Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
December 12 - December 31, 2021
Chapter 6 [A1] 1 Then he went out from there and came to his own country (eis tên patrida autou), and his disciples followed Him. [B1] 2 And when the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to him, that such mighty works are performed by his hands! 3 Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, [i.] and brother (adelphos) of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? [ii.] And are not his sisters (adelphai) here with us?” So they were offended at him.
...more
Now, Jesus and his mom are clearly designated mother and son by Jesus’ enemies. This Jewish identifying of a son by naming his mother (“son of Mary”) is unusual in the Bible, as scholars note, since usually a son is mentioned in relation to his father, unless the woman is a widow (compare Luke 7:12).[24] All this means, then, is that Mary is a widow and mother of Jesus, but the others in Mark’s list according to people in Nazareth are identified by Jesus as belonging to his relatives who are not sons of his mother.
One can even get the sense that Mark mentions all the women named Mary (not to confuse his reader) to emphasize the rhetorical point made earlier by Jesus that –by following and ministering to Jesus (“doing God’s will”)– these women named Mary are all his mothers, since they “minister to him” and do God’s will!
Even so, if we are Bible-Christians, then we should see that, for Luke, Mary is the only person worthy of Jesus’s blessing in Luke 11:28 “who hears the word of God and keeps it.” As such, we are obliged to interpret Mark consistently with the clear message of Luke; namely, if Luke praises Mary by this phrase, then so too must Mark be praising Mary by his similar phrase!
5) to occasionally remind Christians that Jesus’s extended family members are sometimes a detriment to the church, sometimes a help, even if there is a far more negative image of them in Mark’s Gospel due to the ongoing battle for control between Jesus’s mainly non-familial appointed successors and those who are known in the Gospels’, Hegessipus’s, and Eusebius’s (around 300 AD) histories; namely, family members who tried to ride on the coattails of Jesus’s fame in order to wield power, influence, and gain from the first-century church.[37]
Mark’s Gospel, then, avoids mentioning the virgin conception, the virgin birth, and much of Mary’s role in the history of salvation. This was strategically necessary to emphasize the universal (versus privately familial) nature of the Church and salvation.
salvation)? It’s very obvious, even if Biblical experts are entirely disinterested in Matthew’s and Luke’s shared conviction (quoting the annunciation to Samson’s mother and Samson’s conception) that the superhuman Samson and his conception form the model to understand typologically the child of promise who is coming to save the world!
But she is rebuked for being in some way less than credulous about having sexual activity to bear a child. As such, we get the impression that the annunciation didn’t go as well as it could have, and that Sarah missed out on an opportunity for perfect faith like Abraham.
Zachariah and Elizabeth celebrate her perpetual virginity as the very means by which God –contrary to all expectation– blesses Israel with a wonderchild. Perpetual virginity, once considered a perpetual curse for blocking production of the seed of promise, is no longer the curse of Jephthah but the very blessing of Israel![79] Instead of bewailing perpetual virginity every year among the kinsmen of Jephthah, Elizabeth, Mary’s kinswoman cries out: “Blessed are you among women!” (Luke 1:28) and Mary notes that all generation will call her blessed! This is quite a reversal of the lot of perpetual
...more
St. Ambrose of Milan, and St. Augustine of Hippo– constantly alluded to a tradition of Mary taking a solemn vow at Luke 1:34. However, because they neither betrayed their sources for this tradition, nor their textual basis for such an argument, it was only later in the Middle Ages that other authors found Judges 11:39 to justify the patristic tradition of Mary’s virginity. Unfortunately, this historical development has often been understudied by modern scholars of the Bible.
fear” in a “greeting” because his “merit” is great (Mê phobou […] egô hyperaspizô sou ho misthos sou polus estai sphodra). He is given a child of promise due to being considered in a state of justice with God by his faith (episteusen Abram tôi Theôi kai elogisthê autôi eis dikaiosunên)
