Mother Mary, Anthropos

Luke's Greek gospel offers compelling evidence that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is an anthropos. 

(John Radcliffe inspires me to look at Mary by pointing us to that saying of Mary's son, a saying about mothers and their anthropos offspring.  Take a look here, scrolling down to what Radcliffe calls "Off topic somewhat.")

Now we can look at Luke's introduction of Mary and then his conclusion where he continues to figure her prominently.  Below is Luke's chapter 1 and his chapter 24.  I've included the Greek (and Hebrew names) after the English translation.  (Since John Radcliffe notes how the NKJV "gets it right" in John's gospel, let's stay in the same translation and even show the NKJV mechanics, such as italics). 

What should be obvious are these facts: 

1) when Luke introduces Mary, there are several other males also introduced, but none of these individuals is described as anthropos; 

2) when Luke is towards the end of his story, Mary is there the anthropos.

²⁶ Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”  ²⁹ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. ³⁰ Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. ³³ And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”   ³⁴ Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”

Luke's first description of Mary includes his use of these words:

παρθένος [parthénos, aka "marriable girl," NKJV "virgin"];
Μαριάμ [Mariám, aka מִרְיָם, "Miriam," NKJV "Mary"];
ἐν γυναιξίν [ẻn gunaizín, aka "within (married) women," NKJV "among women"].

In the same context (vv 27, 34), Luke's words for "man" are ἀνδρί, ἄνδρα [andri, andra].  Her baby, incidentally, is to be named Ἰησοῦν [Iesoun, aka יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , "Joshua," NKJV "JESUS"]

When one fast-forwards to the end, Luke has another angel speaking to other women, some married, some mothers, some Marys.  The angel quotes the son of Mary.  But the NKJV here does not get things quite right this time.  Here's a bit:

⁶ He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, ⁷ saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.’”  ⁸ And they remembered His words. ⁹ Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰ It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles.

Luke never says here andri or andra for the men.  Rather he writes, καὶ πᾶσιν τοῖς λοιποῖς [kai pasin tois loipois] which NKJV renders "and to all the rest."

Likewise, Luke doesn't say gune for the (married) women.  Instead he offers καὶ αἱ λοιπαὶ σὺν αὐταῖς [kai hai loipai sun autais] which NKJV makes "and the other women with them."

But Luke does have τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου [ton huion tou anthropou].  And to this Joshua (aka Jesus) there must have been in his own nickname for himself a fondness for his mother.  Because - despite NKJV's "The Son of Man" - he is reminding the other Marys and other women to tell the eleven disciples and the other men that he is the son of the anthropos.  And she is the anthropos, according to Luke's account, who knew no "man" and yet conceived and gave birth to her own anthropos.  Mother Mary, Anthropos.

Here's a First

"Dr. Serene Jones has been selected to become the 16th and first woman president of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. . .

Jones, the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, will come to Union after 17 years on the Yale faculty. At present she also serves as chair and faculty member of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Jones has held faculty appointments at Yale Law School and in the Department of African American Studies and Religious Studies. . .

Jones is a prolific and popular scholar in the fields of religion and gender studies. In addition to publishing 37 articles and book chapters since 1991, she has delivered a long list of professional papers and public lectures across the United States and around the world. She is the author of Feminist Theory and Theology: Cartographies of Grace (2000) and Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (1995). She co-edited Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (2006), Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Engagement with Classical Themes (2005), Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty Russell (1999), and Setting the Table: Women in Theological Conversation (1995).

Jones earned her M.Div. from Yale Divinity School (1985) as well as her Ph.D. in theology from Yale University (1991). She holds a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma (1981) and is an ordained minister in both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.

Jones is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. She has received grants from the Pew Scholars and the Louisville Institute and is currently co-principal investigator on the "Women, Religion, and Globalization Grant" for the Henry T. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs."

Read more.

Aristotle & Baron-Cohen & Summers & Sommers: On Difference

A good friend of mine (an academic, a literary scholar, a rhetorician, not a feminist) wrote me last Friday (to share with me Christina Hoff Sommers’s op-ed piece “Academic Inquisitors”). He said:

I wanted to share with you a very interesting, if divisive and perplexing, article from today's Wall Street Journal. The article makes me wonder, don't feminist scholars want to show that women have a different perspective and epistemology? Or does that thesis depend on whether one finds herself (or himself) in the humanities or in science?

Others of you more qualified than I and more personally vested in the rhetoric here should have good answers to these questions. Please feel free to comment! But because my friend asks me, and because I can’t sit quiet when I think (with the mother of my children) about our first-born (our son) in the academy and our other children (our daughters) not far behind, here’s what I say:

Yes, women and men are different and have valuable differences. You and I are different (whoever we are). Gender makes different; race makes different; class makes different; place makes different; disability makes different.

No, finding myself in the humanities or in science does not erase the difference of one human body from another. Or the difference of one human brain from the next (whether autistic, if that’s the “far end of the male norm -- the ‘extreme male brain,’ all systematizing and no empathizing” or “wired to be . . . better empathizers” if that’s the other extreme in the female norm, as per scientist Simon Baron-Cohen, as per journalist Sommers.)

So, I ask:

Aren’t all men and women created equal (if we are different in body and brain and perspective and epistemology and rhetoric)?

And is Aristotle a humanitarian or a scientist when he declares that

Greeks are different from (and therefore superior to) Barbarians;

natural born masters are different from (and therefore superior to) natural born slaves;

males are different from (and therefore superior to) females, who are merely

males botched in the biology of conception by the mother’s mal-functioning;

and males are different from (and therefore superior to) females, because males have more teeth and males have heads full of sperm and have backbones that de-seminate the powerful fluid from the brain to the testicles, the natural receptacles for in-semination (if the females serving as mothers would just get the procreation process right)?