Jesus had Female Disciples, and the Text Makes that Clear

A simple question from a five-year-old—“Why didn’t Jesus have female disciples?”—opened a door we couldn’t close. We follow the text, not the artwork, and uncover a larger circle of disciples that includes women who learned at Jesus’ feet, funded His ministry, and stood fast when fear scattered others. The aim isn’t to add something modern to the Bible; it’s to remove what tradition and illustration have taken away.

We start by clarifying language. Luke 6 shows Jesus calling many disciples and selecting twelve apostles from among them. When He points to His disciples and says “whoever does the will of my Father… is my brother and sister and mother,” He draws a family that includes women as disciples. Luke 8 then names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna—patrons who provided out of their own resources. In the ancient world, patronage meant influence, networks, and public honor. These women weren’t background help; they were mission-critical partners who likely outranked many men socially. In Bethany, Mary chooses learning and Martha serves; Jesus affirms discipleship as the better portion while dignifying diakonia as real ministry.

From there, we widen the lens at the cross and the tomb. Collating the Gospels reveals a cluster of named women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Salome, Joanna, Mary the mother of Jesus, her sister, possibly Mary of Clopas—and “many other” women from Galilee. Even allowing for overlapping names, the group is larger than the standard two or three in most art. They are last at the cross and first at the empty tomb, entrusted with the first proclamation of the resurrection to apostles who struggle to believe. Their courage, patronage, and attentive faith reshape how we picture the movement of Jesus.

We also confront how children’s Bibles and church platforms can normalize women’s invisibility, teaching absence as if it were Scripture. Restoring the women the Gospels name is not cosmetic; it forms how our daughters and sons imagine calling, learning, service, and witness. We close with practical tools—readings, visuals, and resources—to help families, pastors, and teachers show the mixed company that truly followed Jesus. If this conversation challenged your mental picture, share the episode, subscribe for upcoming interviews with leading scholars on Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ female disciples, and leave a review to help more people meet the women the text refuses to forget.

Transcript

The Question That Sparked It

Jessica LM Jenkins 0:24

Did Jesus have female disciples? For some people, this question may seem irrelevant or not something worth emphasizing. But the question immediately reminds me of my daughter, who looked at me once she was maybe five years old, and she's like, Mommy, why didn't Jesus have disciples? Because every book we had, and most teachings you see and illustrations, which I'm going to talk about more, picture Jesus and the 12 male disciples. And the 12 male disciples are discussed as disciples. That term has been co-opted by the English language to describe the 12 almost exclusively. And so my little five-year-old looked at me one day and said, Why didn't Jesus have female disciples? And I was able to tell her, oh, baby, he did, and we were able to talk about it. But this is a realization I myself have had just within the last decade that Jesus had female disciples and who they were and what they did as significant members of his ministry. I did not realize this until I was creating historically accurate Easter visuals for children. And I was going through trying to figure out what characters I would need to illustrate for the story and all of those sorts of things. And I compared the gospels, and then I'd done more and more research to just see how many disciples he had, who these women were, and all of their names and the information about them. But Jesus' female disciples were something that was never taught to me. I had a four-year Bachelor of Science degree in Bible. I have a 32-credit, unaccredited Master of Arts and Israel studies. I have a four-year advanced master's of divinity. I was grew up as a pastor's child, a missionary kid. I was a pastor's wife. No one ever taught me that Jesus had female disciples. My journey was discovering that through the text of scripture for myself as an adult woman, even though I had been reading through the whole Bible since I was eight years old, it wasn't until I was an adult and actually reconstructing my view of biblical womanhood and women in the Bible that I was able to see what was plainly there. Because the dominant narrative of our culture, the illustrations that we see tell us stories that don't match the text. And so what we're doing in this podcast continually is getting back to the text. What does the text say about women? And how does that go against the dominant cultural narratives? Now, again, back to that question of well, why is this even important? I remember one day in church and we go to a complementarian church, so only men ever preach. And even on stage for music, most of our musicians are men. We may have one woman on stage at a time. And I remember my daughter, again, being in the service with us, and there was a woman doing backup, backup vocals, um, that day, and she got so excited to see a woman on the platform in church. It has become in many evangelical, especially complementarian spaces, the norm for women to be invisible on the platform. You might have one doing backup vocals or keyboard or an instrument, but the majority is going to be men. The majority of people speaking are going to be men. The majority of people reading the Bible are going to be men. The majority of the people you see on a given Sunday morning serving the sacrament, serving communion, reading scripture in most churches that I've been in in the complementarian world are going to be men. There is a visual absence of women, and we consider this normal. And then our Bible storybooks continue that trend. I just flipped through a few. I happen to have on my shelf while I was preparing for this episode the Jesus Storybook Bible, um, the Adventure Bible, a couple others. And I noticed the Jesus Storybook Bible has been popular for years and it does consider women as part of Jesus' friends. They don't use disciples in Jesus Storybook Bible, they consider women friends, and they do consider women as Jesus friends, but that's a very nondescript term, appropriate for children, but not, it's kind of a nondescript term. But I found it interesting that though the Jesus Storybook Bible considers women as part of Jesus' friend group, at key moments, they are left off the page. They are not really included, they are not included in many stories. Many stories about women are not included. A few are, but many aren't. Um you have a few women in the crowd, but they're not often main actors unless you have like Mary in the garden after the resurrection. And what I found most interesting is that at Pentecost, you have a picture of um Jesus' followers in an upper room. It's dark, it's sad, it's men and women in that image. And then on the next page, you see the little tongues of fire above three figures' heads. Those figures are all male. So the Holy Spirit comes, the visual image we are given is men. You even have books like Kevin DeYoung's um The Biggest Story, not the shorter version, like the long one with all the chapters. He talks about how the disciples are all men. Of course, this is written, done, produced by Crossway, so no surprises here. The disciples are all men. And he even goes so far as to say all the disciples, all of Jesus' followers abandoned Jesus at the cross, which we're going to come back to later on in the episode. So why does this matter that we say Jesus had disciples? Why does this matter that we front this? It matters because our churches are used to the silence and invisibility of women. And when you see it over and over in things called Bible, like storybook Bibles, Bible art, Christian art, when Christian and Bible are tacked on the front of things, there is an assumption that they accurately portray God's will, even though intellectually we can immediately say, not necessarily, it's done by humans, of course. But there's this underlying assumption that gets put. And we have been trained to treat the invisibility and silence of women as normal and thereby God's. It is an erasure of women that is subtle and completely pervasive to the fact that I could get all the way through two master's degree and a full seminary degree. I could be a pastor's wife and have no idea that Jesus had female disciples or who they were. So let's get into it. Who did Jesus have female disciples? Let's talk about it. Because whenever I say Jesus had female disciples, one of my most popular reels is talking about this, and immediately I get the pushback, no, we didn't. The 12 were the disciples. So deep breath, let's get into it, let's break it down. We're gonna start with the 12. What did Jesus call the 12? We have the commissioning of the 12 in two passages, Matthew 10 and Luke 6. In both of these passages, um, I'll read the Luke 6, just so we're not repeating ourselves, but in both of these passages, um, Jesus is calling disciples and then choosing 12 out of the disciples. So listen to Luke 6, 12 through 16 from the NET version. When the morning came, he, Jesus, called his disciples and chose 12 of them whom he named apostles. Their names are Simon named Peter, his brother Andrew, and James, John, Philip, Arthur and Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, who was called a zealot, Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. So in Matthew 10 and Luke 6, we get a list of 12 names of what we commonly call the disciples. We've shortened the large group of disciples to just the twelve. Well, Luke even says he calls his disciples and chose 12 of them. This implies that the group of disciples was much larger. Um, in another passage, Jesus sends out the 72 disciples. So Jesus had a large group of disciples. The Greek word for disciples is Matthaus. And Jesus sent out 72 disciples. So what we have going on, um, because we have to get technical with our language, we have to be careful in how we speak. The 12 that Jesus chose are called apostles, not disciples. Jesus had a large group of disciples, probably over 100, since he had 72 he could send out. He had a large group of disciples. Out of those disciples, he chose 12 apostles. So if you're thinking then diagram, all of the apostles are disciples, not all of the disciples are apostles. So you can think of it that way if we put it in like a lot logic syllogism. So Jesus calls to him all of the disciples, Matthaeus. Methaeus in Greek means a learner or a pupro. These are people who are learning from Jesus. Many of them are following Jesus, they're traveling with Jesus. Um, some of them may have traveled off and on, some of them, like the 12, may have traveled with him continually and been with him constantly the entire time. Which again, I'm getting DMs this week because I'm talking about this on Instagram. I, you know, people are saying to me, I just realized last year that women traveled with Jesus. The idea that women were traveling with Jesus, not G not just the 12. We have in our minds this visual image of Jesus and 12 dudes traveling, just the 13 of them. That's not the case. You have Jesus and a large entourage of who knows how many people traveling around Galilee and Judea. This is a large group. And these are the learners, those who are following him. They, most of them, would be considered methate, disciples, learners, pupils. It's a large group. He calls out of that group 12 apostles, which means sent ones or messengers. Now, this would immediately we're today. We're talking about did Jesus have female disciples? A also important question is Did Jesus have female apostles? That is outside of the scope of this episode, but it deserves to be answered. And if you want an answer to that question, I recommend for you the Mary We Forgot by Jennifer Powell McNutt or Nij Gukas Tell Her Story. Those are really good books that dive more into that question. And we might get to that question later. But if you're going to answer did Jesus have female apostles, you have to consider Mary Magdalene. You have to consider the women sent to tell the disciples after the resurrection. You have to consider Junia in Romans 16. There are women that you have to wrestle with, were they disciples? I'm were they apostles? Again, outside the scope of this episode today, we're just dealing with disciples. But there's a large group of disciples. Jesus chose 12 apostles out of that group, 12 male apostles, because those 12 male apostles are mirroring the 12 sons of Israel from the Old Testament. So having 12 sons and then 12 male apostles, there's an intentional mirroring going on there. But that gets us back to in this large group of followers called disciples, were any of these women? Do we have textual evidence from the New Testament that Jesus considered women to be methetes, disciples alongside the men? The answer to that is yes, he did. Let's look at Matthew 12, 46 through 50, and I will read that to you, but a little bit of context. Jesus has been speaking to the crowds. People think he's crazy. So his mothers and brothers come to collect him. And Jesus makes some very important statements about the nature of God's kingdom versus earth, and he redefines the family boundaries of who belongs to God and who God's family really is. So that's kind of context in this passage. But Matthew 12, 46 through 50 from the NET version says, While Jesus was still speaking to the crowd, his mother and brothers came and stood outside, asking to speak with him. Someone told him, Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wanting to speak with you. To the one who had said this, Jesus said, Who is my mother and my brothers? And pointing towards his disciples, Methetes, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. So Jesus looks at the Methetes, the disciples, the large group, not just the twelve, the large group, and he identifies them as female and male. He's not looking at a group of men and saying, these men are like my mother and sister. No, he's looking at a mixed gendered group and saying, I'm redrawing the boundary lines. God's family is not flesh and blood, God's family is not lineage, God's family is those who follow him and do his will. And it includes women, sisters and mothers, as Methetes, as disciples. So did Jesus have female disciples? He himself in Matthew 12 says, look at these female disciples. Now they are not named in that passage, but he says that they are there. So our follow-up question is: who are Jesus' female disciples? And what did they do? I knew growing up that Jesus had women who followed him, um, because you see, like the mothers of the sons of Zebedee, she's there on the road with them, asking if they can sit on his right and left hand. You kind of get the idea that there's some women, women hanging around. But the idea I always had was that these women, they're like the washwomen, the cooks. You know, you need someone to do the domestic labor because the dudes aren't going to do it themselves. That's why mom's hanging around to like take care of everybody and wash their socks. So let's consider. Who were the female disciples? Were they just devotedly doing women's labor for Jesus? Or were they on par learners with the male disciples who were there to learn? Are they just kitchen maids, or are they equal in status? In Luke 6, he introduces the 12 apostles. He chooses those out of the disciple group. And it's interesting because we're very familiar with James and John and Peter. Um, a few of the male disciples are very common household names. We're very familiar with them. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. You know, we've got those guys down in Peter and James. But many of the male disciples, apostles, many of the male apostles are only mentioned in that list of the twelve, and we know nothing else about them. But there are significant women who we get a lot more information about. So Luke 6, he introduces the twelve apostles. Luke eight, he introduces a very important group of women. Luke 8, 1 through 3, NET. Sometime afterward, he, Jesus, went on through the towns and villages preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and disabilities. Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Shusa, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their own resources. So Luke 8 introduces a group of at least six women, assuming many would be like three or more, since you'd say a pair if it was two, and you'd say, you know, someone else if it was one. So we're assuming maybe like six women who are traveling with Jesus and the 12. So in our traveling entourage, we have at minimum eight, uh, 17, 19, I can't do math today. Nineteen individuals, including Jesus, the 12, and six women. Now, were these women, as we just asked the question, are they just wash maidens following along, getting pieces of information, but they're primarily there to cook and clean and do all the womanly things that women have always done. You know, we love women in our church. They take care of babies and do casseroles. That's what we want them here for. You know, we're used to having women in church, and we church relies on the labor of women, but we don't give them visibility or voice. Well, the text says in verse 3 that these women provided for Jesus and the male apostles out of their own resources. These women are not washmaidens, these women are patrons. Now, patrons in the ancient world is an important position. It is a position of influence and power. It is something women often did in the ancient world. They would be patrons of celebrated teachers or of temples or various architectural projects. They would use their money to fund these community things, and that would bring them honor, that would bring their family honor, that would bring them societal position. Now, these women aren't doing this to seek honor or societal position. They're doing this because they love Jesus in gratitude because he's healed them. But we have to recognize our own gender bias in our assumptions that we bring to the text. If you're coming out of complementarian spaces, you're used to women being relegated to cooking, cleaning, and childcare. That is what you were used to. That's what I was used to. So it's easy to assume that is what these women are doing because that's what women do. Don't you know? Titus II, women are supposed to be keepers of the home. So if women are following Jesus, they're still keeping home on the road. No, these women are patrons. These are higher status women than most of the male apostles. These women are women with money. These women are women with connections. These women are not there to clean up after the twelve male apostles. These women are there as equal or even higher status members of society who may have come with their own servants or attendants or family members as well. So these patron women, I would argue, are equal disciples alongside the large group of other male disciples following Jesus. They're not necessarily the special chosen twelve apostles who, again, are mirroring the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 sons of Jacob. There's a whole thing going on with there, which is outside the realm of this podcast. But these women are not just showing up to cook and clean and wash socks and sandals and feet. That is, though they have probably had servant parts, that is beneath their rank as patrons and would have been shameful for the 12 apostles or other male disciples to expect that service from them. In the ancient world, your social status depends on a lot of different factors, not just gender. In again, in complementarian circles, we really only have social status depended on maybe wealth, if that mattered in your church. Didn't usually matter in our church, the churches I was in, but in some churches, wealth does matter. So status could be wealth, or it could be gender. And so that's really in our American, we don't have aristocracy, you know, we don't have a lot of that stuff. Um, maybe education, but we gender is the big social status marker. Who gets a voice, who gets visibility, um, who when they speak gets listened to. It's often the men, because it's a gendered social status situation. In the ancient world, you could very easily have women who have a much higher social status than the men around them. Because I'm going off the top of my head, but there's at least Five different things that can influence your social status. And those five things work together to make a puzzle for each individual household, family grouping social status. So you have are you a citizen or not, Roman citizen or not a Roman citizen? Are you slave, free, or freedman? You were a slave, but now you're free, or are you freeborn? So are you freeborn, freedman, or a slave? Are you male or female? Are you rich or poor? And I think there's another one that I'm not remembering at the moment. But depending on all of those circumstances, gender is only one. So if you have a man and a woman where everything is absolutely identical, being male would make you slightly more high status than the woman if every other aspect is identical. But when you're dealing with women who have wealth, as opposed to male apostles who don't, when you're dealing with women who have governmental connections, like Joanna, the wife of Herod's household manager, the male apostles probably didn't. You're dealing with a lot of social status symbols that the male apostles didn't necessarily have. So if you just level the playing field to think about social status in the first century, many of the patron women, these women in Luke 8, had a higher social status. They had wealth, they had connections higher than the male apostles. It would be shameful for the male apostles to expect menial labor from these women. These women are traveling out of gratitude and love for Jesus, supporting the ministry. They are writing the checks, they are not washing the feet. But Mark 15 gives us a few more names of women that should belong to this list of patrons. They may have been the many others who provided. Luke 3 says, um, Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Susanna, and many others. So Mark 15 gives us some names that may have been some of those many others. Mark 15 says a few more women who were patrons of Jesus. Mark 15 says there were also women watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, again, Mary, the mother of James, the younger, and of Joseph, and Salome. So Mary Magdalene is in both lists, but Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and Salome are new names. So Jesus patrons, which Jesus patrons in the Gospels are only women. Only women are named financial supporters of Jesus in the Gospels. And their names are there, there's probably more, but these are the names that we have. Their names are Mary, a Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and Salone. So we have five at least women who traveled with Jesus and were patrons of Jesus' ministry. We also have another category of women in the Gospels who are called friends. We don't know that these women traveled with Jesus, but it does seem they hosted Jesus regularly. They may have given other support along with being a host. And this is Martha and Mary of Bethany. Martha seems to be a fairly high-status woman in Bethany. She has her own home. It's continually referred to as Martha's home, where Mary and Lazarus also live. And we don't know much about why Lazarus is living in Martha's home or why Mary is living in Martha's home. They may be widow woman, Martha may be married, and we just don't hear about her husband, although widowhood and then having your own home and stuff was fairly common in the ancient world. And if you're wealthy or not like super wealthy, but you know, middle, comfortably middle class or upper, a widow could maintain her own home, and that was not a problem in the first century. So you have Martha and Mary of Bethany, who are friends of Jesus. And we see Jesus say, hey, learning at my feet, the act of being a disciple is important. It's just as important as deaconing, which is what Martha was doing. When Luke 10 says Martha was distracted by all her preparations. Again, we think smirk, she's like cooking and cleaning and frantically dusting everything. And oh no, company is here, you know, through the frantic housewife. And maybe that's what's going on. But the Greek word is deaconia. She's deaconing. That is what Martha is doing. She's serving, she's deaconing, but this is a word that is used and it has significance. So you have Jesus' friends, Martha and Mary, who also likely financially supported his ministry, who did the act of discipling, learning at his feet, and who did the acts of deaconing, whatever that involved in their community and context. And Jesus says, yes, deaconing is important, but learning, discipleship is more so fasting in my presence. So we have women who are patrons, we have women who we then see doing the act of discipleship and deaconing, and he encouraged Jesus encourages that. And then we have the women who are faithful to the end. Again, I heard growing up all the time that Jesus was abandoned by everyone, which we do see in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples, the 12 apostles scatter. There may have been other disciples there as well. We have potentially John Mark was there. So we may have a group of disciples that scatter in the garden. Jesus does say in Mark 14, 27, you will all fall away. He said that at the Last Supper, presumably talking to the 12 apostles. But even then, if he is speaking to the 12 apostles, this seems to be a more generalized statement, not an absolute truth, because we see John at the foot of the cross with Jesus. So even John, as part of the 12 apostles, did not fall away, though he may have been briefly scattered in Gethsemane. It is likely that the women who were following Jesus from Galilee and traveling with him, the women who were bankrolling his food and lodging and all of those things, it's likely that many of these women were at the Last Supper. This is a family meal. And remember that Jesus has redrawn the boundaries of family, saying, My mother and sister and brothers are my disciples. Passover is a family meal to be celebrated by a singular household. Jesus is saying, my disciples, male and female, are my family. This is the new household of God. So it is likely at the Last Supper, again, which is only visually depicted as male, it is likely that women were there as well. This is why when I had Holly Carton create some coloring pages for We Who Thirst, you can get these on Etsy or my WeWhoothirst.com website. I included women at the Last Supper. They are female disciples. They are paying for the ministry. I cannot imagine Jesus coming into Jerusalem with an entourage of at least five to six women who are paying for everything and then saying, sorry, I know you're following me. I know you're disciples, but this meal is only for men. You're not welcome. Women were there. They were there. They may have been dining at a separate table. They may have been dining with and among the male disciples, especially if you're dealing with um John and James' mother, the sons of Zebedee, their mom. If you're dealing if Peter's wife came along, um, you know, you could have women intermingled among the 12 apostles as family members. You could have them dining separately, they could have been doing some cooking. You also could have had people off the streets lining the walls, because we're used to thinking family dinners invite only. Ancient world, these sorts of things could kind of be public spectacles. So you could have people off the street coming in. But it's likely women were there at the Last Supper. Jesus turns to presumably the 12, maybe everyone, and says, You will all be, you will all fall away. You will all be scattered. But we see even from the fact that John was at the foot of the cross, he wasn't scattered forever. And I doubt the women were necessarily with Jesus in the garden. I think maybe he was saying, you will all be scattered, speaking directly to the garden. Now, why would the women who follow him all the time not be with him in the garden? Danger, potentially. Um, lots of reasons. Maybe they are back often. There's a huge camping culture at this time because lots of people travel to Jerusalem for Passover. And so the Mount of Olives, um, Jesus isn't just going out there to pray. They may have been camping, or the women may have been staying at a house in Bethany. So he may, they may have left the Last Supper, women may have stayed in Jerusalem because nighttime, women, danger. Jesus cares about these women's safety. Um, they may have just gone to bed after dinner or were doing dishes or whatever, and Jesus goes out with the 12 apostles and maybe a few others to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. I imagine women may not have been there. Again, danger, and Jesus is concerned for them because he knows what's going to happen. He knows armed guards, armed guards and women in darkness, not a good combination. We don't know for sure who is in the garden. That is my surmising. But the garden happens, everyone is scattered at that time. But by the time we get to the cross, and this is where I've always heard it preached, that everyone abandoned Jesus. He died alone. I'm not sure if you've heard that preach, but it is common all throughout. Kevin DeYoung in his book even talks about how everyone abandons Jesus. Except they didn't. Women were there. They were last at the cross and first at the tomb. Now, when if you do picture women at the cross and at the tomb, think to yourself real briefly before we go on how many women you expect there to be. Art shows us commonly two, maybe three women, because each gospel individually mentions about three women each. Each gospel says names of three women. But when you look at all four gospels and you overlap them, there are actually nine separate names of women who were present at the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, or all three. Now, I need to pause before we go. Let me read So let's read the names of these women. You have Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, the other Mary, Siloam, Joanna, Mary Jesus' mother, Jesus' mother's sister, Mary of Clopus, the women who followed from Galilee, and other women. Now, scholars like to overlap these women. Um, because some of these would be multiple names of the same woman. Let's take me as an example. My name is Jessica Jenkins, I'm married to Kevin. My father's name is Jeff. So in that information alone, there are at least four different names you could give me. Call me Jessica, you could call me Mrs. Jenkins, you could call me Jessica the wife of Kevin, and you could call me Jessica the daughter of Jeff. So you have four different names, especially when you have a very common first name like Jessica. Mary is an incredibly common first name in the first century world. So we have Mary, the mother of the James of Joseph, we have the other Mary, and we have Mary of Clopus. Some think it's the wife of Clopus, some think it's the sister of Klopus, we're not sure. But you have a couple different Marys. Some scholars want to say these are all actually the same Mary. So you have Mary Magdalene, and then you have the other Mary, who is the wife of Clopus and the mother of James and Joseph. So you have three names which are considered one person. And then some scholars want to say that Salome and the mother of the sons of Zebedee and Jesus Aunt are all the same person. And so you can take this group of nine names and condense it down to five or six names. And scholars are disagreed on whether you should do this or whether you should not do it. A lot of commentators want to overlap the names and minimize how many women there are. Other scholars, like Marge Mazuko, say no, we shouldn't do that nearly as much as commentators want to. And because of the nature of names, we do not know if the other Mary, Mary the mother of James, and Mary of Clopus, is that three Marys or is that one Mary? And now we have three bits of information about that Mary. We don't know. But what we know is that we have one, two, three, four, five, six, what we do know is that we have nine potentially nine named women. Um, they could be condensed down to about five to six women, but you still have seven or more if you consider the other women, many more women who fallen from Galilee, because like Susanna is not mentioned in this list of women who are at the crucifixion and resurrection, but she could have been there. Um, Mary and Martha from Bethany are not mentioned, but Bethany's not far from Jerusalem. They could have been there, and so in the many more, we have other women named throughout the Gospels that could be included. So as you think about the crucifixion and resurrection, open your picture to a huddle of seven to nine women at the foot of the cross. Not three, but definitely not zero. You have the male apostles who have scattered to the wind, they have fled except John. And then you have six to nine women weeping over Jesus. Matthew says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee are at the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are at the burial and resurrection. I would assume maybe the mother of the sons of Zebedee is also there, but maybe she's off trying to take care of her boys during the burial and resurrection. We don't know. Mark says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Salome are at the crucifixion and the resurrection, and then Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, are at the burial. You can kind of see why there might be overlap between the other Mary and the mother of uh Mary, the mother of James and Joseph. Luke throws in a few other names. Luke says that women who followed from Galilee are at the crucifixion and burial, which again, the women from Galilee are the women from Galilee are Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, who's been mentioned a couple times, and Salome. And so Luke says the women who followed from Galilee are at the crucifixion and burial. At the resurrection, he specifically names Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Joanna, and other women, unnamed women who are also there. John gives us a few more names. John mentions Mary Magdalene, she's named by everybody, Mary Jesus' mother. This is the first time we see Jesus' mother at the cross, and then Jesus' mother's sister. And so you have Mary Magdalene, Jesus' mom and Jesus' aunt at the cross. We know from the other gospels, other women are there as well. But now we see some close family members included also. Most depictions I've seen have Mary Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene, and that's about it. But when we actually look at what the text says, and when even allowing for some of the overlap of the names, there are more than six women who did not abandon Jesus. These are female disciples. They are patrons paying for his ministry. They are friends dear to his heart and soul, and they are faithful to the end. These women are incredibly important to Jesus, and it is incredibly important for the church to know these women. These women have a beautiful part of the story, and they deserve visibility because the text does not ignore them. The text gives names to them because they are important and because the though the recipients of the gospels may have known who these women are. The readers of John may have known who Jesus' aunt was. The readers of Luke may have known Joanna personally. The readers of Mark may have known Salome. Everybody knows who Mary Magdalene is, even if they didn't know her personally. But these women matter. So, some of you, this is new information. Some of you, you're like, okay, yes, this is helpful. I know this. Great. And I want to equip you further because the female disciples are so important. I will be putting all of the information from this episode up on Substack. You'll be able to find that there. I also want to recommend some books to you. Again, Nij Gupta's Tell Her Story is excellent. The Mary We Forgot by Jennifer Powell McNutt. Hugely important work on Mary Magdalene. I'm hoping to have Jennifer Dr. McNutt on the podcast in a couple weeks to talk about Mary Magdalene specifically. And then Joan Taylor and Helen Bond, I also hope to have back on the podcast. And their book, Women Remembered Jesus Female Disciples, is another good book talking about who are these women and what is their story. On my website, you can find my article, Unveiling the Forgotten, Exploring Jesus Female Disciples. There I kind of break down who nine potential women are. And I even have historically accurate clothing designs and a little bit of information about potential social status these women could have had. So you should find that very interesting information if you're interested. On my shops, I have paper dolls and posters that show the female disciples if you want to start combating the visual theology that our churches use. I have posters that show both the female and male disciples together with Jesus. I have paper dolls that have all the figures you would need for any story of the gospels that include all the named female disciples and all the named male disciples and extra figures for the unnamed followers of Jesus. There are coloring pages where you see the women at the foot of the cross, the women at the tomb, the women telling the male apostles that Jesus is risen, and you see the women at the Last Supper. All of these are available at weWhoothirst.com and at wehoothirst.etsey.com. So I want to equip you to know who the female disciples are. And that when somebody says, why is this important? Why does it matter if Jesus had female disciples? Or no, he didn't have female disciples. He just had 12 male disciples. And you can sit down and be like, well, actually, let's talk about why this is important and let's talk about the textual evidence that Jesus had female disciples. In Matthew, he specifically says he has female disciples. These female disciples were patrons, they are friends and they are faithful to the end. Where male disciples, we have no men named as patrons of Jesus' ministry. There may have been, but they're not named as such. And only John was faithful at the cross alongside Jesus. The women have a special role in his kingdom. And during the last days of his ministry, we see women understanding the depth of Jesus' teaching in a whales in a way that the 12 apostles missed. Jesus is telling them on the way to Jerusalem over and over again, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. And the male apostles are like, No, you're not. You're joking. What are you talking about? And women are anointing him. And Jesus says, She is. Is anointing me for my burial, and we will recommend remember her because of this. Women are understanding what Jesus is saying and taking it seriously, and they are there at the foot of the cross and at the burial and at the resurrection. Women were there when Jesus was born. At the incarnation, women were the first to touch God, and at the resurrection, women were again the first to touch God. Jesus loves women, He makes them visible, He says their voices matter. He told the female disciples there at the resurrection, go tell the male apostles who didn't believe them, but that's beside the point. Jesus said, Your voice matters, you go tell. You are the sent ones, the apostles to the apostles. They mattered to Jesus. They should matter to the church. Email me, DM me if you need more information on this. I will be making posts on Instagram. Definitely check out my Substack article. Download it, give it to a pastor or someone who needs it. We will be having important conversations over the next couple weeks, hopefully with Dr. McNutt and with Drs. Taylor and Bond. But thank you so much for being here with me today. As we are in the Lenten season, and I want to emphasize the female disciples all throughout this season because Jesus loved them and he loves you. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He's make his face to shine upon you and give you peace. God bless.