MARY
MARY
287
Peter, and St. John are alike emphatic in in- sisting on the fact of the Incarnation as the central truth of the Christian religion, and alike silent as to the way in which it was brought about.
The ancient Syriac Gospel discovered at Mt. Sinai, and published in 1894, of which a translation was published by Mrs. Lewis in 1896, has some remarkable variants in Mt 1%. It runs thus: ‘Jacob begat Joseph; Joseph, to whom was be- trothed Mary the Virgin, begat Jesus who is called Christ’; again in v.” the reading is ‘she shall bear to thee a son’; and in v.* ‘she bore to hima son.’ The publication gave rise to much discussion in the Academy * and elsewhere: among other theories it was suggested that this might be an Ebionite revision of our Gospel; but this seemed inconsistent with the word ‘ Virgin’ which appears in ν. δ, as well as with vv.'**. Others supposed that the Syriac version represents an earlier form of the genealogy, which may have been taken from a Jewish register and incorporated in the Gospel. This view received a certain amount of support from some of the old Latin versions, which have Joseph cui desponsata virgo Maria genuit Jesum, where the use of genwit instead of peperit has been thought to betoken an earlier form, in which desponsata was followed by erat.+ See, further, art. JESUS CHRIST in vol. il. p. 644.
However this may be, there can be no doubt that the miraculous conception was denied by several of the early heretics, who either maintained (with Cerinthus) the naturalistic birth of the Lord, followed by the bestowal of supernatural powers threugh the descent of the Spirit at His baptism, or held (with Marcion) that He was without earth] parentage, but descended from heaven in the 15t year of "Tiberius and showed Himself in the syna- gogue of Capernaum.
n the other hand, stress is laid on the super- natural birth of the Lord by Ignatius, who in oppos- ing the phantom theory of the Docetz uses such phrases as καὶ ἐκ Μαρίας καὶ ἐκ θεοῦ, Eph. 7; ὁ yap θεὸς ἡμῶν Inoods Χριστὸς ἐκυοφορήθη ὑπὸ Μαρίας κατ᾽ olkovo- μίαν ἐκ σπέρματος μὲν Δαυεὶδ πνεύματος δὲ ἁγίου, tb. 18 ; ἔλαθεν τὸν ἄρχοντα τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου ἡ παρθενία Μαρίας καὶ ὁ τοκετὸς αὐτῆς, ὁμοίως καὶ ὁ θάνατος τοῦ Κυρίου, ib. 19: these, he says, are τρία μυστήρια κραυγῆς, three mysteries wrought in the silence of God, though destined to be proclaimed aloud. Ὁ
(6) Proceeding now to the second part of Mary’s life, we find her, after the death of her husband (who is introduced for the last time in the visit to the temple), residing, as it would seem, with the Lord and His brethren [see BRETHREN OF THE LORD], partly at Nazareth (Mk 6'", Lk 416. Jn 1” 1919) and ey at Capernaum (Mt 4 91, Mk 21, Jn 213).
e are not told that she accompanied our Lord in His missionary journeys, like Mary Magdalene and Susanna (Mk 15”, Lk 8%). The first mention of her in this period is at the marriage at Cana in Galilee (Jn 2), where her direction to the servants, ‘ What- soever he saith unto you, do it,’ seems to show that her relation to the bridegroom was such as to justify the exercise of authority on her part. Her previous appeal to her Son to provide for the deficiency of wine had drawn forth from Him the same sort of correction as her complaint at His disappearance on the occasion of the visit to the temple, τί ἐμοὶ καὶ col, γύναι ; ‘ Woman, what hast thou to do with me?’ Though there was nothing of harshness in the
* See letters by Conybeare, Sanday, Charles, Badham, and others in the Academy for 1894 and 1895 ; also Blass, Philology of the Gospels, p. 86 f.
+ The verse occurs in ‘a (recently discovered) fragment of the oldest known MS of any t of the NT,’ which has just been edited by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in the lst part of the Oxyrhynchus Papiri. It appears there in its ordinary form "Ἰακὼβ δὶ ἐγίννησεν ᾿Ιωσὺφ τὸν ἄνδρα Μαρίας, ἐξ ὃς ἐγεννήθη Ἰησοῦς ὁ λυγόμενοί Χριστός,
2. Bee Lightfoot, Jgnatius, vol. ii. p. 76.
eppeiiation γύναι, ΔΒ we may see from its use in the last tender commendation of His mother to the beloved disciple (Jn 19%), yet the choice of a word applying alike to all women is not without its significance, and the clause which follows un- doubtedly contains a warning that it was not for her or for any human being to determine His course of action.* The next mention of Mary is in Mk 3*-87, where we are told that the people pressed upon Jesus tosuch an extent that He had not even time to eat; and that His friends hearing this, ‘went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.’ Accordingly in the 3lst verse we read that ‘his mother and brethren came where he was, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. ... And they say unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answereth them, and saith, Who is my mother and my brethren? And look- ing round on them which sat round about him (in Mt 12 ‘stretching forth his hand towards his disciples’), he saith, ‘Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.’ Here, too, the same lesson is taught, viz. that the knowledge of Christ after the flesh conveys no special privilege, no right of interference or control, not even any exclusive or peculiar blessedness, for in Lk 11” the exclamation, ‘ Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou didst suck,’ calls forth the correction that His mother’s true blessedness consisted, not in the fact of a physical connexion, but in those moral and spiritual qualifications which were open to all, ‘Yea, rather (“evodv),+ blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.’ The next occasion on which we meet with Mary is at the foot of the Cross. She had come up with other women from Galilee to be present at the passover. As she stood watching the dying agony of her Son, she received His latest charge, entrusting her to the guardianship of the beloved cicinle, who from that hour took her to his own home (Jn 19%). The only remaining notice of her in the NT is contained in Ac 14, where she is mentioned as continuing in prayer and supplication with the apostles and the other women and the brethren of the Lord.