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Excerpt : from
the Introduction |
Page:
1,2,3,4,5
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Some two thousand years have passed since Maryam was thirteen, and yet the date she gave birth is deeply embedded in our consciousness.
We number years by AD and BC -- Anno Domini, and Before Christ -- a system conceived by the Scythian bishop Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, formulated by Isidore of Seville in the seventh, popularized by the Venerable Bede in the eighth, and now universal. Whether in Jewish or Arab Jerusalem, in Cairo or Damascus, in New York or London or Paris or Tokyo, we measure time this way. We do it so easily, so automatically, that we rarely if ever pause to ask where it began. The twenty-first century since what? The year 1776 or 2010 since when?
No matter what faith we profess -- or abjure -- we date our checks, invoices, e-mails, newspapers, newscasts, history books, birthdays, anniversaries by this one event that took place in the Middle East two thousand years ago. That year in Maryam's life is seamlessly integrated into everyday twenty-first-century life. It makes no difference if we substitute the political correctness of CE and BCE (Current Era and Before the Current Era), since the 'current era' dates from that same moment. Maryam gave birth, and even the strongest atheist cannot conceive of time without acknowledging her.
How, then, can we know so little about her?
She lived in Nazareth, that we know. And she had a son. Beyond these bare facts, she is given mere cameo appearances in the gospels: anxious at the temple and at the wedding at Cana, and in only the last of the gospels, John, grieving at the foot of the cross. Even then she is nameless, simply "his mother." And Paul? In all his voluminous letters, he never even mentions her.
Everything else we think we know -- even who her parents were -- is legend accrued over the centuries, far removed from her in both time and place. And though these legends are magnificent, they work as perhaps all legends do: they obscure any idea of who the real person was. Each successive image of Mary has taken her progressively further from the reality of Maryam. She has been used, as all those who are venerated are inevitably used, to further individual, social, theological, even political causes. She has been garbed in silver and pearls, crowned with gold and girded with angels. And in the process, she has disappeared. She has become all image and no reality: a virtual Mary. Or rather, an infinite number of virtual Marys.
Many Christians do not even care to entertain the fact that she was a Jew. And Jews tend to respond in kind. In Israel, she is called
Maria ha-kedusha: the holy Maria. The use of the Latin Maria instead of the Hebrew Miriam is a means of distancing her, keeping her at arm's length as though to say "No, not one of ours." Another way, that is, of stripping her reality from her.
What was that reality, then? Who was she? Who must she have been? Who could she have been?
Just asking the questions is exciting. We are so used to the image that the very idea of the real person sets the eyes alight, the mind to wondering. Yet precisely because we are all, one way or another, deeply involved with her, there is also a great sense of trepidation. And this is daunting.
In the four years it took to research and write this book, I've fielded innumerable intrigued questions from those who knew what I was working on and were eager to know what I had found out. Yet I sensed that more than answers, what they wanted was reassurance. There was a certain discomfort, maybe even embarrassment, at the very idea of Maryam as a real woman. A feeling, perhaps, that this is one figure we shouldn't touch. That we'd be better off to leave her alone, to surrender her to myth and legend, accede to the established church image of her.
I suspect the source of this unease is a fear that she may emerge from any biographical exploration as less than we would wish for. If we strip away the aura, we fear standing there bereft. And this fear seems almost Freudian. The image of her as the ultimate mother -- a symbol of maternity whose physicality has been transformed into the metaphysical -- reaches deep into even the most agnostic heart. We quake at the idea of getting too close, at the prospect of the sacred revealed as human.
The 'official' biography of Maryam has survived and flourished over two millenia for a very good reason: It works. Yes, it is impossible for a virgin to give birth. And yes, that is precisely why the story works. It is a mystery tale: a mystery both in the modern, detective sense, and in the far older, religious sense, touching on things mysterious and unknown to mere mortals. The crux of her story -- the virginal mother -- is the perfect paradox. The sound of one hand clapping pales by comparison.
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(c) Lesley Hazleton, 2004
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