The First Mary (Part 2)
Mary the mother of Jesus is a peripheral figure in the gospels. As Marina Warner wrote:
Her birth, her death, her appearance are never mentioned. During Christ’s ministry she plays a small part, and when she does appear the circumstances are perplexing and often slighting.
As I outlined in Part 1, the “slighting” Warner referred to usually came from Jesus himself. I detailed several instances where Jesus’ words to, or about, his mother reflected a certain irritation or even hostility towards the woman who bore him in her womb for nine months. The Wedding Feast at Cana is a good example. In her discussion of that episode, Warner described Mary as “apparently rebuffed quite brutally by her son”.
Last time I suggested that there might have been a softening in Jesus’ attitude towards Mary at the end of his life. This is how the gospel of John related a final encounter between mother and son:
But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Mag′dalene. When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
Could it be that, for Mary, the great sadness of witnessing Jesus’ last moments was tempered to some extent by her son’s expression of love and concern for her future wellbeing? If so, this was more than just a touching personal moment between a son and his mother. Many biblical scholars attach a wider, more universal, significance to Jesus’ words.
To some, this moment is the birth of the Christian Church, with Mary as the mother of the Church and the Beloved Disciple representing all those whom the Lord loves.
So a lot of theological weight is attached to this simple exchange. But did that encounter between mother and son happen at all?
In order to answer this question we have to consider several problems with the account cited above.
John’s gospel contains the only record of Jesus’ last words to his mother and to “the disciple whom he loved”, i.e. John himself.
The incident is not mentioned at all by the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.The other three gospels referred to the followers, friends, and family of Jesus who were present at his crucifixion as “looking on from afar” or standing “at a distance”, not “standing near” as John’s gospel put it.
Apart from John in the passage above, none of the gospel authors placed any of Jesus’ male friends or disciples at the crucifixion site. According to one of the gospels, after Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane “all the disciples forsook him and fled”.
This explains why, if the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are correct, only women turned up to keep vigil as Jesus hung on the cross.Although several gospel writers (including John) named these women individually, e.g. Mary Magdalene, none (except John) stated that Jesus’ mother Mary was among them.
Other aspects of John’s story raise further questions.
Crucifixion has been characterised as the “most hideous kind of execution” in the ancient world.
Like ‘breaking on the wheel’, which I discussed here, it was designed to kill its victims slowly. According to one description, death came after many hours through a combination of terrible effects, including:an increasing asphyxia, the tetanic state of the muscles, hunger and above all thirst, to say nothing of the wounds made by the loathsome birds that always haunted the place.
Up to relatively recently, many executions were held in a public space. Jesus’ crucifixion was no exception, with probably hundreds of onlookers present. We are told that some of these were shouting insults at the crucified Jesus.
There were also lots of Roman soldiers milling about - a full battalion according to one account - some arguing over who would get to keep Christ’s discarded clothes. What with the hawkers and traders who must have followed the procession from the city nearby, Calvary was probably a pretty noisy place that day.We are told in several of the gospel accounts that Jesus cried out in agony as he struggled on the gibbet.
Of course Jesus was a man who felt pain like anyone else. Given the awful effects of crucifixion it is not difficult to believe that he screamed several times during that dreadful afternoon. It is quite likely also that his cries were loud enough to be heard above the din of the crowd, to be reported later by the gospel writers.
In these circumstances is it credible, as we are told in John’s gospel, that Jesus was also able to speak coherently to two people who were close enough to hear his words - even if we accept that they were actually there in the first place?
However nothing can be ruled out. Perhaps Mary, Jesus’ mother, did appear at her son’s execution without being noticed by the other witnesses. It is possible also that one of Jesus’ male followers risked capture by accompanying her to the scene. Maybe both managed to get close enough to the cross for Jesus to spot them and say what he is reported to have said. Even then one more objection must be overcome in order to accept the authenticity of John’s account.
Why would Jesus entrust his mother’s welfare to one of his disciples when, as I outlined in Part 1, he knew that she had other children who could look after her?
Of course this raises the question as to why John, or a later editor of his gospel, would make up something that never happened. However, such speculation is beyond the scope of this investigation, which is to establish if there was, or could have been, any reconciliation between Mary and her son as Jesus was dying on the cross. Based on the evidence presented here, the answer must be ‘no’.
So far we have been examining the sparse biographical details of a woman who lived and died in a tiny country many centuries ago. But her posthumous influence on the development of western, and indeed global, civilisation is incalculable. As Warner has written,
[Mary] is one of the few female figures to have attained the status of myth – a myth that for nearly two thousand years has coursed through our culture.
If my interpretation of the documentary record is correct, Mary opposed her son’s mission to draw the world away from its attachment to “the ruler of this world”. Not only that, but from an early age Jesus realised this and resisted his mother’s efforts to frustrate him. So the implications of the theory I am putting forward here are enormous. However before I can examine what these implications might be for us all, I need to address one further question.
How did Jesus’ treatment of Mary compare with his attitude and behaviour towards women generally?
More in Part 3.
Marina Warner, Alone of all her sex: The myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary (New York, 1976), p. 14.
Ibid, p. 16.
John 19:25-27.
John Bowker, The Complete Bible Handbook (London, 2004), p. 317.
John 21:24. The author of John’s gospel claimed that he was both “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and a first-hand witness to everything he described. Scholars believe him to have been a son of Zebedee and brother of another apostle named James. (Bowker, Bible Handbook, p. 313).
e.g. Matthew 27:55-56.
Matthew 26:56. Mark 14:50.
Luke 23:49. This passage also includes a reference to “all his acquaintances” having been at Calvary. However, given the previous footnote, the author could not have intended this to include any of Jesus’ closest male followers.
Henri Daniel-Rops, Daily life in Palestine at the time of Christ (London 2002), pp. 177-8.
Ibid, p. 178.
Matthew 27:39-44.
Mark 15:16-20.
John 19:23-25.
e.g. “And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.” (Mark 15:37).
Joseph, Mary’s husband, was another obvious candidate to take care of Mary after Jesus’ death. However, by this time he might have been dead himself leaving Mary a widow.
Warner, Alone of all her sex, p. xxv.