“If that is the case, then I wonder whether it isn’t better to read both the uses of “behold” in the scene by the cross as drawing the eyes of the person being addressed to Jesus. He is urging his mother whom he here greets as “Woman” as though she were Eve, to behold him, her son. In doing so he is both indicating the old creation going out of being which is killing her son, and indicating to her that she is in travail with him for a birthing that is taking place now. Then he draws the eyes of the beloved disciple towards himself as mother indicating that in his going to death he is bringing to birth a new family. From that hour a new family is being born, and it makes perfect sense for the relationship of Mary and the beloved disciple to be recast as one in which they are of the same generation. The elective family which has been brought into being by Jesus’ birthing stretches towards and welcomes into it the woman whose motherhood was both honoured and yet had its cultural meaning transformed as it was stretched into a sisterhood in the new creation.”