Jesus and Mary: It's not really complicated at all...

To commemorate Christmas, CNN ran an opinion piece today by Dr. Jay Parini entitled Jesus and Mary: It's complicated. 

After asserting that Mary and Jesus had significant disagreements, he concludes that "their relations ended on a note of deep accord, with Mary taking on her role as "mother of God," becoming an important figure in the early church."

But before he got there, he drags out a series of tired Modernist claims about Mary's behavior during Jesus' ministry that are designed to challenge the appropriate honor we Orthodox and Catholic believers accord her.

So here, one by one, are the erroneous Modernist claims (I say this as a former Modernist Protestant), and why they are a misinterpretation of Holy Scripture.

1) The Finding of Our Lord in the Temple

Dr. Parini asserts that the first "complicated" exchange between Jesus and Mary is when the family is on their way back from Jerusalem, only to find that Jesus has stayed behind and was debating matters of law with the teachers in the Temple. Jesus tells his mother, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"  Dr. Parini states that "He was smart, perhaps a bit sassy. As the only glimpse we get of Jesus before the age of 30, it's a telling instance, however."

Telling of what?  Few mothers, even Modernist Protestants, sympathize with the boy who put his mother through hell by disappearing for several days. But unless Dr. Parini has a lot more evidence to come, this will not really serve, retrospectively, as proof of a pattern of conflict between Jesus and Mary.

2) Mark 3:21. Jesus' Family says he is "Out of his mind."

Dr. Parini informs us that "In Mark 3:21, it's clear the family wishes he would cease and desist. 'He is out of his mind', they cry."

The Greek of this passage tells us that those who thought he was crazy were, literally, "Those of him" ( οι παρ' αυτου ). There is no reason to believe that Jesus' mother was part of this group. This could have been a group of his extended family with no involvement of Mary.

3) Jesus tells Mary "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" ( τι εμοι και σοι )

Dr. Parini informs us, 'This sounds harsh."

The context is the Wedding at Cana, John 2:4. Mary has asked her son to make wine out of thin water (a thing she apparently knows he can do). 

The phrase "What have I to do with thee?" ( τι εμοι και σοι ) is exactly repeated in an exchange between Jesus and a demon in Mark 5:7. I've even heard Radical Protestants latch onto this fact and assert that this is proof that Jesus rebukes his mother in the same way as he rebukes a demon.

Only one problem. It's the demon who says this in Mark And it's Jesus who says it in John.

Now, the use of plural to denote respect was not operative for spoken Greek at that time. So neither the demon nor Jesus was disrespectful as such by the use of singular. The fact that the demon in Mark 5:7 speaks this phrase just prior to begging, from a position of weakness, to be sent into the pigs (as opposed to being cast out of the country), shows that the phrase "What (is there) to me and to you" is spoken by someone who acknowledges they are inferior to the one they are speaking with. So for Jesus to use this phrase shows us that, even though he is the Son of God, he also expresses filial piety toward the Mother of God. Not harsh at all.


4) Jesus speaks dismissively of his mother in Mark 3:35

Dr. Parini informs us that "Jesus says dismissively: "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

The context here is that someone told Jesus that his mother and brothers were seeking to see him. This is only a diss and only dismissive if the wider context of Scripture teaches that Jesus mother and brothers were not doing God's will. And therefore, the gathered crowd were his real mother and brothers and not those of his genetic stock.

But if Scripture does not present Mary as opposing God's will, then Jesus was simply teaching people that a relationship with God does not require genetic relation to him. Thank God.

 Yet Scripture clearly teaches that Mary is a paragon of doing God's will. 

She it was that proclaimed "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to be according to your word." (Luke 1:38). 

John the Baptist leaped in the womb of Elizabeth when he heard Mary's voice. (Luke 1:41) In the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth declared to Mary "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1: 42). In the Holy Spirit Mary proclaimed "Henceforth all generations will call me blessed (Luke 1:48)." 

This passage is quite similar to another which some misquote and mistranslate to dismiss Mary. In Luke 11; 27-28 we read that a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed." Jesus replied, as oft quoted, "No, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it." 

Only problem, the word frequently rendered as "No, rather" is menounge ( μενουνγε ). The eminent Greek scholar Dr. Chrys Caragounis points out that this word actually means "Yes, and what's more..." In other words, once again what is translated as a diss on Mary is anything but.

And so, every passage paraded out as evidence that Mary did not support her son's ministry is a mistranslation or misunderstood reading of Scripture. The Mother of God sits in the front pew of every Church, leading us to follow and worship her son. Christ is born. Glorify Him! 


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The Nativity and the History of Science

We are members of a Moscow Patriarchal (Unrevised Julian Calendar) Church. But I was chrismated at an OCA parish, and subsequently met my wife, a Romanian. So we do sneak off to celebrate Revised Julian Calendar Christmas.

I was struck this morning that the Nativity Troparion implies knowledge that the sun is a star:

Your Nativity, O Christ our God,

Has shone to the world the Light of wisdom!

For by it, those who worshiped the stars,

Were taught by a Star to adore You,

The Sun of Righteousness,

And to know You, the Orient from on High.

O Lord, glory to You!

Having an undisciplined mind and a wandering spirit, I unfortunately spent a good deal of the next hour thinking about matters of the history of science. I wondered exactly when some person first proposed the concept that our sun is a star and, by implication, that stars are themselves suns with their own planets, etc.

It doesn't seem that such a belief is self-evident. After all, to a casual observer, stars and our sun behave quite differently. Our sun is big and bright and out only during the day and seems at least to travel around our planet. Stars are out at night and they're tiny and not bright enough to light up the night sky worth a damn. I mean, take the moon out of the equation and the night is dark!

So even though we now know that it's the Earth that revolves and that our sun is just a star really close to us, we shouldn't think the ancients to have been idiots for not automatically knowing these things.

But that brings us to the question, when was this idea first proposed? I was able to rally and turn my mind to matters spiritual in nature after I resolved to research the issue once I got home.

Now, the Nativity Troparion could have been in its present form as early as the 6th or 7th century AD. But it turns out that the idea of our sun as a close-up star was proposed long before that by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (ca. 500 BC - 400 BC). The idea was also included in the first known assertion of a heliocentric solar system, by Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (310 BC - 230 BC).

Interestingly, despite the fact that our sun as a star is implied by the Nativity Troparion, the idea was condemned by Ecclesiastical Authorities, and was listed alongside some actual heresies for which Giordano Bruno, a 16th century AD friar and astronomer, was burned at the stake. (The man apparently actually espoused pantheism, making it unlikely that his cosmological views would have been sufficient to lead to his execution.)

It is important to remember that not just the Roman Church condemned Bruno and Copernicus. Martin Luther also condemned the heliocentric view as anti-biblical.

At any rate, today we imitate those Wise Men from of old who followed a star to another star, this one very close up, the Sun of Righteousness. And if God's love ever seemed as distant and cold as a star, now in the Incarnate Christ it is as close and warm as the Sun.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

A Visit to Bethlehem

In this video I show the highlights of our trip to Bethlehem this Summer. Merry Christmas, everyone! Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Veni, Veni, Emmanuel!

I've created a new version of the beautiful Western Advent hymn, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."

This hymn was based on the "O Antiphons," which are sung liturgically in anticipation of Christmas. The traditional order of the verses, however, reverses the dramatic culmination just before Christmas of the verse "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." I've reordered the song to make this the climactic and dramatic point it was intended to be.