- In Matthew and Mark, a woman anoints Jesus' head. She is not identified as a sinner.
- In Luke, a sinful woman in the city weeps upon Jesus' feet, wipes them with her hair, kisses them, and anoint them.
- In John, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anoints the feet of Jesus and wipes them with her hair.
Scholars believe that, as the stories were passed on in oral tradition (before the Gospels were written), two different events were mixed together. In one, a sinful woman came to Jesus at dinner, wept on his feet and dried the tears with her hair. In the others, Jesus was at dinner and a woman expressed her love for him by anointing his head with oil.
By the time the Gospels were written, each evangelist had a slightly different version of what had become one story.
In a popular tradition, the sinful woman in Luke's version has been mistakenly thought to be Mary Magdalene. This was probably because later in Luke's Gospel, he mentions that Jesus had cast "seven demons" out of Mary Magdalene. This was a standard way of speaking of someone cured of sickness, but some misunderstood it to mean sinfulness.
- Little Black Book, Diocese of Saginaw