Wulf's Webden

Earlier this week, I was investigating the Bible story about a woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfume. It occurs in all four gospels but there are some significant differences between the accounts – for example, was the perfume poured on his head or his feet? Since none of the stories is that long, I decided to read each and write up the key details as columns in a spreadsheet, pinning down what matched and where there were discrepancies.

You can read them yourself. The accounts are in Matthew 26:6–13, Mark 14:3–9, Luke 7:36–50 and John 12:1–8. The easy pair are Matthew and Mark, which run in almost perfect harmony. An unnamed woman pours expensive perfume on Jesus’ head while he is dining at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and very shortly before the Last Supper. There are some minor differences. Mark notes that the “expensive ointment” was pure nard and that it was “some of those present” rather than “the disciples” who were indignant about the waste of money it represented. Otherwise, the passages line up note for note.

If we go to John’s version next, it is substantially different. Here we are probably in the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Mary (almost certainly the sister of the other two) anoints the feet of Jesus with the nard perfume and wipes his feet with her hair. Judas is singled out as the one grumbling about the waste of money and John takes the opportunity to point out that Judas had already started pilfering from the disciples common purse. Could this be the same event Matthew and Mark describe? Even with the variations already described, it would imply that at least one of the authors is a deeply unreliable narrator.

I am more inclined to think that this is a different event which happened a few days earlier, with Mary and the unnamed woman independently inspired to similar acts of great devotion (both of which are explicitly linked to preparation for Jesus’ forthcoming – and temporary – burial). How can we explain the similar responses of indignation and Jesus repeating almost word for word the same counter-response? It isn’t made clear but one possibility is that most of the the disciples were note at the first feast, which John describes. More of them are at the house of Simon the Leper a few days later although perhaps not Judas. Indeed, he could even be making his arrangement to betray Jesus to the religious leaders which he enacted a day or two later. If most of them hadn’t seen the earlier incident or been told about it, it would be understandable for them to have the same, natural reaction and for Jesus to reiterate the earlier response.

That puts us on two distinct events, both occurring round the time that we now call Holy Week. What about Luke’s story? That is much earlier in the ministry of Jesus. The twelve apostles were only selected in chapter 6 and, although there have been a few episodes since, we are a little way off Jesus setting his face to go to Jerusalem (chapter 9) let alone the triumphal entry (chapter 19). Luke tells us about Jesus eating at the house of Simon the Pharisee but there is no reason to equate him with ‘the Leper’. Simon was a common name at the time – even within “the twelve”, we have Simon who is later called Peter and Simon the Zealot, although we probably shouldn’t extrapolate that about 17% of men shared that name!

In this case the unnamed woman is characterised by the host as a “sinner” (often regarded as implying prostitution), which doesn’t seem to match the Mary of Bethany who delights to sit and listen at the feet of Jesus. Incidentally, the woman in chapter 7 is also probably not Mary Magdalene, who gets mentioned in the following chapter as having been set free of demon possession without any link to the anointing narrative. In this case, there is no mention that the perfume was particularly expensive and it is the host who becomes indignant about the woman’s sinfulness, rather than a focus on the “waste” of the perfume’s value. Jesus responds not with “the poor you will always have with you” and a reference to preparation for burial but with “whoever is forgiven much, loves much” and then declares the woman’s sins forgiven.

We may still have questions about the passage. For example, I wondered how the woman knew she would be forgiven much beforehand or chose the action of anointing with perfume but it wouldn’t be unreasonable, in the context of the narrative, to spot the prompting of the Holy Spirit, which occurs in many places and times throughout the whole Bible. Having carried out this study, I am now convinced that the four gospels contain accounts of three separate incidents: Luke’s first and much earlier, then John’s and, a just a few days later, the one described by both Matthew and Mark.

Let me know if you want to see the completed spreadsheet, along with a blank version that could be used for a guided group Bible study.