Mary, the mother of Jesus, has special religious and cultural significance. The historian can also study her as a living and breathing person. Religious works, if interpreted carefully, can help us understand Mary as a historical character. We can also use secular works to discover how a typical woman like Mary would have lived. Mary was a Jewish woman who lived at the beginning of the Common Era in Roman Palestine. She married Joseph and had multiple children. Mary became a symbol of purity and motherhood.
Famous Parents
Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus Christ, are perhaps the two most famous parents in history. They are the subject of many religious and fictional works. We talked about Joseph once before. What can a historian tell us something about Mary?
Historical Sources
The earliest sources that provide information about Mary are the gospels in the Christian New Testament. Jesus died about 30 CE. The gospels came late in the first century.
Additional Christian writings that provided alleged biographical details about Mary came even later. The holy book of Muslims, the Qu’ran, later provided its own often quite different details.
Other sources also provide historical context about times and provide independent reaffirmation that something occurred. The result is a more complete historical picture.
Gospels Are Not Historical Books
The gospels do not provide a complete biography of Jesus. The gospels are religious works with a specific mission to make various religious points. They speak of miraculous events, not in the realm of secular historians. A miracle is something supernatural. It is a matter of faith.
Religious works provide information about the past. If we carefully analyze the material, we can reasonably determine historical facts mixed in with religious content.
Mary of Nazareth
Mary was likely born in Galilee, a largely rural region in northern Palestine. Mary and Joseph later raised a family, including Jesus, in Nazareth, a small village in that area.
The gospels had a religious reason for wanting Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. One gospel assumes Mary and Joseph lived there first and then moved to Galilee to avoid prosecution.
Historically, it is much more likely that both grew up near or around Nazareth. People spent their lives in one place. We cannot know for sure Mary’s hometown. We can reasonably guess.
A typical resident of Galilee would be a peasant living a hand-to-mouth existence.
Family
Christian sources written after the gospels tell us that Mary’s parents were Joachim and Anne. “Mary” was a popular name for Jewish girls. There are many different Marys in the gospels.
One gospel tells us that her cousin was Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. The family relationship has an important religious message. It is less clear that it is historical.
Early Life
Jesus, according to gospel sources her first son, was born about 4 BCE (a mistake in dating led Jesus to be born “before the Christian Era” began!). If so, she was born about 18 or 20 BCE.
Mary likely grew up as a typical Jewish girl, following longstanding ethnic and religious traditions. The Jewish ruler Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas (4 BCE-39 CE) ruled over Galilee during her lifetime. The Romans had little direct effect on her life. Until later.
Marriage
Jewish girls married shortly after they reached puberty. Mary’s father would likely be in charge of finding a suitable match. It was not a love match but hopefully, they would be comfortable with each other and each would create a happy marriage.
Mary might have married sometime between thirteen and sixteen years of age. Jewish girls first were betrothed. The couple were legally married but did not live together. The marriage was officially celebrated a year later.
Mary was married to a Jewish tradesman named Joseph. Men married somewhat older than girls, sometime after eighteen. Later traditions, for religious reasons, said that Joseph was an old man with adult children. Historically, Joseph was likely the average age.
Religious Details
Two gospels tell miraculous stories about virgin births, angels, and other familiar Christmas traditions. One gospel tells us Mary, Joseph, and Jesus fled to Egypt for a few years to escape from Herod. The other two gospels do not talk about the family’s early years.
These accounts have religious significance but are not secular historical accounts. Later stories about Jesus’s childhood also are more religious fables than reliable history.
Married Life
The average Galilean peasant had many children. The gospels tell us about Jesus, James, Joses, Simon, and unnamed sisters. Jesus was the oldest and probably was mentored to follow in his father’s footsteps. Jesus’s brother James later was a leader of the early Christians.
Joseph died before Jesus began his public ministry. Jesus was about thirty years old, making Mary in her forties. One gospel tells us Joseph was still alive when Jesus was twelve years old.
We do not know the details of Mary’s married life but she would have played an important role in taking care of the home and children. She would have been a significant role model for Jesus.
Mary as a Christian
The gospels tell us that Mary was involved in various incidents of Jesus’s ministry.
Mary was wary of Jesus’s ministry. She might have been present at his death. One biblical account talks about Mary hanging out with Christians after Jesus’s death. One gospel says that while Jesus was dying he entrusted a “beloved disciple” with Mary’s well-being.
Was Mary an early Christian? Perhaps. We do not know. We also do not know when she died.
Mary later became an important religious symbol. She was honored as a perfect mother and symbol of purity. Mary was the subject of art and a role model for women. Religious traditions grew to explain her life and significance. The historical Mary became a living legend.