ContradictionsReading order 484Bible context 2 min read
Who washed Jesus's feet with her tears and dried his feet with her hair?
John names Mary in a Bethany anointing, while Luke describes an unnamed woman's tears and ointment in a different meal setting.
- Textual conflict
- Weak contradiction
- The supplied passages do not establish incompatible claims. Different events, meanings, or conditions may account for the difference.
- Importance
- Supporting
- A supporting event, teaching, or biographical claim.
Shared anointing details do not identify the different meal settings and women as one event.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Mary anoints Jesus' feet at the Bethany supper
Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. 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 12:1-3
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
Read the full chapter:John 12
An unnamed woman washes Jesus' feet with tears at a Pharisee's meal
And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in