Extract
Magnificat and crucifixion: the story of Mariam and her son.
Raymond Brown, in his marvelous and massive study of the birth of Jesus, (1) asserts that the infancy stories in the Gospel of Luke have no "major influence" on the rest of Luke's story. While I understand that he is pointing to the lack of explicit reference back to the shepherds, Gabriel, or the other major players in Luke's first scenes, my work with storytellers and actors has taught me to distrust the notion that any part of any story is unrelated to the rest of the story. (2)
In this essay I explore the tension created between the song sung by Jesus' mother at the beginning of the story and the death suffered by her son at the end. "Mariam ran" Standard readings of Mary's visit to Elizabeth in Luke 1:39-56 focus on its uplifting content and forget that we are dealing, here as everywhere in the Bible, with a human story full of pull and push, delight and fear. At the beginning of this scene, Mariam (3) runs away (1:39). Why? If this is a human story full of pull and push, the laws of physics must be obeyed. There must be something that impels her to run. If you see someone running down the street, you assess the probabilities. Is this a fugitive or a jogger? Human life is full of such hypotheses. We have to treat Mariam the same way. Why is she running? She could be excited to tell her kin about her pregnancy, but she could have done that from home, without departing for the hill country. "Heading for the hills" means something in any language, in any story. Mariam ran, perhaps in flight. But from what? The scene offers us one distinct possibility: She was untimely pregnant. A person in such a situation might well run away. Tractate Kethuboth 44b-45a in the Talmud lays out some particulars: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Shil...See the full content of this document
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