The Virgin Mary - A Stain on the City (Jesus, Creator)

[Jayhawker Soule]

The stain is likely the result of salt run-off, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. The agency does not plan to scrub it off the wall.

- see Some see Virgin Mary in underpass stain

In covering the story, CNN interviewed one frightened women, facing the possibility of cancer, who is now praying to this salt stain in the hopes of a miracle. This is both heartbreakingly sad, and a testament to our ability to see what we want to see. Whatever the psychology involved, the Virgin Birth seems to be a far more beguiling myth that even the resurrection.

Mary's pilgrimage into western mythology was a slow one. She is never mentioned in all the writings of the Apostle Paul, the earliest creator of material that came to be included in the New Testament. Paul, who wrote between 49-64 C.E., had no interest in Jesus' origins. His only references to Jesus' family came when he said that Jesus was "born of a woman, born under the law." He asserted that "according to the flesh," Jesus was descended from the House of David. Paul also made reference to Jesus' brother, a man named James. No divine origin here, no miraculous birth, no virgin mother.

The pattern was continued in Mark, the earliest Gospel, written between 70-75 C.E. or 40 to 45 years after the earthly life of Jesus came to an end. Once more there is no story here of a miraculous birth. There are, however, two references to Jesus' mother, but neither is flattering. She appears in this first Gospel to be embarrassed by Jesus, to think him "beside himself" and Mark says that she went with Jesus' four brothers, James, Joses, Judas and Simon, and his two sisters to "take Jesus away" [see Mark 3 and 6]. That is hardly the behavior one would expect from a woman who had been visited by an angel and who had been told that she was to be the Virgin Mother of the Son of God.

The Virgin story entered the Christian tradition in the early 9th decade gospel of Matthew, some 55 years after the death of Jesus. It was repeated in the late 9th or early 10th decade gospel of Luke, and then it disappeared in favor of the concept of Jesus' divine pre-existence in the 10th decade Gospel of John. The mythology of Mary, however, was destined to expand in the development of Christian history.

By the early years of the 2nd century the idea of the Virgin as the ideal woman began to grow. First, it was said of her that she was a virgin mother. Next, she became a permanent virgin, making it necessary to transform the biblically mentioned brothers and sisters of Jesus into half-siblings or cousins. Next the church fathers claimed for her the status of being a postpartum virgin which caused the hierarchy of the church to go through intellectual gymnastics to prove that the hymen of the Virgin Mary had not been ruptured even during Jesus' birth. Tales circulated that perhaps Jesus was born out of his mother's ear! Then someone found a text in Ezekiel [see Chapter 44:1] which suggested that when "the gates of the city were closed only the Lord could go in and out." Without either shame or apology that verse, written about 800 years before the birth of Jesus, was said to demonstrate that Jesus could be born without disturbing the gates of his mother's womb.

Next in the 19th century the Virgin was declared to be immaculately conceived. Even her own birth was now said to have been miraculous. The stain of human sin found in the myth of the fall of humanity (in the Garden of Eden) was not allowed to touch her. Finally in the 20th century, literally at the dawn of the space age, Mary was proclaimed to have bodily ascended into heaven. This new doctrine was based on the fact that no one knew her place of burial. The reason, the Church's leadership suggested, was that she had never died.

- see The Virgin Mary is No Wonder Woman

Second only to the strained claims placed on Isaiah 7:14, I am amazed at the extent of the liturgy and adulation surround a woman who was little more than a bit player in gMark and of no interest whatsoever to St. Paul. Perhaps it's all due to pious fraud by the author of gMat. Or, perhaps, it's due to the overzealous imagination of an apologist no more discerning than those who now burn candles to a salt stain on an overpass.

[michel]

Deut, people need 'crutches' ; why disallusion them if they are happy believing what they believe in - it's not as if they are harming you.