Mary of Bethany in the context of "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Vermeer)"

The anointings of Jesus’s head or feet are events recorded in the four gospels. The account in Matthew 26, Mark 14, takes place on Holy Wednesday, while the account in John 12 takes place 6 days before Passover in Bethany, a village in Judaea on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives, where Lazarus lived. In Matthew and Mark, he is anointed by an unnamed woman. In John, the woman is identified as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany. The event in Luke features an unnamed sinful woman, and is in the northern region, as Luke 7 indicates Jesus was ministering in the northern regions of Nain and Capernaum. The honorific anointing with perfume is an action frequently mentioned in other literature from the time; however, using long hair to dry Jesus's feet, as in John and Luke, is not recorded elsewhere, and should be regarded as an exceptional gesture. Considerable debate has discussed the identity of the woman, the location, timing, and the message.

Luke 10 is the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the sending of seventy disciples by Jesus, the famous parable about the Good Samaritan, and his visit to the house of Mary and Martha. This Gospel's author, who also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, is not named but is uniformly identified by early Christian tradition as Luke the Evangelist.

Lazarus Saturday in Eastern Christianity (consisting of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic Churches) refers to the moveable feast before Palm Sunday to which it is liturgically linked. It celebrates the raising of Lazarus of Bethany. Bethany is recorded in the New Testament as a small village in Judaea, the home of the siblings Mary of Bethany, Martha, and Lazarus, as well as that of Simon the Leper.

John's gospel reports that "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead." Presumably, it is where he spent the Great Sabbath that occurs immediately before Passover, prior to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus is reported to have lodged there during Holy Week, and it is where his anointing by Lazarus' sister Mary took place a few days later on Holy Wednesday.

John 12 is the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It narrates an anointing of Jesus' feet, attributed to Mary of Bethany, as well as an account of the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. The author of the book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that John composed this Gospel.

Martha (Aramaic: מָרְתָא‎) is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary of Bethany, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem and witnessing Jesus resurrecting her brother, Lazarus.