Mary Mother of Jesus biography

Dromo's Den

Mary Biography

MARY (Gk. Maρiáμ, Mariam, Mapla, Maria, from Heb. Miryām, of uncertain etymology), The Mother of Jesus. Apart from what is contained in the narratives of Jesus' birth and childhood (Matt. i–ii; Luke i–ii), very little is told of Mary in the New Testament. If the genealogy in Luke iii. 23–38 is intended to be that of Mary (which is doubtful), she was descended from David. She was also related to the priestly family to which Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, belonged. (See Luke i. 5, 36.) After her betrothal to Joseph, a carpenter of Nazareth in Galilee, but before her marriage, she was informed in an angelic vision that she would through miraculous conception give birth to a son who should reign on the Davidic throne and be called the Son of the Highest. (Luke i. 26–38.) The marriage to Joseph took place. Jesus, her first-born son, was born at Bethlehem, whither she had gone with Joseph in consequence of a census decreed by Augustus. (Luke ii. 1–6.) Compelled to flee into Egypt with the infant Jesus, Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth after the death of Herod the Great. (Matt. ii. 13–23.) Here some have believed that other children, Jesus' brothers and sisters (cf. Mark vi. 3; Matt. xiii. 55), were born; though the belief in her perpetual virginity has been a part of traditional theology from early times. Soon after Jesus began his public ministry the family—Joseph was apparently dead—moved to Capernaum. (John ii. 12; cf. Matt. iv. 13, ix 1.) To what extent Mary accompanied Jesus on his journeys we do not know. That she did not fully comprehend the mission of her son is evident from John ii. 4, if not from Mark iii. 31–35. (Cf. Luke ii. 48–49.) She witnessed the crucifixion and was then intrusted by Jesus to the care of John, the beloved disciple, who gave her a place in his home. (John xix. 25–27.) The last notice of Mary in the New Testament is in Acts i. 14, where she is mentioned as one of the company of disciples who were accustomed to meet in the upper room in Jerusalem soon after the Resurrection.

No more than this is told of her in the New Testament; but the tradition of the Christian Church added much to it. There grew up a literature, partly apocryphal (see Apocrypha), dealing with her infancy and childhood, with her espousal to Joseph, and with the birth and infancy of Jesus, and with her death and assumption into heaven. The more her position in the scheme of redemption was meditated upon, the more important did she appear. The frequent controversies as to the nature of her son bore upon her own personality and history; thus the Council of Ephesus (431) really summed up its doctrine against Nestorius in calling Mary the "mother of God" (θετόκοs). Festivals celebrated in her honor increased in number; among the older ones, some of which date back to the fifth century, are the Purification, February 2; Annunciation, March 25; Assumption, August 15; Nativity, September 8; and Conception, December 8. The devotion to her not simply as an historical memory, but as a living power, owing to the prevailing force of her intercession with her son, became so marked in course of time that it was one of the things against which the reformers of the sixteenth century strongly protested. It continued to develop, however, in the Roman Catholic church, and found expression, among many other ways, in the definition in 1854 of her conception as immaculate, or free from the taint of original sin, a doctrine suggested as early as Augustine, and long held by the Catholic church; and the prayer in which her intercession is invoked (see Ave Maria) became second only to the Lord's Prayer in frequency of use. Many of the shrines erected in her honor, at places supposed to have been consecrated by apparitions of her presence, have become among the most celebrated pilgrimage places.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 165.