This is a touch religious but here's my excuse - it's the season to celebrate the birth of Jesus and I honestly am treating this topic more from a historical / intellectual perspective than from anything religious. If you know me well enough, you will know I am not the religious kind.
Anyway, I have just recovered from a terrible flu and I'm lying down most of the time with nothing better to do and I just read an article in Christianity Today. The writer, a PhD theology student from St Andrew's University, in reply to the question posed in the famous modern Christmas song 'Mary, did you know?' argues that Mary knew Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God and God himself. Here's the link to the article.
The writer's only argument is based on Luke 2 in which is described a scene where a multitude of angels appeared to a group of shepherds and announced the birth of Jesus and these shepherds went to Mary and told her what they saw. In Luke 2:19 we are told that in response to what the shepherds told her they saw, 'Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart'. From this alone, the writer of the article in Christianity Today concludes that Mary must have known that the baby before her was God himself.
I will show why the writer was badly mistaken in drawing her conclusion. There are many stories in the Gospels of Jesus attracting large crowds of followers who wanted to listen to his preaching and his family, i.e Jesus' mother and brothers would go to him to take him home. Sometimes, it's written that they thought he was crazy and sometimes, his rebuff of them is made clear.
In Mark's Gospel, we are told that Jesus' family heard of how crowded Jesus' preaching assignments were and in Mark 3:19, we read 'When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind".'
Also, in Luke 8 we read this: 'Now Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." He replied, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice."
If Mary really believed that Jesus was the Messiah or the Son of God, she would not have thought he was out of his mind and would not have gone repeatedly to take him home when he was preaching to crowds of people. Presumably that would have been part of the job description for a Messiah.
That's all I wanted to say - that I disagree with the writer of the article and in reply to the Christmas song 'Mary, did you know?' is a resounding 'Of course she didn't know. Or rather, she didn't believe it.'
I have more to say about what else I find unconvincing in the Christmas story but hey, this is my naturist blog and not a religious blog. And besides, it's just two more days to the world's most important birthday celebration in the history of humanity so let's not have any more controversial posts. Haha
Jesus’ Birth Foretold
ReplyDelete26 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29 But she was very perplexed at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; 33 and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. 36 And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”
38 And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26-38 NASB)
So Mary didn't know? Mary may not have understood the full scope of His ministry and life, but she certainly knew that Jesus was no ordinary baby, that He was special. She was also well-versed in the Messianic prophesies, as we see from her hymn of praise after she went to be with Elizabeth, so she knew that He would be called "Immanuel", which means "God with us".
Thanks for your comment. As I indicated in my article, there are different threads that might indicate different things in the gospels. A historian's job is to try to see which account is more plausible. They can't all be correct because they conflict with one another. The birth narrative of St Matthew's Gospel is taken by some scholars to be the least authentic. Some say that it's written to support the almah-parthenos mistranslation. I think the two accounts from Mark and Luke that show Mary and Jesus' brothers wanting to take him home because they thought he was out of his mind are the strongest attestation to the view that Mary probably didn't think Jesus was all that special.
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