{"id":4985,"date":"2012-07-31T20:59:18","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T00:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=4985"},"modified":"2012-07-31T20:59:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-01T00:59:18","slug":"mary-mary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=4985","title":{"rendered":"Mary, Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, by coincidence,<\/strong> is my birthday. Oddly enough, it fell on the exact same date last year. I wonder if that qualifies me for a Guinness World Record.<\/p>\n

A dear friend bought me a steak dinner after work. Unfortunately, that dear friend was myself, but we didn\u2019t let that spoil the festivities.<\/p>\n

I came up with a question in my Bible reading<\/strong> the other day, and wondered if any of our erudite readers know the answer to it.<\/p>\n

I was reading the account of the Resurrection in Luke 24:10, where it talks about the women who went to the tomb on Sunday morning, found it empty, and reported it to the disciples. \u201cIt was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a parallel passage in Mark 16:1: \u201cWhen the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus\u2019 body.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an earlier reference to this woman in Mark 15:40: \u201cSome women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.\u201d<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s what I\u2019m wondering. Scholars have pondered this previously unmentioned Mary, one among so many Marys who keep popping up in the gospels. Has it ever occurred to anybody to argue that this Mary might actually be Mary the mother of the Lord?<\/p>\n

We know that the Lord had a brother named James, who became the head of the Jerusalem church. And an otherwise unmentioned brother named Joses (perhaps named after his father Joseph) isn\u2019t unthinkable. If you\u2019re Catholic you\u2019d insist that the Virgin Mary wasn\u2019t the mother of James, but the stepmother. But she could still be called his mother informally. <\/p>\n

Why doesn\u2019t it say, \u201cMary, the mother of the Lord?\u201d I don\u2019t know. Modesty? Fear of the authorities?<\/p>\n

Another objection would be that James, the Lord\u2019s brother, has traditionally been called James the Elder (I think) rather than James the Younger. My theory would require that tradition to be wrong.<\/p>\n

Catholics probably wouldn\u2019t take to this idea, though I might point out that it would give a biblical foundation to all those \u201cPieta\u201d statues.<\/p>\n

But my main question is, has anyone suggested this before? Or is it too dumb for anyone to have suggested before?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, by coincidence, is my birthday. Oddly enough, it fell on the exact same date last year. I wonder if that qualifies me for a Guinness World Record. A dear friend bought me a steak dinner after work. Unfortunately, that dear friend was myself, but we didn\u2019t let that spoil the festivities. I came up … Continue reading Mary, Mary<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}