In a recent (August 16, 2024) public facebook post, Dr. Robert Gagnon (author of the must-read book, The Bible and Homosexuality: Texts and Hermeneutics [Abingdon, 2001]) wrote the following against the popular Roman Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) claim that Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant:
Many (most? all?) Catholics claim that Mary in Luke 1:39-45 is equated
with the Ark of the Covenant. This claim is made by appeal to Elizabeth's
remark to Mary in Luke 1:43 when Mary comes from Nazareth to a Judean town in
the hill country to visit her "relative" Elizabeth: literally,
"From where to me is this (Gk. pothen moi touto; NRSV: why has this
happened to me), that the mother of my Lord comes to me?" Some Catholic
scholarship alleges an intertextual echo to David's words about the ark of
Yahweh. So Mary is the new Ark, bearing in her womb the new and greater
Presence of God among us.
Well, the claim is dubious at best, as even the greatest Catholic
biblical scholar of the modern era, Raymond Brown, acknowledged. Even if Luke
were making the connection (I think the connection to be quite a stretch), it
would apply to Mary only so long as the Christ child were in Mary's womb. Once
he left the womb, Mary would cease to be the receptacle of "the Presence
of God among us."
There is zero evidence in Luke-Acts subsequently of Mary being revered
as the "new ark of the Lord." On the contrary, Luke later reports a
Jesus anecdote in which a woman in the crowd said to Jesus in a loud voice,
"Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you sucked!"
But Jesus said, "On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of
God and keep it" (Luke 11:27-28). Luke also retains from Mark the saying
"Who is my mother...?" but "those who hear the word of God and
do it" (Luke 8:19-21). So much for Mary as the Ark of the Lord, at least
in any ongoing sense.
How strong is the alleged echo to 2 Samuel 6? Not very.
In 2 Sam 6:9, David asks himself, "How (Gk. pos, Heb. 'ek) can the
ark of the Lord (Greek translates Hebrew "Yahweh" with the pious
"Lord") come to me?" The verbatim agreement with Luke 1:43 is
limited to a question that ends with "comes to me?" It is fair to ask
that, had Luke intended a direct echo, the question would have begun the same
way; not "from where to me is this" but more simply "how."
In addition, one sees a similar question asked of David in 2 Sam 24:21,
by the man (Araunah) whose threshing floor God told David to buy, which would
ultimately become the site of the Temple: "Why has my lord, the king, come
to his servant?" This suggests a connection not between Mary and the ark
(which is not mentioned in 2 Sam 24) but between the child in her womb and King
David.
In 2 Sam 6:9 David is responding in fear, wondering whether he can
continue to bring the ark to Jerusalem. He had wanted to bring the ark from the
outskirts of Judean territory near the Philistines to Jerusalem. But on route,
when Uzzah had attempted to steady the ark on a cart drawn by oxen, Yahweh
killed him. This judgment by God made David "unwilling to take the ark of
Yahweh into his care in the city of David" for three months (6:10-11).
There is nothing like this in the encounter of Elizabeth with Mary in
Luke 1:39-45. Elizabeth's question is in response to her baby leaping in her
womb at Mary's greeting. There is no worry expressed over continuing to meet
with Mary; there is no transport to Jerusalem being in doubt by fear that God
might kill her because of her close proximity to Mary and "the fruit of
[her] womb." Elizabeth's question reflects her amazement and joy at being
so honored as to be visited by the one bearing "my Lord," the Messiah.
Sometimes the alleged link to 2 Sam 6 is further stretched by claiming
that the unborn John the Baptist leaps for joy in his mother's womb, just as
David leapt and danced before the Ark when finally welcoming it to his royal
city of Jerusalem, with joy surpassing fear as the appropriate response to
God's presence. So let's briefly look at this additional alleged echo to 2 Sam
6.
Before Elizabeth asked her question of Mary, when Mary entered
Elizabeth's home and greeted her, "the baby (John the Baptist) leaped in
her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit" (1:41; later in v.
44 Elizabeth mentions the leaping to Mary). There are problems here too with a
correlation to 2 Sam 6.
First, the baby leaping and Elizabeth asking her question in Luke 1
occur at roughly the same time. In 2 Sam 6 the saying by David and his leaping
for joy are separated by months. Second, the alleged mention of David
"leaping and dancing" when the ark came into Jerusalem three months
after David had asked his fearful question (2 Sam 6:16) might not actually say
that David was "leaping." The Hebrew verb pazaz is translated
"dance" by the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon; and the Greek translation
in the Septuagint uses the verb orcheomai, which means "dance."
Third, this Greek verb in 2 Sam 6:16 is different from the Greek verb used in
Luke 1:41, 44 for the baby's action (skirtao). Also, fourth, the person doing
the dancing/leaping in the 2 Sam 6 story is the same person as the one who
asked the fearful question, whereas in Luke 1 there is a distinction: The baby
first does the leaping and Elizabeth responds by asking her question.
In conclusion, an echo to 2 Sam 6 is a stretch. Even the greatest
Catholic biblical scholar of our age, Raymond Brown, said that a connection was
"dubious" (The Birth of the Messiah, 344-45; see also 327-28). He
says: "This resemblance [between Luke 1:43 and 2 Sam 6:9] has been seized
upon to defend the (dubious) thesis ... that Luke thinks of Mary as the Ark of
the Covenant." He continues:
//One should be cautious in drawing an identification from such echoes
of an OT scene. It is the Ark's power to kill that causes David to ask his
question--a motivation quite different from that of Elizabeth's question. The
Ark's eventual journey to Jerusalem after the three-month stay is quite
different from Mary's return home. The connecting link in the Lukan
reminiscences may be David rather than the Ark. When David goes to Araunah the
Jebusite to purchase the threshing floor that will ultimately become the site
of the Temple in Jerusalem, Araunah asks, "What is this, that my lord the
king has come to his servant?" (II Sam 24:21). This question also
resembles Elizabeth's question, and it does not concern the Ark. // (Birth of
the Messiah, 344-45)
To this we can add that any alleged connection between Mary and the ark
(which does appears highly unlikely) would have to be limited to the time of
her child bearing, since after Jesus is born the presence of God is no longer
within her.
Nor does Luke give any indication after 1:43 that he views Mary as the
New Ark. After the story of Mary treasuring in her heart the words of the boy
Jesus in the Temple in Luke 2:51, Mary barely factors in the Gospel of Luke,
except to have her stature twice diminished. Luke twice warns against giving
Mary too much attention and reverence, noting that significance in the Kingdom
of God comes not from being Jesus' mother or from nursing Jesus as an infant
but from doing the will of God (8:19-21; 11:27-28). Furthermore, the only
mention of Mary in all of the Book of Acts is the statement in passing in 1:14
that "Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers" were among those
who, pre-Pentecost, "were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together
with certain women."
There is thus no indication by Luke that Mary has any kind of perpetual
status as the Ark of the Covenant, and very little indication that she even had
the status in Elizabeth's eyes at the time in which Mary was bearing the Christ
child in her womb.
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