intended to keep this perfume to prepare for the day of My burial.” (John 12:7, NIV). From his reaction, we see first the plain demand: that she be left alone. She is not to be cajoled into doing something else; her action, in and of itself, has meaning and must be honored. But he goes further to say that her action is prophetic—or is it? Judging by the various footnotes and varieties in translation, the second sentence elides easy translation. The NRSV translates it as, “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial” with a footnote saying, “Gk lacks She bought it.” The ESV translates it as, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial” while also footnoting that it can be translated, “Or Leave her alone; she intended to keep it for the day of my burial” Is she intending to keep the already used oil for his burial? If so, why is it Nicodemus who embalms his body with myrrh in John 20 and not she? And how is she to use what she has already used? The alternative translation within the ESV provides a more interesting angle: she intended to keep it for the day of my burial. Perhaps she had meant to keep it for later, but events changed and she now knows it is time to prepare the body for burial. Her abiding in Jesus gives her knowledge of what is right to do at that moment.

This brings us to the final point needs attending. Just as in Luke, the Johannine Jesus ends his approval of Mary’s activity with a cryptic note. Here he says, in John 12:8 “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” On its face, his reply seems to accept apathy toward economic injustice, particularly when paired with his approval of the extravagance and denial of Judas’ venture. However, when understood in this scene’s funerary overtones and overall theme of mutuality, it becomes clear Jesus is expressing the importance of knowing what kind of discipleship is needed at this moment. It is not an either/or binary, but a question of timing: tend to the poor, yes, but tomorrow (and every day following); pay attention to Jesus before his death. This is a smoothing out of the challenge presented in Luke 10:42, where the discipleships do seem set in binary opposition. John does not diminish ministering to others, he rather focuses on mutual love: if the disciples can be right in their orientation toward love for Jesus, they can love others and perform the service he requires of them following the new command he gives after washing their feet. 

Conclusion

This review of John 12 against Luke 10 makes clear that the Gospel of John refines the oppositions presents in the stories of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary to demonstrate their abiding in one love for Jesus and one another. No one figure is preferred over and above another. Defined in mutual relation to each other and their love, and shown through acts of equally valued discipleship, the family symbolizes the loves in which Christ instructs his disciples. We have further seen how the symbolism of this oil anointing becomes even more multivalent. Carrying with it both the sweet fragrance of a celebration of life and love, and the heavy air of somber memorial, Mary’s ointment signals the life and death paradoxically present in Christ and those who abide in Christ. Her anointing symbolizes Christ’s love at its most bittersweet moment. However, by incorporating Martha’s service and Lazarus’ presence, the bitterness is no longer directed at opposing individuals, and a sweetness lingers in every form of discipleship to Christ.

Thus, in transposing the anointing scene with these Lukan characters and scenes, John deepens the story to demonstrate equal worth of discipleship based in the mutual love and service of Christ and those who love him. Said differently, these show what the essence of what it means “to love one another.” 

Works Cited

Attridge, Harold. “The Cubist Principle in Johannine Imagery: John and the Reading of Images in Contemporary Platonism.” In Imagery in the Gospel of John, eds. Jörg Frey, Jan Gabriël Van der Watt, Ruben Zimmermann, Gabriele Kern, 47-60. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2006.

Bible Hub. “John 12.” Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers. Accessed November 10, 2019, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/ellicott/john/12.htm  

Bible Hub. “Strong's Greek: 1247. διακονέω (diakoneó).” Englishman’s Concordance. Accessed December 1, 2019 https://biblehub.com/greek/strongs_1247.htm

Bible Hub. Strong's Greek: 3136. Μάρθα (Martha)”, Strong’s Concordance. Accessed November 10, 2019 https://biblehub.com/greek/3136.htm

Brown, Raymond. An Introduction to the New Testament. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

Ernst, Allie. Martha from the Margins: The Authority of Martha in Early Christian Tradition. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009.

Habermann, Ruth. “Gospel of John: Spaces for Women.” In Feminist Biblical Interpretation, eds. Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker, trans. Lisa Dahill. 662-679. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2012.

Janssen, Claudia, and Regene Lamb, “Gospel of Luke: The Humbled Will Be Lifted Up.” In Feminist Biblical Interpretation, eds. Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker, trans. Lisa Dahill 662-679. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2012.

Lee, Dorothy. Flesh and Glory: Symbol, Gender, and Theology in The Gospel of John. New York, NY: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2002.

Lin, Yii-Jan. “The Gospel of Mark: The Good News of the Suffering Son of God.” Lecture. Yale Divinity School. New Haven, CT. September 16, 2019. 

[1] Yii-Jan Lin, “The Gospel of Mark: The Good News of the Suffering Son of God” Lecture, Yale Divinity School. New Haven, CT, September 16, 2019. 

[2] Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 334.

[3] Brown, New Testament, 226.

[4] Brown, New Testament, 365.

[5] Ruth Habermann, “Gospel of John: Spaces for Women,” in Feminist Biblical Interpretation edited by Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker, trans. Lisa Dahill (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2012), 662.

[6] Habermann, “Gospel of John: Spaces for Women,” 662.

[7] “My thesis is that the use of Johannine imagery reflects certain tendencies…[that] are (1) to overdetermine the significance of recognized images, in part by viewing them from different angles of vision, all of which seems to increase the complexity of the symbolic system, but (2) to focus thereby on the referents of the symbolic system, thereby striving to penetrate to the ‘essence’ of what is symbolized. I describe this tendency as ‘cubist,’ on a loose analogy with tendencies in early 20th century European art.” Harold Attridge, “The Cubist Principle in Johannine Imagery: John and the Reading of Images in Contemporary Platonism,” in Imagery in the Gospel of John, eds. örg Frey, Jan Gabriël Van der Watt, Ruben Zimmermann (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 47.

[8] Claudia Janssen and Regene Lamb, “Gospel of Luke: The Humbled Will Be Lifted Up,” in Feminist Biblical Interpretation edited by Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker, trans. Lisa Dahill (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2012), 645.

[9] “Thus, feminist scholarship on Luke fundamentally questions the widespread acceptance of Luke as ‘women’s evangelist,’ which is often based only on the number of women mentioned in the Gospel.” Claudia Janssen and Regene Lamb, “Gospel of Luke: The Humbled Will Be Lifted Up,”647.

[10] “Thus feminist scholarship on Luke fundamentally questions the widespread acceptance of Luke as ‘women’s evangelist,’ which is often based only on the number of women mentioned in the Gospel.” Claudia Janssen and Regene Lamb, “Gospel of Luke: The Humbled Will Be Lifted Up,”647.

[11] “Strong's Greek: 3136. Μάρθα (Martha),” Strong’s Concordance, Bible Hub, accessed November 10, 2019 https://biblehub.com/greek/3136.htm

[12] Allie Ernst, Martha from the Margins: The Authority of Martha in Early Christian Tradition, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009)

[13] “Just as Paul calls himself an ‘apostle’ and Sosthenes his ‘brother’ (adelphos, 1 Cor 1:1), thus, according to her interpretation, Martha is described as diakonos and Mary as her ‘sister’ (adelphē). D’Angelo concludes from the significance of the house in the story and the face that the house belonged to Martha and Mary that both women were the leaders of a house church, comparable to Priscla and Aquila.” Habermann, Feminist Biblical Interpretation, 671.

[14] Demonstrated best when Collins says, “This is the point of detail at which the present paper enters the dialogue. What has the feminist critical understanding of the Greek diakon- words contributed to its reading of the story? The words occur in only two passages of Luke-Acts that present women engaged in diakonia of some kind.” And Collins’ further point in disagree with feminist scholars: “As philological or semantic observations these judgments about diakonia are inadequate and misleading.” John Collins, “Did Luke Intend a Disservice to Women in the Martha and Mary Story?” Biblical Theology Bulletin, Vol. 28, Iss. 3 (1998): 106, 109.

[15] Note how the author of Acts, who is presumed to be the same author of Luke, has Paul describes himself, in Acts 22:3, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today.” 

[16] Ernst, Martha from the Margins, 196.

[17] “1. Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” John 11:1-6, NRSV (Emphasis added.)

[18] “The anointing is arguably not a separate pericope standing by itself, as is generally assumed, but is one scene in a larger unit, the raising of Lazarus, artificially divided by the chapter break between John 11 and 12. Already the narrator has created an inclusion by the proleptic reference to Mary’s anointing at the beginning of the Lazarus story, puzzlingly referred to as if it has already taken place…Awkward though this reference is, it acts as a prolepsis, a narrative anticipation, and has the literary effect of entwining the story of the anointing with the Lazarus story.” Dorothy Lee, Flesh and Glory: Symbol, Gender, and Theology in The Gospel of John, (New York, NY: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2002), 198-199.

[19] Ernst, Martha from the Margins, 197-198.

[20] Ernst, Martha from the Margins, 198.

[21] “Martha’s confession, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’ (John 11:27), is the counterpart to Peter’s confession in the Synoptic Gospels.” Habermann, “Gospel of John,” 671

[22] “Martha confesses her faith in response to a word and not a deed…As such she is one of the blessed who have not (yet) seen and still believe.” Ernst, Martha from the Margins, 37.

[23] “And Martha served. --The tense of this verb differs from that of the others in the verse, and implies the continued act of serving, whilst "made a feast" is the statement of the fact as a whole.” “John 12,” Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers, Bible Hub, accessed November 10, 2019, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/ellicott/john/12.htm

[24] “Strong's Greek: 1247. διακονέω (diakoneó),” Englishman’s Concordance, Bible Hub, accessed December 1, 2019 https://biblehub.com/greek/strongs_1247.htm

[25] Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 349.

[26] “In the washing of feet, the hierarchal pattern of the patriarchal society was reflected. At the lowest level of the hierarchy were the female slaves; they were obliged to wash the feet of their masters and their male guests.” Habermann, “Gospel of John,” 672.

[27] Ernst, Martha from the Margins, 196.