Brant James Pitre - Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah

In order to situate the words and deeds of Jesus in their historical context, we need to be familiar with two important sources of information: (1) the Jewish Scriptures, commonly known as the Old Testament, and (2) ancient Jewish tradition, enshrined in a host of writings not contained in the Hebrew Bible and often not familiar to non-Jewish readers who are not already specialists in biblical studies.

For this reason, it is helpful to briefly identify the various collections of Jewish writings outside the Bible that I refer to from time to time in this book. I cannot overemphasize that I am not suggesting that Jesus himself (or even the writers of the New Testament) would have read any of these works, some of which were compiled long after his earthly life. What I am suggesting is that many of these writings bear witness to ancient Jewish traditions outside the Bible that may have circulated at the time of Jesus. In particular, there are Jewish phrases, customs, practices, and beliefs reflected in both the New Testament and these extrabiblical Jewish writings.

In light of this situation, contemporary scholars such as Dale Allison, Craig Evans, Amy-Jill Levine, Craig Keener, John Meier, E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, and many others make abundant use of extrabiblical Jewish sources in their study of the New Testament. For a recent example, see especially The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2nd ed.; eds. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). In this volume, an international team of Jewish scholars utilizes both Jewish Scripture and extrabiblical writings, including rabbinic literature, to shed light on the meaning of the New Testament.

With this in mind, after the Bible itself, the most important Jewish sources utilized by contemporary scholars are the following:

• The Dead Sea Scrolls: an ancient collection of Jewish manuscripts copied sometime between the second century B.C . and 70 A.D . This collection contains numerous writings from the Second Temple Period, during which Jesus lived.

• The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: a vast array of writings that are often attributed to ancient authors such as Enoch, Ezra, Baruch, and others. They span the centuries before and after the time of Jesus (from the second century B.C . through the fourth century A.D .). Many of these works, such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch, give key insights into Judaism at the time of Jesus.

• The Works of Josephus: the writings of a Jewish historian and Pharisee who lived in the first century A.D . His works are extremely important witnesses to Jewish history and culture at the time of Jesus and the early Church.

• The Mishnah and Tosefta: two extensive collections of the oral traditions of Jewish rabbis who lived from about 50 B.C . to A.D . 200. Most of the traditions are focused on legal and liturgical matters. For rabbinic Judaism, after the Bible, the Mishnah remains the most authoritative witness to Jewish tradition.

• The Targums: ancient Jewish translations and paraphrases of books of the Jewish Scriptures from Hebrew into Aramaic. The Targums emerged sometime after the Babylonian exile (587 B.C .), when many Jews began speaking Aramaic instead of Hebrew. Scholars disagree about their exact dates, which are very difficult to determine.

• The Babylonian Talmud: a vast compilationmore than thirty massive volumesof the traditions of Jewish rabbis who lived from around A.D . 220 to 500. The Talmud consists of both legal opinions and biblical interpretation, in the form of an extensive commentary on the Mishnah.

• The Midrash Rabbah: These texts are ancient Jewish commentaries on various books of the Bible. Although parts of these are later than the Talmud, they contain many interpretations of Scripture attributed to rabbis who lived during the times of the Mishnah and the Talmud.

These are by no means all of the ancient Jewish writings scholars use to understand the New Testament, but they are the ones I have engaged from time to time in this book.

chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

This book is written for anyone who has ever wondered what the Bible really teaches about Mary, the mother of Jesus. In particular, it is written for those who have been puzzled by, struggled with, or rejected Catholic beliefs about Mary as unbiblicalif not idolatrous. I should know. I was one of them. Heres how the story goes

THE PROBLEM WITH MARY

When I was growing up, I had no problem believing what the Catholic Church teaches about Mary. I was born into a Catholic family, baptized as an infant, and raised in predominantly Catholic South Louisiana. Every Sunday, I attended a Catholic church that had several statues of Mary. On special occasions, I lit a candle and would ask Mary to pray for me. One of my earliest memories is of my mother taking my brothers and me to pray the Rosary with my grandmother and great-grandmother. While the women prayed, we boys would sit on the floor playing and listening andif memory servesgetting pretty bored. However, by the time I was seven or eight years old, my older brother and I had picked up the practice for ourselves. Believe it or not, we boys used to kneel beside our beds at night for thirty to forty minutes while we read the Bible verses and said the prayers in a little book called