Which Mary Anointed Jesus with Oil? (Explained from the Gospels)

It was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. John's Gospel names her directly. It was not Mary Magdalene, although the two are often confused.

The question gets tangled because all four Gospels describe a woman anointing Jesus, and only one of them gives her name. Here's how the accounts fit together.

John names her

John identifies the woman twice. First, when he introduces Lazarus:

(It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)

— John 11:2 (KJV)

Then he tells the story itself, at a dinner in Bethany with Lazarus at the table and Martha serving:

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

— John 12:3 (KJV)

So the Mary who anointed Jesus is Lazarus's sister, the same Mary who once sat at Jesus' feet to listen while Martha served (Luke 10:39).

Matthew and Mark tell the same story

Matthew and Mark describe a woman anointing Jesus in Bethany too, but they don't name her:

And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.

— Mark 14:3 (KJV)

Most readers, ancient and modern, take this to be the same event John describes, and there's good reason to. It's in the same village, in the last week of Jesus' life, with the same expensive spikenard (Mark and John both value it at three hundred pence). In every version someone complains that the money should have gone to the poor, and every time Jesus defends her and links what she did to His burial.

There are two differences, and neither is hard to resolve:

• Head or feet? Matthew and Mark say she poured the oil on His head, and John says His feet. A Roman pound of oil (about 12 ounces) was plenty for both. Each writer highlights a different part of the same act.
• Who complained? Matthew says "the disciples", Mark says "some", and John names the ringleader: Judas Iscariot, "because he was a thief, and had the bag" (John 12:6).

The house belonged to "Simon the leper", presumably a man Jesus had healed. John doesn't name the host, only that "they made him a supper; and Martha served" (John 12:2).

What Mary's anointing meant

Spikenard (nard) was a perfumed oil imported from the Himalayas. Three hundred pence was about a year's wages, since a labourer earned "a penny a day" (Matthew 20:2). Mary poured out a small fortune in a single evening.

Jesus explained why it mattered:

She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.

— Mark 14:8-9 (KJV)

Within a week Jesus would be crucified. Mary seems to have understood what the disciples didn't: that He was going to die, and that this was her chance to honour Him.

The other anointing in Luke 7

Luke tells a different story, earlier in Jesus' ministry and probably in Galilee. Jesus is eating at the house of a Pharisee, also named Simon, when an unnamed woman comes in:

And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

— Luke 7:37-38 (KJV)

This is a separate event. The setting, the host, the timing and the point of the story are all different. Simon the Pharisee objects to who she is, not to the cost, and Jesus' answer is about forgiveness, not burial: "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much" (Luke 7:47).

Luke never names her, and nothing in the text suggests she was Mary of Bethany or Mary Magdalene.

The anointings side by side

	Matthew 26 / Mark 14	John 12	Luke 7
Woman	Unnamed	Mary of Bethany	Unnamed "sinner"
Place	Bethany, house of Simon the leper	Bethany	A Pharisee's house, probably in Galilee
When	Jesus' final week	Six days before the Passover	Early in His ministry
Anointed	His head	His feet	His feet, washed with tears
Who objected	Disciples ("some" in Mark)	Judas Iscariot	Simon the Pharisee
Jesus' point	Preparing His body for burial	Preparing His body for burial	She is forgiven because she loved much

Where Mary Magdalene comes in

Mary Magdalene isn't in any of these stories. She's introduced in Luke 8:2, right after the anointing in Luke 7, which is one reason later readers merged the women together. Pope Gregory the Great taught in 591 that all three were the same person, and the idea stuck in Western tradition for centuries. Read more in Is Mary Magdalene the sister of Lazarus?

Mary Magdalene did set out to anoint Jesus, though, just too late:

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

— Mark 16:1 (KJV)

She never got the chance. When the women reached the tomb, it was empty. Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus' body for burial, and Mary Magdalene was the first to find out He no longer needed it.