Friday, August 23, 2024

Robert Gagnon on Mark as the New Ark of the Covenant

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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