Lucifer's True History of Everything

Aug 29, 06 07:48 AM

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The True Life of Jesus, continued 

Mary was a Bible-believing Jewish girl, and at age 13, a fatherless orphan, poor but virtuous; and even though she always said she hated her nose, in my opinion Mary was "homely" only in the British sense of "domestic," but not in the American sense of "really ugly."

Joseph was a pleasant, rather average, Jewish boy, 17, who had no problem with the shape of Mary's nose, nor with her age, which was 13 going on 14.  But neither did Joseph ever intend to become famous as a stepfather to the Son of Almighty God.  Like any young Nazarene working stiff, Joseph in his fantasies of married life thought less about the babies than about "good cooking" and "good sex" and "dutiful obedience" – none of which was Mary's strong suit, but Joseph remained sweet on her, just the same.

When Joseph first asked for the girl's hand in marriage, Mary's "parents" encouraged her to say "yes." (Contrary to the gossip of a few homophobic neighbors, neither of the bleeding-heart liberal Jewish Moms with whom Mary grew up ever persuaded her go lesbian.)  But Mary did feel that she needed some time to think about Joseph before marrying him.  In those days, when Israel was subject to Rome, carpentry was second only to tax-collection as the trade most heartily despised by the Jews.  Because the houses were made of mud and stone, not wood, residential work was scarce: many Jewish carpenters were obliged to eke out a meager income building crosses Monday through Thursday, for the Romans, and nailing criminals to the wood on Fridays.  Joseph – whose specialty was building three-legged stools to sit on when milking goats – generally declined government work, but Mary thought it might be better, even so, to remain single than to marry a carpenter; so when Gabriel first announced that she had been chosen to give birth to the long-awaited Messiah, Mary blurted out a little fib, saying, "How shall this be, when I don't know a man?" (Luke 1:34) – which was not an outright lie, for two reasons: (1.) Joseph, at 17, was no "man" but just your typical randy teenager, with only the barest peach-fuzz on his upper lip; and (2.) Mary and Joseph, though engaged, were not yet "knowing" one another in the Adam-knew-Eve, Cain-and-Seth-knew-their-sisters, sense of the word.  Indeed, one reason that the Lord chose Mary instead of some other 14-year-old Jewish virgin is that Mary never let her fiancé so much as cop a feel.

While pondering these things in her heart, "Mary ran away from home," as recorded in the Gospels.  She fled south, "traveling into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judaea; and she entered into the house of Zacharias," an elderly priest of Abia, whose wife Elisabeth was Mary's cousin (Luke 1:39-40).

Zacharias was a man "well stricken in years" and impotent, but recently cured, big-time, which accounted for the rosy glow in Elisabeth's cheek:  Elisabeth was now six months pregnant.  The Gospels report further that the little fetus was "filled with the holy Ghost, even in his mother's womb," which in those days was quite unusual for a Jewish infant (Luke 1:18-19).

Elisabeth, plump and jolly, was thrilled to meet a young relative from up north.  She invited Mary to stay.  Zacharias, whom Elisabeth called "my dumb husband," did not protest.  He couldn't.  His first sexual climax in nearly thirty years had caused him to suffer a stroke, an apoplexy that left him quite speechless, as silent as a tortoise; and for the next nine months, he just shuffled around the house with a big, dumb, triumphant grin on his face (Luke 1:20).

The two gals had much to talk about.  Young, naive, and newly engaged, the Virgin Mary had a healthy curiosity about the birds and the bees, but she never – contrary to apocryphal reports – she never complained to Elisabeth that human intercourse seemed, to her, like a bad way to make babies (Aramaic zara', "yuckie");  she said rather that sexual intercourse was invented by Almighty God, and that she did not question His judgment, since the Lord certainly knew what He was doing.  

Elisabeth said that that was really an excellent point, and she was happy to hear it, because most men don't.

For weeks on end, the two cousins just talked and talked – about babies, and angels, and circumcision, and true love.  "And Mary abode with Elisabeth about three months before traveling back home to Galilee" (Luke 1:56).

The gospels do not record what the middle-class, law-abiding, Bible-believing folks of Nazareth had to say at Mary's homecoming, and it's a gracious omission, because they actually said quite a lot.  It had been almost four months since the girl vanished.  During that same interval, her fiancé, Joseph the carpenter, had not left town.  And yet Mary returned home three months pregnant.  "Do the math," everyone said.  "Do the math" (Luke 1:26).

When Mary protested that she was still a virgin – that she had become pregnant in some other than the usual manner of young runaways – the adults of Nazareth were skeptical.  In fact, many of them said hurtful things, for which God later punished them and their children, and their children's children, to the third and fourth generations (Numbers 14:18).

 – L.

(Coming tomorrow:  Joseph’s reaction!)

Posted by Lucifer at 07:48 AM

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