DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
Seven demons had gone out of her. Luke 8:2 lists her first among "some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities" (illnesses). These women traveled with Jesus and the twelve disciples and provided for them out of their own resources.
Why it’s interesting
The longer ending of Mark, the extra verses that close Mark's Gospel in many Bibles, repeats the detail (Mark 16:9). Apart from that one echo, only Luke tells anything of these women's past. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene appears only in the accounts of Jesus's death and resurrection.
Scholarly consensus
Learn the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.