The Virgin Mary has played many roles through the centuries
While Mary may be enjoying renewed popularity as of late, this is not the first time she has been “in the spotlight.”
Mary the mother The four New Testament Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – are the earliest sources that mention Mary.
She is a minor character in Matthew, and never speaks, even at the time of Jesus’ birth. She has a slightly more pronounced role in Luke, which is the only other New Testament Gospel that mentions the birth of Jesus. In Luke, she talks with an angel, visits a family member and speaks words of prophecy. She also visits Jerusalem on two occasions: once for a purification ritual in the temple, and a second time to celebrate Passover.
In Mark, she seeks out Jesus while he is preaching, and she is also mentioned in passing by people in Jesus’ hometown. The first of these scenes also appears in Matthew and Luke.
Finally, she appears twice in the Gospel of John. The first is at a wedding where the wine has run out, and the second is at Jesus’ crucifixion, where she stands nearby while he dies.
Mary the virgin The Gospel authors also use Mary to stress that Jesus was a particularly noteworthy person.
Matthew and Luke accomplish this by “mythologizing” the story of his birth, by emphasizing that Mary was a virgin when he was conceived, and that her pregnancy was of divine origin rather than the result of human sexual activity.
The theme of the virgin mother impregnated by a god is not uncommon in the ancient world, and early readers of Matthew and Luke would have understood Mary’s pregnancy in the context of other wellknown stories of “divine children” born to virgin mothers.
Mary the mirror Like so many biblical characters, the way that a group understands Mary has much to do with how that group understands itself.
This plays out clearly in artistic representations of Mary. In the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, for example, fifth-century mosaics portray Mary as a noble woman dressed in Roman imperial clothing, which reflects the historical context in which these mosaics were made.