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Kerygmania: Our Lady, the high-powered frequent flyer
I was reading the account in Luke 1 of the Annunciation and Visitation, and it struck me as exactly the opposite of the 'Mary was a poor young girl' narrative that seems to be fashionable at the moment:
Thoughts:
1. Mary's trip to Elizabeth must have been a major undertaking. Wikipedia, albeit on no solid evidence that I can see, thinks Zechariah lived in Hebron, 100 miles from Nazareth - at any rate, the hill country of Judea was a long way away. So she would be spending a week on the road, staying at inns each night.
2. Nevertheless, it sounds like she did this on her own initiative, i.e. she was the one who decided she wanted to see Elizabeth. So either her parents acquiesced in her wish and provided the means to do so, or else she was an independent woman of means.
3. And furthermore she was able to stay with Elizabeth for three months; presumably she wasn't needed at home to do her spinning, weaving, brewing, or whatever young women would be expected to do in those days.
Overall, it sounds like the sort of trip you could do if you were the equivalent of an upper-class heroine of a Jane Austen or Georgette Hayer novel, but not if you were one of the common people.
Another partially related thought: I always vaguely assumed that she conceived more or less straight after the Annunciation, but there's nothing in the text to suggest it; in fact, there is a clear separation between chapter 1 and chapter 2. If we take Luke at face value, and ignore Matthew, it would appear that John was conceived during the reign of King Herod (at the latest, 4BC), and Jesus was conceived when Quirinius was governor of Syria (6 AD), i.e. there is a gap of ten years between Luke 1 and Luke 2. Which would put Mary in her twenties at least when Jesus was born.
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
[...] 56 And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.
Thoughts:
1. Mary's trip to Elizabeth must have been a major undertaking. Wikipedia, albeit on no solid evidence that I can see, thinks Zechariah lived in Hebron, 100 miles from Nazareth - at any rate, the hill country of Judea was a long way away. So she would be spending a week on the road, staying at inns each night.
2. Nevertheless, it sounds like she did this on her own initiative, i.e. she was the one who decided she wanted to see Elizabeth. So either her parents acquiesced in her wish and provided the means to do so, or else she was an independent woman of means.
3. And furthermore she was able to stay with Elizabeth for three months; presumably she wasn't needed at home to do her spinning, weaving, brewing, or whatever young women would be expected to do in those days.
Overall, it sounds like the sort of trip you could do if you were the equivalent of an upper-class heroine of a Jane Austen or Georgette Hayer novel, but not if you were one of the common people.
Another partially related thought: I always vaguely assumed that she conceived more or less straight after the Annunciation, but there's nothing in the text to suggest it; in fact, there is a clear separation between chapter 1 and chapter 2. If we take Luke at face value, and ignore Matthew, it would appear that John was conceived during the reign of King Herod (at the latest, 4BC), and Jesus was conceived when Quirinius was governor of Syria (6 AD), i.e. there is a gap of ten years between Luke 1 and Luke 2. Which would put Mary in her twenties at least when Jesus was born.
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Comments
My brain didn't get to work on it to anything like the degree yours had! My takeaway was much simpler: it bears witness to a juxtaposition I often see in Scripture and more especially in the Nativity narrative.
There's an entirely mundane meeting (on the face of it, excluding the practicalities you mention) of two relatives both expecting babies - combined with the Holy-Spirit-inspired leap in the womb that puts God's seal on the encounter (and produces the Magnificat).
We can't expect that sort of thing to happen every day, nevertheless in my life I'm on the lookout for encounters that combine the mundane with the distinctive mark of God's presence in the encounter in question.
The tendency has been to read the account of the meeting of Elizabeth with Mary as reflecting Mary already being pregnant when she visits Elizabeth. (Which is why the Church calendar celebrates the birth of John the Baptist six months before the birth of Jesus.). You're right about the clear separation, but there's no reason to suppose there is more to it than Luke needing to tie up the story of the birth of John the Baptist before he moves on to Jesus. A number of commentators (including M.-J. Lagrange (1911), A.J.B. Higgins (1969),P.W. Barnett (1973-4) N. Turner and W. Brindle (1984), N.T. Wright and John Nolland (1989)) have noted that there is no reason why Luke 2.2 Should not be translated "This was the census that took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria." To my mind there is also the additional question whether πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην in the previous verse should be read as literally meaning the whole world, or whether it might have an idiomatic usage meaning (loosely) 'everyone' - like the French tout le monde.
Well, in the interest of declaring my biases, my predisposition is to avoid those retellings of the Nativity that make Mary excessively young and vulnerable. I think they add an unnecessary level of squick into the story, when the text itself, at face value, seems to make Mary quite independent.
So my position isn't "This is unlikely, therefore Luke is making it up", but rather "Luke portrays Mary as a member of a social class for which it is not unlikely."
I'm reliant on English translations, but ISTM unlikely that Luke would say Mary was going to a town in [the wider] Judea if she was already in [the wider] Judea, and more likely that he was contrasting "in Judea" with "in Galilee" from v26.
E.g., if you said someone travelled from Eindhoven in Brabant to a town in Holland, then technically, since Holland is often used to refer to the whole of the Netherlands, you could mean another town in Brabant, but it would be more likely you meant the province of Holland.
It's also the fact that the section on John starts with a chronological marker (i.e., in the time of Herod), and the section on the birth of Christ starts with a different chronological marker. Although I'll admit that a ten year gap (OK, technically nine years as there is no year #0) seems unlikely as well, and interferes with the chronology later on when you have to reconcile Jesus' age with Pilate's governorship.
She is of course vulnerable as a woman, and more so as an unmarried mother, and particularly once she and Joseph and the child become refugees.
A geriatric primagravida (to use the medical terminology) would definitely have benefitted from extra help around the house, and it may have been that the two of them were close and Mary would have rushed off to see her cousin anyway, as well as the fact that if an angel is telling you something, you'd want to see for yourself.
Her parents lived in Zippori where there is a wee church to St Anne. (Byzantine C.5). Nazareth, on the other hand, which was a tiny village of maximum 250 families. (This based on calculations from the size/flow of the well).
There is also the school of thought she was "sent" to the Temple at age 3 "for her education"
Isn't the simplest solution that the story is made up and/or a mix of two stories?
There are stories about Jesus of Nazareth and stories about his birth in Bethlehem. And a bunch of other things about Egypt and other places. Kinda unlikely that they can all be squared with the idea that the people discussed are fairly poor semi-skilled artisans.
/Here endeth the unhelpful contribution by the resident doubter.
Yes, but even if it's pious fiction, it's still fiction that presents Mary as well-heeled and independent.
And even if you strip the nativity stories out of the gospels, I don't think there is any compelling reason to believe that Jesus' family were poor semi-skilled artisans.
(FWIW my subjective impression is that Luke is attempting to be fairly factual, whereas Matthew is more theologised / legendary / made up [delete according to degree of scepticism].)
The problem is that she then came back to Nazareth three months later.
Her itinerary, as described by Luke, is Nazareth > hill country > Nazareth > Bethlehem, hence my frequent flyer comment (which I realise I didn't really explain).
According to The Jewish Encyclopaedia, a betrothal would normally last a year before a first marriage (which also rather militates against my nine-year gap above).
What does 'that' refer to in this sentence?
The only thing we can actually be sure is that Jesus has always been known as a carpenters son from Nazareth and when he died apparently only owned a single garment.
Most of the other stuff seems like embellishment.
Yeah but there's no consensus on what tektōn means. I've heard it claimed to be everything from a jobbing day-labourer to an architect's assistant. According to Wikipedia, Geza Vermes, who is hardly an apologist for Christianity, thought it meant someone learned in the Torah.
That's a bit like saying St Francis must have been from a poor family because when he died he owned nothing at all.
Well, your position also looks like conjecture. If you want to argue that we can know nothing at all, then fair enough. But you seem to be arguing that we can know Jesus' family was poor, on what looks like fairly weak evidence to me, and then you explain away the descriptions of Mary in Luke by saying 'the writers/editors made a cursory effort to make the story coherent by inventing stuff that is basically impossible.'
Ok yes it's a conjecture but seems to require less "frequent flying" than asserting it must all be factual.
But what I'm trying to get at is that frequent flying isn't a problem, it's just an indicator of Mary's social position. Clearly people did travel, otherwise there wouldn't be such things as inns. And some women do seem to have possessed a high degree of independence:
To put it another way: if I described a character as a footballer, then I could mean he was anything from a Premier League multimillionaire to a Sunday League amateur. But if I then describe his Mercedes and his Cheshire mansion, the simplest explanation is that I wish to indicate he is the former; it would seem perverse to insist he has to be the latter and that I made up the car and mansion as embellishment.
But I've scratched my itch, so please continue without my tangent.
For what it's worth, @Blahblah you are not alone. The whole thing makes very little sense to me other than being a pious legend telling us that the birth is very special. It seems to me to be so firmly hagiographical that it can't be treated as history at all.
Sure, but even if it is pious fiction, it is pious fiction about someone relatively well off.
Maybe I am guilty of over-analysing, but it seems to me that a character's portrayal has MORE significance if the narrative is fictional than if it is intended as factual. That is, if it's factual, then it needn't signify more than 'Well, that's what happened', but if fictional, then the author had a choice to tell one story rather than another, and so we can ask why they made that choice.
Example: if I write a biography of Jürgen Klopp, and recount that after a certain match the great man broke his glasses, that probably means his glasses got broken. If I write Klopp fan-fiction, and invent an episode where he breaks his glasses, then I am probably doing so to create some kind of effect.
Another example: if I write historical fiction about Shakespeare, it would not be odd to invent random quarrels or love affairs, but it would be odd to make him a destitute orphan rather than a middle-class glover's son.
We know that when Jesus was presented in the temple, his parents paid in pigeons not sheep. This marks them as poor.
Either that, or he was proclaiming Mary as Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Co-Redemptrix, and the new Eve. Which one sounds more likely, I wonder?
Yeah, that is the strongest argument that I am wrong.
But Luke also claims that Mary and Joseph went to the Temple in person every year, which would mark them as unusually mobile, at least.
In the context of Torah and of the Gospels, I don’t think any inference of unusual mobility can be drawn from going to the Temple at least once a year. That kind of mobility is presented as normal.
10 for 10 on snark, 0 for 10 on logic.
And as a carpenter, Joseph would not have had flocks to tend, crops to be weeded and harvested, and so forth.
Fair cop.
As a Prot, I don't understand the whole Mary thing. I've been told that Jesus asking John to care for her shows he is telling the whole church to venerate her, and that's far too big a jump for me. But this may be the topic for another thread.
Oh it does, doesn't it?
https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/illuminated/manuscript/discover/leaves-from-the-hours-of-albrecht-of-brandenburg/folio/ms-294b/section/panel-intro
Business class?
News just in: you may need to revise your list to delete that term and add the descriptor: "disciple": Pope calls idea of declaring Mary co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’...
I think I found it: https://whitesmokeahoy.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-is-your-mother-son.html
No, Gabriel tells the whole church to venerate her in Luke 2. Christ's committing her to John suggests she had no other offspring. Doesn't prove. But suggests. Otherwise to tell her, "John will take care of you now, not your natural son James," is very unnatural.
Delighted to hear it!