Mary Magdalene! Heroine of thousands of biblical novels throughout the centuries. Played a prominent role in the latter part of all four Gospels. The woman out of whom Jesus was reputed to have driven seven devils. A reformed prostitute, or at the very least a “sinner,” depending on your source material, with the latter category such a fitting one for most of us that her appeal had been universal for nearly two thousand years. On one point, however, all the Gospels and early sources agreed. The Magdalene woman’s love for her Lord, and her courage, had been surpassed by none in that small party who had accompanied Jesus to Jerusalem for his last Passover.

The three of us sat on the grass at her feet, and after both John and Joseph took turns patiently and unhurriedly explaining the purpose of my visit, she looked down at me and asked plaintively, “Will you promise not to hurt me if I tell you whatever you want to know about Jesus?”

“Matthias is a friend of mine, Mary. He would never harm you,” Joseph assured her.

She pointed to the purple stripe on my tunic. “All Romans hurt people. They even tried to kill my Lord.” Her voice was childlike in both tone and inflection, and the slow cadence of her words, all spoken in an emotionless flat monotone, indicated a condition for which neither the old man nor John had prepared me.

“She has not been herself for many years, Matthias,” Joseph finally confided, as if the woman could not hear him, “ever since that morning when she returned from the empty tomb. However, her ability to recall even the slightest detail about her experiences with Jesus has not diminished. Just talk softly to her and keep your questions simple.”

“I have only a few,” I said.

I happened to look up into the branches above my head. One lonely symmetrical pomegranate dangled gently in the breeze. On a sudden impulse I got to my feet, leaped for it, plucked the dark red fruit from its stem, and handed it to Mary Magdalene. She clutched it to her breast and lowered her eyes as poignantly as any bashful schoolgirl.

“Mary,” I began, “when did you first meet Jesus?”

“I was brought to him, by some scribes and Pharisees, while he was teaching in the Temple. They threw me at his feet, shouting that I had been taken in the very act of adultery and should be stoned under the laws of Moses. They wanted to know what Jesus had to say.”

“What did he say?”

“He blushed and pretended not to hear them and stooped down and wrote with his finger on the dirt of the courtyard.”

“Did you see what he wrote?”