How Mary knew her God-son, Jesus

By Raul Casso

The writer(s) of the Gospel “According to Luke” tell us that Mary knew that Jesus was the Son of God throughout his lifetime because the Archangel, Gabriel, told her so before her miraculous conception. That she miraculously conceived after Gabriel's visit would have reinforced, in Mary's mind, the truth of what Gabriel had told her.

The writer(s) of Mark, on the other hand, make it clear that Mary did not know her son was God. Instead, Mark tells us that Mary thought Jesus was insane, and needed to be “taken care of.”

Simply put, Mark and Luke are telling different, irreconcilable stories. Here are the relevant verses:

Luke 1:26-35 (KJV): “And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God . . . to a virgin . . . [named] Mary . . . and said, ‘. . . Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God . . . and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name, Jesus . . . He . . . shall be called the Son of the Highest. . . .”

Consider now what Mark tells us:

Mark 3:14-21 (KJV): “And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils . . . and when his friends (or kinsmen) heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself. . . .” (The New International Version renders the passage, “when his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.'”)

The failure of Mark's Mary to recognize that Jesus was the son of God is completely at odds with Luke's Mary, who knew of Jesus' divinity even before conception.

Why the discrepancy? Although a complete treatment of this question is well beyond the scope of this little column, a few comments are nevertheless in order.

Some of the reasons for the difference are that the books of Mark and Luke were written in different historical time periods, in different cultural contexts, and with intended readerships that had different religious beliefs and expectations.

Although the actual dating of the Gospels is a matter of debate among bible scholars, most agree that the gospels were written sometime after the death of Jesus and before the second half of the second century. Many scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark is the oldest, or, stated another way, written the soonest after Jesus' death.

At the time Mark was written, there was little need to persuade people of Jesus' true identity. It was still supposed that the end of the world was near, and that Jesus would soon return in clouds of glory. In this context, the writers of Mark apparently felt no need to include any biographical information qualifying Jesus' divine origins: His imminent return would more than suffice.

Luke, on the other hand, may have been written decades after Mark. By the time the writers of Luke put pen to paper, times had changed. By then, it had become embarrassingly clear that the world had not come to an end, and that Christians would have to wait for an undetermined amount of time before their savior's return.

Towards the latter part of the first century, about the time Luke may have been written, Christianity existed as a tiny religious sect struggling for survival against other religions that flourished at the time. Among those other religions were Judaism, the Hellenistic beliefs, and the various “mystery” religions that the masses adhered to. As the several religions struggled for success, the writers of Luke felt the need to further qualify their now tardy prophet as God, in general, and the Messiah in particular. Luke did so by including additional “evidence” designed to convince his targeted readership that Christianity was the true religion.

Some of those “Luke” wanted to convince were of Jewish persuasion. So, for example, we find in Luke, as well as in Matthew, genealogies tracing Jesus' lineage from Joseph to David in order to satisfy the Old Testament qualification that the Messiah would be of Dividic lineage (Lk. 3:23-38; Matt. 1:1-16). Similar genealogies are not found in the book of Mark.

Others the writers of Luke wanted to convince were the pagan masses who believed in a variety of “mystery” religions that were in vogue at the time -- a common characteristic of which was a human virgin, supernaturally impregnated by a god, and giving birth to a god-child. The fabled Hercules of Greek mythology, for example, has a similar birth circumstance, as does Mythra, also of pagan faith.

Thus we have Luke tell us of Mary being visited by the Archangel , Gabriel, who tells her (and us) of the supernatural pregnancy she would undergo, and how her child would be God, no less. Mark, writing decades earlier, was not faced with the same pressures that would later challenge the fledgling Christian belief system. Accordingly, Mark writes of an adult Jesus, whose divine nature is often misunderstood or unrecognized so that, ultimately, those who did not accept or recognize Jesus' divinity would kill him “according to the scriptures.”

To keep matters in perspective, such discrepancies are of no consequence where the Bible is understood to be a collection of ancient stories, legends, myths, histories, and beliefs, all of human origin, and compiled over the course of time into the volume we have today and refer to as the Bible. It is only when the Bible is believed to be the inerrant word of God, however, that discrepancies of this kind present a problem: Either Mark was mistaken, or Luke was, or both were. Whichever the case, the Bible is in error.