Mary isn't typically worshiped in the Catholic faith, but she is clearly an important figure in the life of Jesus Christ. Still, even within the Catholic Church, the exact role of Mary is debated. Here are some of the little-known details of the so-called Mother of God.
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00:00Mary isn't typically worshipped in the Catholic faith, but she is clearly an important figure
00:05in the life of Jesus Christ. Still, even within the Catholic Church, the exact role of Mary
00:09is debated.
00:10So, just so we're clear, we're not going to get into the faith-based aspect of the virgin
00:15birth. That's for you to hash out in the comments. What we do want to talk about is the prophecy
00:19associated with Jesus' birth. Jewish tradition prophesied that the Messiah will be born of
00:24a virgin — at least, so the most common interpretation of Isaiah 7.14 goes. The Gospel
00:29of Matthew concludes that Mary's birth is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy, which
00:33has long been translated from Hebrew as,
00:35"...the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel."
00:39That translation has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. Jewish and even
00:43Christian scholars now believe that the Hebrew word almah should be read as young woman,
00:49not virgin. The other part of the definition means marriageable woman. You might even hear
00:53the word rite associated with the term. Without getting too graphic, the implication is that
00:58a woman who was to be married would be a virgin to her husband. But again, this comes down
01:03to the common first century usage, and 2,000 years later, we're not 100% sure if they were
01:08using the dictionary definition, for lack of a better term, or just a general term for
01:13a young unmarried girl.
01:15The birth of Jesus is only depicted in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, and the
01:20revelation to Mary that she would play mother to the Son of God, known as the Annunciation,
01:24appears in those two books. In Luke, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her that she
01:28is in the Lord's favor, and she'll give birth to a son, heir to David and king eternal.
01:33"...do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God."
01:41But the insistence that Mary was truly, physically the mother of Christ also served as a counter-argument
01:45to Gnosticism in the early church. Some Gnostic sects believe that Jesus was not a mortal
01:50or physical being, and that he was not born of Mary so much as he passed through her,
01:55like light through a prism. Confirmed parenthood, even if only one of the parents was human,
02:00would in turn confirm Jesus to be fully human by an ancient understanding of the supernatural.
02:05We don't want to get too far in the weeds here, but if you know the Nicene Creed, it's
02:09basically a testament against Gnosticism. That's why there are lines stressing the virgin
02:13birth that specifically name-drops Mary to contradict the Gnostic theories of Jesus.
02:18The ultimate power of Jesus in Christian thought is his redemption of all mankind. So this
02:22puts Jesus on a parallel track to Adam, the first man. After all, Adam's sin and disobedience
02:27brought despair and death into the world, and Jesus' obedience to God's will brought
02:31salvation and eternal life.
02:33The early Christian church carved out a similar parallel interpretation of Eve's role in the
02:37Old Testament with Mary's in the New. Mary obviously had a different relationship to
02:42Jesus than Eve did to Adam. But Eve and Mary are both considered to have been virgins at
02:46the time of their most consequential acts, succumbing to temptation in Eve's case and
02:51accepting the responsibility of caring and raising Christ in Mary's.
02:55Catholicism takes the parallels even further. Mary is believed by Catholics to have been
02:59born without original sin herself. And Mariology, the formal study of Mary, considers a view
03:04of Christ and his role incomplete without acknowledging the part Mary had to play.
03:10Obviously, there are many debates over religious text and terminology that can seem like fights
03:14over semantics, like we said about the virgin-versus-ready-for-marriage thing earlier. There was also significant
03:19controversy over how to refer to Mary in the early church because of such a title's implications
03:25on the nature of Jesus.
03:26Mary was titled Theotokos in the 3rd or 4th century, Greek for God-bearer or Mother of
03:31God. That's still used in Orthodox Christianity. It's been speculated that the term came into
03:36regular devotional use once the Council of Nicaea, as in the Nicaean Creed mentioned
03:41earlier, determined the divine nature of Jesus in contrast to those Gnostics. But to label
03:45Mary as a Theotokos was to go beyond describing divine status to Jesus. It was to call him
03:51God himself.
03:52On those grounds, Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, gave Mary a lesser title.
03:57He and his followers referred to her as the Christotokos, or Christ-bearer. In Greek,
04:03Christ means anointed one. It's subtle, but again, the text was critical to people back
04:07then. It maintained her and Jesus' significance without crossing a line they felt shouldn't
04:12be crossed.
04:13But wait, there's more. You see, the Greek term Christ comes from the Hebrew for Messiah.
04:18But Messiah could also mean prophesied one, in addition to anointed one. If it feels like
04:22we're going in circles, that's a problem we still have today.
04:26As many aspects of her life are disputed by various churches, so is the nature of her
04:30The big question there concerns the assumption of Mary — whether, upon reaching the end
04:34of her life, she ascended, body and soul, into heaven as Jesus did. The assumption is
04:39accepted within the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII declared it a dogma of the Catholic
04:44faith in 1950. The doctrine has been broadly traced back as far as the Book of Revelation,
04:49where Mary is seen as the most logical embodiment of God's people in the battle of good and
04:53evil.
04:54If you want to get hyper-specific, the idea of Mary ascending to heaven can be traced
04:57to Eastern Christian beliefs of the 5th century. There's a tomb of Mary. Actually, there's
05:02two, because there's debate as to which is historically accurate. But there's no body
05:06in either tomb, and there are no acknowledged relics of hers. Archaeologically speaking,
05:11there is not a ton to tie Mary to either spot. The point is that there's no body, and therefore
05:16it ties into the ascension to heaven dogma.
05:19Obviously, not everyone is on board here. Some theologians have branded it Gnostic heresy,
05:23reflecting a rejection of the earthly aspect of Christ. And because it is not an event
05:28described in the Bible, many Protestant denominations reject the assumption entirely. It's still
05:32a hot topic among the various branches of Christianity.