# 107 Mary, the first Christian? + Dr. Amy Peeler

Mary’s Unique Knowledge of Jesus

How does Mary see Jesus in a way that we miss?

Mary is the first one who really knows who Jesus is. Like, in her body, she knows that this is God's Son.

Even though treason, even though adultery, even though stoning, God's got me. It's like, we all miss this.

She is the first Christian and exemplar for us all. Why? Because I knew Jesus.

So should we elevate her above other disciples? Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms, with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion. Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our Creator, better.

Hi, it's Cass. I wanted to first start off by saying thank you for listening. I created this because I could not find it anywhere else on the internet, and it takes a very small team and a large upfront investment to make it all possible.

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Mary in Luke’s Gospel

My name is Cassian, and I'm your host. Today we're going to talk about Mary because for many Christians, Mary is either treated as divine, untouchable, or she's almost invisible like it was for me. You know, we just didn't talk about her that much, but we're going to look at her through the lens of how she's described in the book of Luke because Luke doesn't look at her in either of those ways.

She's not divine, nor is she invisible. In Luke's gospel, Mary is one of the first people to understand what God was doing through Jesus, and we're going to understand why. Because before the miracles and before the sermons, before the disciples even understood, before the cross even, Mary saw something and she didn't whisper it.

She sang it. She sang it in a song. And when I went back and I reviewed this before me and Dr. Peeler sat down, I didn't even realize it was a song. And now I have a million questions about it. And it's at the moment that Mary is announcing that God is showing mercy.

She is scattering the crowd. She's bringing down rulers all through Jesus once his pregnancy is announced. And so we're going to be answering the question today through Dr. Amy Peeler. What did Mary understand about Jesus that modern Christians often miss?

So today I am joined by Dr. Amy Peeler. Dr. Peeler, you are a biblical scholar whose work focuses on Hebrews, New Testament theology of gender, theological interpretations of scripture, and Old Testament in the New and Pastoral Epistles.

You earned your PhD and MDiv from the Princeton Theological Seminary and your BA in Biblical Languages from Oklahoma Baptist University. You are the author of many works, many books. You are highly credentialed to speak on this topic.

Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you so much for having me. And I love hearing about your discovery of Mary and her song. That's so fun.

It's so exciting because I mean, I come from a Protestant background and also Orthodox. And it's like, okay, Mary's untouchable. And, you know, she's the mother. And, you know, from an Orthodox standpoint, she's depicted in all these icons.

But it's hard to humanize her as the mother that she is and kind of see that, you know, my mom knows me better than everybody. And so, like, how does she see Jesus? Like, she's going to see it differently than anybody.

But how did you start studying Mary?

Well, it sounds like we grew up kind of similarly. As you read, I went to a college in Oklahoma because that's where I grew up. I was part of the Southern Baptist denomination, and I learned a lot of wonderful things, learned to love the Bible as a young girl.

But like you, I don't remember hearing much about Mary. That's typical of Protestants, especially those who are, my church was very contemporary and the big band and all the things. So not a whole lot of Mary.

I mean, if people talked about her, maybe I wasn't paying attention. But I don't think that was the case. So I went to graduate school and got very interested in the family metaphor and family language in the Bible.

And I focused on Hebrews because Hebrews talks about God as a father who gives an inheritance and educates us. And after my dissertation, I thought, I want to take this theme to the whole of the New Testament.

Where does it talk about family? And I was really impacted by the fact that we get to call God our father, right? That's a very intimate, empowering. And yet there's some questions. Is that gendered? What does that say about God?

It's a complex topic. And I wanted to do more research on it. And as I was doing so, thinking about God as father, thinking about our identity as children of God, as sons and daughters of God, I had a very good friend who studies icons, actually studies Orthodox icons.

And he said, you know, you talk about God as father, you talk about us as sons and daughters of God. But don't you think that you should talk about the fact that Jesus had a mother, that God chose to become incarnate by being born of a woman, as Paul says in Galatians 4 .4.

And it was kind of a lightning bolt moment for me of like, yeah, there's really a gap in how I've been thinking and what I want to research. This friend, this happened to be at a conversation over Thanksgiving dinner one year.

And it's a conversation that changed my life. Because from that point, I started paying attention to Mary and realized that a lot of my questions about God and about identity of humans and how we relate with one another, I really just needed to focus on the incarnation.

And by God's choice, she is an indispensable part of how salvation happened. And studying her has changed my life as a scholar, as a Christian, as a mom. And I don't even think I've barely scratched the surface of all we can learn from her.

I hope that we somewhat scratch it today. Because I honestly can't fathom what you're saying. It's like, okay, yeah, we can understand her backstory, but it's like the way that it ties into the bigger picture of Jesus.

It's like, how? I want to know that. But understanding it today, you want to discuss Luke 1 .46 -55, which is Mary's song. And leading up to the song, reading through the chapter, this is right when Mary finds out that she's pregnant with Jesus.

And this is when Elizabeth has now come. And what is it? John the Baptist leaps in her womb, and they find out that Mary's also pregnant. And then Mary breaks out into this Broadway song.

Yes, yes, I love it.

And do you have any context that we need to... Because I'll read the verse, but any context leading up to this moment that we should be aware of, as if we were there. Like, what was going on if I was in the room that I'd be picking up that I'm not picking up on reading today?

What a great question. Well, Luke has done such a good job for us. And Luke, at the very beginning of his gospel, he's like, hey, I'm an historian. I'm going to give you all the details. And his gospel is so full of details.

So unlike the other gospels, he actually goes not just to Jesus's backstory, but to the backstory of his forerunner, his family member, John. So we get this whole story about Zachariah and Elizabeth. He prepares us to read Mary's story very well, because John's pregnancy is miraculous.

I'm sure your listeners will remember that Elizabeth was barren and they were old. And that's like lots of stories in the Old Testament, right? And then the angel comes to Zachariah. You're going to get to have a baby with your wife, Elizabeth.

It's amazing. But that kind of sets us up to see what happens with Mary as even more amazing, because she, of course, is not married yet. And this has never happened in Israel's scripture that a young woman who is a virgin will conceive, right?

This is one of the crazy miracles that we Christians believe. And in studying this, I believe this so much more deeply and its impact is amazing. So that's the context we really need to know, is that she has been presented the invitation from the angel.

Would you like to bear God's son? And this is a high honor.

Julie, I always took that as like, you will bear that. Yes.

Let's talk about that just a little bit. That's really important, actually. So you're correct that the language there in the earlier part of Luke 1, from the angel Gabriel to her, is you will conceive, you will bear a son, you will name him Jesus.

But notice that those are in the future tense. It hasn't happened yet, right? We can imagine the situation in which this heavenly messenger comes and says to Mary, guess what? You are pregnant. God has chosen you.

You already have a baby in your womb. And in that expression of the story, she would have had no choice at all. It is a statement of this will happen, but it's in the future. And the next part of the conversation is so important.

The heavenly messenger then entertains her disturbance. Like it says, she's not sure. She's troubled by this. She asks a question. Gabriel gives more information about Elizabeth. All things are possible with God.

But here's the key thing. Nothing happens. And the messenger doesn't leave to report this conversation until Mary verbally agrees. Let it be unto me. I am, I want to be God's servant in this. That affirmation, that in the tradition it's used in the Latin, it's called the fiat, the yes, is a willing yes.

It does not, the conception does not happen. Gabriel does not leave to report the message until Mary has agreed. So it is an invitation. And that is radically important. That's really how God works. God says, hey, I want to do these good things for you.

And Mary knows this would be a high honor. She also knows that it would cost her. I mean, to have the ruler of Israel in Rome, Rome's not going to like that. And moreover, she's betrothed, not married.

There's going to be some shame possibly associated with this. But knowing the honor, knowing the cost, she still says yes. And only then does she conceive. This is not forced upon her. It is an invitation which she willingly accepts.

Whoa.

I guess I just, like you said, must have not been paying attention when we talked about this in church. But it does, I always kind of was like, okay, lucky Mary got handpicked by God. Nice. She's got to do the baby.

But I wonder, I guess I never once even considered that it was a conversation where she was like, okay, logistically, how is this going to work? You know, how does, I would also have a million questions.

I wonder if she knew kind of like, I'm going to do this crazy thing. It'll come with, you know, physical costs, maybe social costs. But do you think she knew in that moment, like the sacrifice of losing a son?

Did she bear it? Did she understand that weight of that moment?

I don't think so. Given what Luke informs us with all the words of the conversation, all that she knows is she's going to bear the Messiah. That's all that's talked about, that he will reign over the house of Israel forever.

And so that's all she knows. She doesn't know what his life will look like, right? I mean, the fact that the Messiah would die, this was really shocking. But didn't she know like prophecy?

Wasn't she like aware of it? Like, oh, if this is the Messiah, then like all that thing is going to happen.

I love that question. I mean, we are very familiar with the suffering servant passages in Isaiah 53 and by his stripes, we are healed. But the putting together of the Messiah, the one who will reign over all of the world, God's kingdom, and the suffering servant, Christians made that association because I think Jesus does in his teaching.

But early Jews did not put these things together. This is why so many people miss Jesus. They think he's going to be a political revolutionary. And when he dies, they're like, well, I guess we thought he was going to redeem Israel.

Guess he's not going to. They did not anticipate the death of the Messiah.

Okay. So she was like, he'll play a role. Don't know what that's going to look like. A Messiah might mean many things, but that guy that Isaiah was talking about, I don't think that'll be my son.

That's correct. Yes. If I'm going to bet on this, I'm going to put a lot of my life savings on the fact that she would not have made that association. Okay. Okay. Got it. So now, so she's made that choice.

She says, yes, I'm all in. She's now conceiving. She's now, yeah, conceived. And then her sister, Elizabeth, shows up. Well, not quite sister.

And this is fun. And I hope I can paint kind of visual context for us. So she accepts. Gabriel leaves to report the message. But we don't, and this I think is so beautiful. We're not told when the conception happens or the mechanics of it.

It's like in the gaps of the page. Because Mary says yes. And then by the time, and she travels to Elizabeth's house. That's what it says, that she goes in haste to visit Elizabeth. Elizabeth doesn't come to her.

But sometime between her yes. And then when she walks into Elizabeth's house and says, hello. And then Elizabeth, like the John leaps in her room. And then she's like, who am I that the mother of my Lord would come and visit me?

It's in between those events that the conception happens. And I think that it's so holy. It's such a mystery. How does God take on flesh from this, you know, faithful young woman? We aren't told. It's so holy.

It's not narrated. The mechanics aren't given. It's just in the gaps on the page. But it's happened. And so she goes to Elizabeth and several important things here. So what Luke tells us is that Elizabeth is her, the Greek word here is sungenes.

All that means is that they're a part of the same family. Often they're talked about as cousins. And maybe that's true, but it could be even more broad that they're both Jewish. The reason why I think that's important to emphasize is that we know Mary is from the tribe of Judah because she stands in the line of David.

And we know that Elizabeth is in the priestly line from Levi. So probably they're part of different tribes, but they're both Jewish. But it really matters that Mary is from the line of David because the Messiah has to come from the line of David, right?

So if she's giving Jesus his flesh and blood, his humanity, she has to be Davidic so that he can be Davidic. So that's why it matters. Got it.

Hi, Cass here. I have to complain about something because I haven't been completely honest with you. Yes, I love Jesus, and I do love weird exegetical Bible discussions, but there's this whole other part of my life that I don't really show anybody on this channel.

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The Magnificat as Prophetic Jewish Poetry

Here's the fun visual part.

So according to Christian tradition, Elizabeth and Zachariah, of course, live. They live in this village called Ein Kerem, and their house is preserved. Christians have built churches over it and above it.

I got a chance to visit there in May of 23. And you can go into the room where people say that they met. And they sang this song, and it's this little stone room. It's up on this hill. It's quite beautiful.

And I happened to stand there that day by myself, really. There were no other tourists in the room. And I was just overwhelmed in awe, thinking, this is the place that she sang. So you could picture up on a hill, a beautiful view, a little home.

They would have been a little bit more well-off because he was a priest. And when Mary rushes in, Elizabeth says, My goodness, you've conceived the Lord. Blessed are you among women. And then Mary bursts forth into song.

Oh, my gosh.

I also love it just because they're speaking in a language that makes sense for them. But I, too, would say something like, Who am I that the most beautiful woman in the world would be in my house? I would say that to my friend.

And it's like, the mother of our Savior is here. It's so good to see you. I love that. OK, so she bursts into song. And we're going to kind of—. So she says, and I'll run through it. It's just a couple lines.

So Mary, start the Broadway number. She says, My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.

Holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him. From generation to generation, he has performed mighty deeds with his arm. He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.

So many questions. So many questions. Is that common to start singing?

I feel like I'm in a musical. Yes, yes, it seems like it is. There are so many songs in the Old Testament, right? Mary is Jewish, and this song displays that she's very faithful. She's paid attention to her Bible studies in synagogue, because this is very close to another song in the Old Testament, that of Hannah.

If you remember the story from 1 Samuel, Hannah is a woman who was also barren and could not conceive, and she went and prayed and begged the Lord to have a child. And then she does, and she has Samuel, and then she dedicates him at the temple, because she's promised God, if you give me a child, I'll dedicate him.

And when she does, she sings a song, and it's very similar to Mary's song. And we have the song of Miriam, and even in Luke itself, there are multiple songs. When Zachariah, when John the Baptist is born, Zachariah is going to sing a song.

Then Simeon is going to sing a song when he encounters Jesus at the temple. So there's really two answers here. Singing is common in the people of Israel. Think about the Psalms, right? That whole thing is a book of songs.

It's also the case that Luke, as a writer, is really showing his skill as an artist, because he's crafting these poems or songs that are in the Greek. There's like a rhythm and kind of a rhyme to them, and that's how you know that they're not just straight prose.

They're really poetry. Oh, if we read that in Greek, then it would.

Okay, got it. We would sing it, yes. Got it, okay. So it kind of reminds me, and again, I'm speaking from a very ignorant standpoint. I'm not trying to make light of this, but it sounds like that scene in Lion King when Simba's born, and he's like, you're going to rule the world.

She's just speaking prophecy over this child, but it almost seems like she's telling the future. It almost seems like this is what's going to happen. How do you know? Is this part of divine revelation?

So is she talking about God who just blessed her? Is she prophesying over her unborn son? Or is she just saying, in general, I have a child inside me, and I just want really big things for him?

Yes. Good. Well, I think really the first part of your questions are correct. This really is prophecy, and earliest interpreters of Scripture called her a prophet, and that this was an expression of prophecy.

And as your listeners might know, prophecy, as defined in the Bible, does think about the future, and I'll speak to that in a moment. But it also speaks to the past. Biblical prophecy looks in the past and says, what has God done?

How can we trust God's character? These are all the things that God has done. So not only is her song very similar to Hannah's, but really, if you sit down and read through the Psalms or Isaiah, there are so many phrases here that she evokes from Israel's Scripture.

This is what God does. God feeds the hungry. God lifts up the lowly. God displaces the proud. So she's being prophetic in that she's saying, I know who God is, as revealed in the Old Testament. She's also being prophetic in that she is foretelling what the ministry of her son will be like.

When he preaches his first sermon at Nazareth, he evokes some of these same contexts, some of these same ideas. I'm going to free the prisoners. I'm going to give sight to the blind. I'm going to bring the day of the Lord.

And so she's showing that his ministry will be one of reversal. Who does Jesus pay attention to? The lowly, not the important, right? And he wants the important to be redeemed, but he'll kind of put them in their place, right?

You're not all that. You need to know that you need God. So she's also foretelling what's coming. I believe that's true because she knows who God is. And so by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, she can say, hey, if my son is the Messiah, the one who is sent from God, he's going to have God's character and do these things.

And yeah, she's also a mom. She's like, I got blessed with this child. I mean, that's important to remember too, that women in this time period were very nervous. Like, will I be able to conceive? Will my baby live, right?

Infant and maternal mortality are so high. So to have the promise from the angel, you will be able to conceive. Your son will live such that he will be able to reign over Israel. She has this assurance that lots of other mothers would not have had, that she knows that he will be able to fulfill his vocation that God has placed upon him.

Wow.

Okay. Was there, so you kind of mentioned like, this is emulating some other women in the Old Testament. So is she resembling like Hannah the most? I think of Abraham's wife. Like, is this, is she intentionally saying, oh, okay, I'm just going to kind of step into the book, like the Torah that I read and I'm going to be like her.

Is that kind of, or is this like very genuine? You know, like how much is this, she's kind of repeating what she's read. Oh, got it. Okay. That's a great question.

I see this as an example. You know, someone maybe in your church, I always think of like an older person who so loves the Lord and so loves the Bible. Like when they talk, just biblical phrases come out.

Not because they're like trying to show you that they've memorized stuff, but they're just in the word and in prayer all the time. It just bubbles out of their soul. That's what I think is going on. And she's being very self-referential.

I mean, look at all the first person pronouns at the beginning. My soul doth magnify the Lord. My spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Savior, for he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth, all generations will call me blessed.

In some sense, this has been really radical for me as kind of like a woman whose personality tends to be a little bit diminutive. Like it's easy for me to kind of hide myself or like Mary has taught me a boldness.

She's like, look at me and what God has done for me. There's this confidence in her, but it's not pride. God has done this awesome stuff, but he has done it to me. Like she's not afraid to own the blessing that has come to her.

So it's very much from her heart and soul, but I think it's informed by her knowledge of these stories and the Old Testament. And then I really do want to emphasize that I believe the Spirit is at work through her words.

I mean, Luke is so good to point out the work of the Holy Spirit throughout Luke and Acts. And I think that's what we have going on here as well.

And you mentioned her boldness. How old was she at this moment?

You know, if you've heard this in a sermon, it really is correct. She's probably 13 or 14, which is wild.

I feel like I got boldness two years ago.

I love that. Yes. Now, of course, for them, that would be more like our equivalent of 18, 19. It's like at that place where you're about to launch into adulthood. But yes, yes, Cassian. This shows to me she has a depth and a grit and a maturity that is beyond her years.

I really believe that that's true. Okay, so much there.

What are we—13 is kind of like 18. Is the level of biblical and Old Testament literacy, is that common for a 13-year-old to know as much as she knew? Or what are we missing about Mary? Was she a genius, like a savant?

Well, you know, our Catholic brothers and sisters and our Orthodox brothers and sisters would say that God's grace came to her even before she was born. So she was set apart in a particular way. As a Protestant, I don't think that I must believe that.

I understand why they do, but I don't think that the Bible teaches me that directly. So I tend to think about her, she's a normal Jewish young woman. And what we know about normal Jewish young women is that they would have gone to synagogue.

They would have maybe visited the temple for festivals occasionally, maybe even annually. They would have heard the Word of God. So she was, I think, a good listener. She did not have a Bible in her house, right?

Nobody is rich enough to have printed manuscripts. So she would have heard. She would have been an oral learner as most—. She's just memorizing.

She would have been like, Oh, I know all about Hannah and Abraham's wife and Old Testament, just because I heard the stories so many times. Not because she was able to study it at night. No, no, no. That is correct.

Yes. Wow. Okay. So would you say that it was impressive how much she knew, or that she was on base for how much other women her age knew at that time?

It would be within the range of what people would be exposed to, the kind of stories they would be exposed to. I do believe both in this, in every account that we have about her in Scripture, we do see her deep faithfulness.

So her responsiveness to God, I believe is at a quite mature level that may be beyond her peers. And doesn't that make sense? If God is going to select someone to raise, the Messiah to raise God's own son, that God would choose someone that is mature spiritually?

I think that's what we have evidence of. You know, Cassian, I need to say as well, because some listeners will be kind of waiting on me to say this. Of course, what we have here in our Bibles is written by Luke.

This Magnificat as recorded in Luke 1 is in Greek. Mary would not in all likelihood have spoken Greek, and that certainly wouldn't be her mother tongue that she would say privately to Elizabeth. She would have spoken Aramaic in all likelihood.

So we are getting a translation here, and we need to recognize that. And God so loves languages that God's okay with that. That we don't get her original words in Aramaic, we get a translation. And so there is some shaping here.

So here's how I believe that it happened. I believe that Mary knew about the stories of these women. She knew the Psalms. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and with great joy, she bursts out into this poem or song.

And I like the idea of singing because people did sing quite a bit in their religious worship and in synagogue. So she burst out in song. And then later, right? Much later, after Jesus has lived and died and resurrected, and she's hanging out with Luke, because Luke is very clear that he has a number of eyewitnesses, and she has to be one of them.

Because how else is he going to know what's going on in this room? Unless she or Elizabeth tell him. But at some point then, she communicates to Luke this very event. And then he maybe quotes her words directly and translates them from Aramaic into Greek.

Possibly. It could also be the case that he, inspired by the Holy Spirit, takes the themes of her song and puts them into the exact words that we have on the page here. I'm very open to the Holy Spirit, both inspiring Mary and inspiring Luke, to give us the poem that we have recorded.

Right. It's kind of like when you tell the story versus like you have someone tell the story and then you relate to someone else. It's not like a game of telephone so much that the plot changes. It's just maybe there's an emphasis somewhere else.

Yeah, or like a reporter, right? If a reporter went to someone and like, tell me the story of this event, then they really want to do due diligence to write that down faithfully. And very clear, I have recounted the story of Jesus, which includes the story of Mary.

I've done so faithfully. So trust that we're getting her heart, even if we're not getting her exact words.

Okay. Okay. Okay. I thank you so much for painting that. Like, I didn't even think to ask that, but that's such a good way of like, how did we even get this? She lived it. And then years later told Luke who then recorded it.

So thank you. Hey, we're Matthew and Leah Hedden,.

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Mary’s Social and Political Risks

Where do you, I love to like put myself in the moment of when this was happening. So kind of knowing like, she's telling Luke about this. I feel like Luke's next question been like, well, so you broke out in song, Mary.

What did Elizabeth do? Was Elizabeth just like, like I can, cause today if I ran home, like if I think of my sister, I was telling you, really remind me of her. And I walk into my sister's house and she's like pregnant.

I'd be freaking out. And then she started singing. I'd probably laugh. You know, I'd probably sing with her. You know, it'd be a really fun moment. But what do you think Elizabeth did?

You know, I've never really thought to ask that question, but I love it. And again, I think maybe, yes, in our culture, this feels like a musical, which would be weird, right? We have to kind of check our brains at the door when we go see a musical because no one just kind of burst out into song.

If so, we'd be like, that's funny. That's weird. I do wonder in their culture if singing was just more prominent. It's interesting. I spent some time living in England and that's actually a much more singing culture, even than America.

Now, I don't think it's the degree of first century Judea, but that taught me like singing is more natural for some people groups than others. And so I think that would have been more normal. But Elizabeth, wow.