Photo: Artwork depicting Mary.
There’s something about Mary: Linda Duckenfield revisits ‘the most important woman in the New Testament’
‘I want to make some different “assumptions”.’
As a child, I took several trips to France with my intrepid dad. These coincided with a festival my young ears heard as ‘Kanzoo’, and there were funfairs and happiness everywhere. It was a long time before I knew that it was ‘Quinze-Août’, 15 August – and even longer before I knew that this commemorated the assumption of the virgin Mary, one of the most important ‘Marian’ festivals for Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Later I learned that the assumption was when Mary was believed to have been taken up bodily to heaven, like Jesus before her.
With the freedom of thought I have in my Unitarian and Quaker practices, I want to make some different ‘assumptions’. I want to throw in a few ‘what ifs’, and use some historical context, to try to bring Mary to life as a woman. (We’re lucky, in the modern era, not to be burnt at the stake for heresy.)
Mary/Maryam is the most important woman in the New Testament – and also the Qu’ran, where she has a whole chapter devoted to her. And yet we know so little about her. Pictured above (left) is one of the earliest known paintings of Mary. It is from the sixth century CE, so in no way an accurate likeness – she would not have been white, for a start. She looks pleasant enough, however, in her generic brown garb, covering her hair.
Mary was the daughter of Joachim and Anne. She lived with Joseph – a ‘tekton’; a carpenter or skilled craftsman – in Nazareth, and they were betrothed towards the end of the BCE era. Of middling income, they married shortly before the birth of Jesus, Mary’s first born. Jewish custom at the time was that girls could be betrothed from about twelve and a half years old (around puberty), and married one or two years later. So let’s say Mary was fifteen when she discovered she was pregnant, before the marriage.
As a woman and grandma, remembering girlhood, I find reading the biblical narrative quite troubling. It is only through Joseph’s justice, and his dream of the angel, that Mary avoids being made a public example, and divorced as a harlot. (At the time, that could have included being stoned to death.) The annunciation is no less terrifying. When Gabriel suddenly appears and tells her what is to pass, she has no say in the matter, and has to submit to the overshadowing Power of the Highest. It reminds me of Zeus, who ‘overwhelmed’ his love objects in all sorts of guises, and who fathered several divine or semi divine beings.
I’ve read that the word ‘virgin’ in the book of Isaiah is likely a mistranslation of the Hebrew word ‘almah’, the word for ‘young woman’, like ‘maiden.’ And it is conceivable (and more likely to me) that Mary’s pregnancy had a human source, apparently not Joseph, and maybe violent. Life for women has always been full of jeopardy. Thank goodness, she, and Jesus survived.
Although we hear the New Testament nativity story every year, there is no mention of Mary’s labour. In the Qu’ran, however, we learn that Maryam laboured in great pain, holding on to a date tree, which also gave her sustenance. Much later there will be many pictures of Mary with the infant Jesus. The lovely example above (right) shows a young mother delighting in her chubby offspring and his growing curiosity. (Sadly, the object so intriguing him is a tiny silver cross.)
‘Mary can be a fine example of human motherhood without being burdened with the incessant demands of intercession.’
There is good evidence, confirmed in Richard Bauckham’s Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, that Jesus had four brothers (James, Joses, Simon and Jude), and at least two speculatively-named sisters. These were ‘born of the same womb’, so Mary was a typically busy woman. She and Joseph clearly gave their children a good grounding in booklearning, religion, and practical matters. What if Jesus, like most teenagers, went off the rails a bit? What if Mary needed to lean out of the window and say ‘He’s just a very naughty boy’? Later, when he was a more serious rebel, overturning moneylenders’ tables, it is unclear what the parents’ attitude was. I think Mary would have been proud. She was in evidence at the wedding when Jesus miraculously changed water to wine, and that must have been a happy occasion.
Please note that Jesus’ beautiful prayer, which Mary may have learned, was given in Aramaic. We call it the Lord’s Prayer, with an ‘Our Father’. But in Aramaic it is addressed to ‘Abwoon’, our Creator, or our parent, so without gender.
When Jesus became famous, Mary and his family had concerns for his mental health: ‘And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, saying “He is out of his mind”’ (Mark 3:21). Then in Matthew 12:46, we hear of when they visited him, and desired to speak with him, but he effectively rejected his biological family. Distressing? Perhaps there comes a time in most mothers’ lives when they feel simultaneously rejected and concerned about their adult offspring.
As a woman, Mary probably didn’t attend Jesus’ Sanhedrin trial. She would have heard Pontius Pilate’s sentence, as this was public. It is well attested that, along with Mary Magdalene and Mary of Cleophas, Mary kept vigil at the crucifixion. We honour the grief of Mary and of all mothers whose offspring die. Mary would have been about forty-eight at this time. The last mention of Mary in the New Testament seems to come in Acts, 1:14, when she appears with other disciples, including her second son James, as an activist in Jesus’ mission.
I am not an iconoclast. I don’t break images, but nor do I worship them, nor venerate relics traded at enormous expense. I don’t believe that Jesus, who I think of as a great teacher, would have wanted to be remembered in images of agony. I also feel sad that an industry of Mariology sprang up. Mary can be a fine example of human motherhood without being burdened with the incessant demands of intercession. Let’s see ‘that of God in everyone’.
We know nothing of Mary’s later life. I like to ‘assume’ that she wasn’t ‘assumed’ into heaven one Quinze-Août, but instead lived to a ripe old age, enjoying grandchildren, and the chance for renewed and creative independence. We follow her with love on her sometimes difficult journey, to the wisdom and strength that comes with age.
