A Farewell to the Pondering Mary

What is it about?

In the traditional understanding of Jesus's birth story, his mother Mary is portrayed as 'pondering' the angelic message about her son in her heart (Luke 2:19). But the translation 'pondering' is probably not correct. The meaning of the Greek verb in similar Greek texts from the same period is 'to determine the meaning of', 'to understand (the meaning of)', 'to figure out' or 'to infer'. This means that Mary was not pondering the words conveyed to her by the shepherds, but was understanding their meaning. For some reason many scholars do not accept that Mary was able to comprehend what the angel said about her son. Their arguments, however, do not hold up. The intention of the author of the Gospel of Luke was to demonstrate that Jesus was the legitimate messiah of Israel. Mary represents and prefigures Jesus's later followers and validates the basic conviction that Jesus is the messiah of Israel.

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