Did Mary Magdalene have brothers and sisters?

Traditionally, Mary Magdelene is identified with the Mary who had a brother, Lazarus; and a sister, Martha. The family lived in a place called Bethany. However, The Bible does not specify that this is the same Mary.

Dr. S. S. Smalley, in his contribution to The New Bible Dictionary, edited by Dr. J. D. Douglas, maintains that John, in his Gospel "could not have been unaware of the real identity of the two Marys [of Magdala & of Bethany], or have been content to confuse the readers." He stated that there was "no justifcation" to saying that Mary Magdeline & Mary of Bethany were the same.

Whereas Christ had cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene, nothing indicates that she had or didn't have siblings. She was in the company of those who attended to Christ's burial & subsequently present at His resurrection.

ANSWER

Surnames like "of Nazareth", "the Baptist", "Bar Jonah", "Barabbas", "of Tarsus" etc., clearly indicated origins. "Mary of Bethany" is obviously a completely different person to Mary Magdalene or Mary of Migdol-Tyre which is the meaning of her name. Actually, Mary Magdalene is most likely the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman who asked Jesus to cast out a devil from her daughter. It seems the New Testament writers were embarrassed that a Phoenician woman was first to witness the Resurrection. The Romans and Greeks hated the Phoenicians so much that tempers would rise just by mentioning them. Phoenicians were held responsible for starting the Trojan war and the Romans had been terrified of them during the three Punic Wars. The Tyrians or Dorians, who fled the Assyrians, swarmed over Greece in the 7th century BC along with many Jewish or Ionian refugees (emigres). So Mary the Tyrian or Phoenician was not an ideal person to be the first to eye-witness the Resurrected Christ. Yet Jesus must have organised things to happen like that. This is the mystery. It is solved by recognising the connections with Elijah and Elisha's resurrections of the two Phoenician womens sons (in Shunem and Zarapeth). Just as they resurrected two Phoenician women's sons so the Son of God's resurrection was witnessed by a Phoenician woman's daughter. It is a fairly simple code to show the resurrection of Jesus is true.

Mary Magdalene thus stands for the woman in the place where the bad news of the Garden of Eden (to Adam and his Eve) was rescinded, turned around (repented), over-turned etc. Just as the First Adam stood with his woman to hear the bad news resulting from the 'consumption' of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil", so Jesus whom Paul described as the "Last Adam" stood with a woman to represent as it were the "Last Eve". The situation of Genesis 3 was paralleled by the situation recorded in the Gospels and quite deliberately so. Of course few people, even in churches, accept this sort of analysis because they do not accept the Creation Account of Genesis which demands we believe in a first man and first woman from whom we are all descended. We are not descended from Lucy the Chimp of Ethiopia in 1 million BC.

One assumes on the basis of normal events that Mary Magdalene did have siblings. It's more unlikely that she was an 'only child' - but she might have been. There are more important things to consider.