The Two Marys: Mary Magdalene & Mary of Bethany - Wronged for Fifteen Centuries

For fifteen centuries, were two of the most important women in the Gospel story mistaken for one another?

Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany have stood at the centre of Christian tradition for almost two thousand years. Yet their identities, their actions and even their reputations became entangled in ways that profoundly shaped how generations understood them.

In 1922, Scottish author A. W. Kerr took up that question in a remarkable little book carrying an extraordinary accusation:

Wronged for Fifteen Centuries.

Kerr believed that Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany had been wrongly identified with one another, and that centuries of interpretation had obscured the distinct women preserved in the Gospel accounts. Drawing closely upon Scripture, Christian tradition and historical argument, he set out to separate their stories and challenge an identification deeply embedded in Western Christianity.

But there is another remarkable story behind The Two Marys.

Published quietly in Edinburgh in 1922, Kerr’s small book appears to have left surprisingly little visible trace in Britain. Yet hundreds of miles away, in Catholic Poland, his argument was being read, cited and debated.

By 1925, the Polish Catholic priest and biblical scholar Władysław Hozakowski was engaging directly with Kerr. He reviewed The Two Marys in the theological journal Przegląd Teologiczny, examined Kerr’s arguments in detail and even quoted directly from the English text. Kerr was also cited in Hozakowski’s own substantial study of Mary Magdalene, Marja Magdalena w Ewangeljach.

Hozakowski did not simply accept Kerr’s conclusions — he challenged some and credited others. But that is precisely what makes the evidence so compelling. Kerr’s little English book had crossed borders and languages and entered serious Catholic theological debate within only a few years of appearing.

Why did a book that attracted such attention abroad become so difficult to find at home?

And then, for more than a century, The Two Marys largely disappeared from view.

Now Ancestral Living Press returns A. W. Kerr’s complete work to print in this Restored 1922 Edition.

This is not a modern rewriting of Kerr’s argument. His text has been newly transcribed and carefully prepared from the original publication, preserving his language, quotations, references, dedication and characteristic use of capitalisation. The wording of Kerr’s notes has not been altered; only the footnote numbering has been regularised to accommodate modern print and digital formats.

At the heart of the book remains the question Kerr posed more than one hundred years ago:

Who were the two Marys?

Was Mary Magdalene the woman later tradition made her? Was Mary of Bethany someone entirely distinct? How did the Gospel accounts of anointing become entangled? And how could an identification challenged by the evidence endure for century after century?

Kerr approaches those questions with the confidence of a writer convinced that an old historical wrong could still be corrected.

For readers interested in Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, the women of the Gospels, biblical history, early Christianity and the development of Christian tradition, The Two Marys offers something increasingly rare: a forgotten voice from the early twentieth century, preserved in its own words and allowed once again to make its case.

A forgotten 1922 investigation.

An argument that crossed Europe.

Two women whose identities became intertwined.

One challenge to fifteen centuries of tradition.

The Two Marys is A. W. Kerr’s remarkable attempt to set them apart again.