Did Mary Know?
Gramps49
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
Luke 1: 46fff
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for He has looked with favor on His humble servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed,
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is His Name.
He has mercy on those who fear Him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
He has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of His servant Israel
for He has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise He made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
There is a rather popular song, Mary, Did You Know?.
For some, the song seems to contradict the Magnificat.
My hypothesis is that Mary did not know. In spite of Luke claiming Mary sang the Magnificat in response to the annunciation, there are a number of snippets in the Gospel stories that indicate Mary was as clueless as others as to what would happen to her son in his life. There is the story of Mary and Joseph frantically looking for their son after the visit to the temple when he was around 12 years old. There is also the story of Mary and the brothers of Jesus trying to get him out of the limelight, shall we say. Even at the crucifixion, Mary appears to be traumatized by witnessing the execution of her son.
It seems Luke inserted one of the earliest Christian hymns into Mary's response to the angels announcement when she visited her cousin, Elizabeth. The Magnificat summarizes Luke's theological thrust in his Gospel. It is a good fit. But Luke could not have used the song if it were not for the resurrection already taken place.
So, my question is. What did Mary know?
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for He has looked with favor on His humble servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed,
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is His Name.
He has mercy on those who fear Him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
He has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of His servant Israel
for He has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise He made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
There is a rather popular song, Mary, Did You Know?.
For some, the song seems to contradict the Magnificat.
My hypothesis is that Mary did not know. In spite of Luke claiming Mary sang the Magnificat in response to the annunciation, there are a number of snippets in the Gospel stories that indicate Mary was as clueless as others as to what would happen to her son in his life. There is the story of Mary and Joseph frantically looking for their son after the visit to the temple when he was around 12 years old. There is also the story of Mary and the brothers of Jesus trying to get him out of the limelight, shall we say. Even at the crucifixion, Mary appears to be traumatized by witnessing the execution of her son.
It seems Luke inserted one of the earliest Christian hymns into Mary's response to the angels announcement when she visited her cousin, Elizabeth. The Magnificat summarizes Luke's theological thrust in his Gospel. It is a good fit. But Luke could not have used the song if it were not for the resurrection already taken place.
So, my question is. What did Mary know?
Comments
I think there are a couple stories in Luke, maybe the other Gospels too, were it says an event happened and Mary ended up pondering it in her heart. There is no doubt she was a source for those stories.
It seems to me the question posed in the OP is missing a necessary component: Did Mary know what? Did Mary know Jesus would be the Messiah? Did Mary know he’d be crucified? Those are very different questions.
Luke, who records Mary singing the Magnificat, also reports that Gabriel told Mary that her son would be the Messiah. “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32–33) Nothing there about suffering or the crucifixion.
The Magnificat reflects a thoroughly traditional view, consistent with what the Hebrew Scriptures present, of what the arrival of the Messiah will mean. Nothing there about suffering or crucifixion.
One thing the Gospels all present is a basic misunderstanding of the Messiah’s mission, of how the Messiah would usher in the kingdom of God. Peter readily recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and then just as readily insisted that surely Jesus didn’t have to die.
Did Mary know that Jesus was the Messiah? Yes, I think she did, at least intellectually. Did she understand all of the implications of that, including what would happen to her son? I can easily imagine she didn’t. I suspect she spent pretty much all of Jesus’s life pondering things in her heart, trying to figure out what they meant and how they fit together.
Note, I said the Magnificat is one of the earliest known Christian hymns. I have no idea who composed it. It is similar to the Song of Hannah, though. Luke did insert it into his because it fits his theology.
I would suggest that "no doubt" is pushing it a bit.
Luke is the most scholarly of the Gospel writers. He often inserts secondary material that supports his theology, much like academics will use supportive materail in their papers.
Did it shape his theology? Could be.
From early on, she would realise something of what was to come, given the warning or prediction from Simeon in Luke 2:33-36.
Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
As I understand it, the canticle of the Magnificat in Luke follows in a Hebrew tradition of five biblical songs of God’s vindication and deliverance sung by women — beginning with the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 sung by Miriam, the sister of Moses. Then follows the Song of Deborah in Judges 5, the Song of Judith in the Apocrypha and the Song of Hannah in First Samuel. A rich and ambiguous tradition.
Maybe not as we know it now, but the gist of it may well have been hers (and recorded by Luke).
for He has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise He made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
It didn't work out like that. The vast majority of Jews ignored Jesus and still do.
I'd have thought that was fairly obvious, but I'd be wrong, it seems.
You could argue that it didn't work out for the rest of us, either, but that might be a subject for another thread!
You could say that it is a now/not yet dichotomy. Mercy has been shown through Mary's Son, but it is still being worked out every day.
There wasn't much mercy in Auschwitz or any of the other camps for the children of Abraham.
I encourage you to read Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl Frankl described what it was like to be interned in one of the concentration camps. He found that if a person could find some sort of meaning in the camp, the chances for survival increased. He found grace in the camp in very small ways.
Maybe this article from the Times of Israel might also help you understand God was in the midst of all that suffering.
Yes, I'd like to think the revolutionary and fiery Magnificat was a much-beloved ancient poem or song cherished by the prophetic community Mary belonged within, a canticle the writer of Luke may have heard at his mother's knee. For those living under Roman military occupation, it was important to recall what had been done for the poor and humble by God in their own history, and here in the text attributed to Luke, we find the theme of parallelism introduced between Jesus and John the Baptist. Reading these texts doesn't have to be a literal fact-finding mission that opposes supposed historicity and 'myth' or the miraculous. It's all real, it's all metaphor. What stays with me in these Gospel passages is the irreducible, the differing perspectives we can appreciate without having to choose one over the other.
As a born again atheist with the greatest possible good will, if Mary didn't start Christianity, who did?
And Viktor Frankl speaks to the grace of humanity.
It all speaks to transcendent emergent human brilliance. Forged in human fires of hell.
Hostly Portering
I'm assuming that this comment on the "JtB, Elijah and The Prophet" thread was supposed to be on this thread so I've moved it and deleted the other one.
No Sir. Jesus being the Prophet was part of the family conspiracy that we can shift back on Elisabeth.
Apologies for misunderstanding - it's now been recreated in its original location...
Not at all Sir. A most understandable misunderstanding.