buy from amazon.com
buy from amazon.co.uk
The Holy Family
A close examination of the biblical record may actually give Mary an even more significant role in the gospel project than that afforded her by contemporary Roman Catholicism. A close analysis of the gospel texts reveals a mixed group of both men and women travelling together through the key phases of Jesus’s ministry, as it moves from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south. Twelve of the men in the group are named to set up an analogy with the twelve tribes of Israel headed by the twelve sons of Jacob,201 but the core group of fellow travellers is mixed. Several of the women are named: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Salome, the mother of the disciples James and John, alongside ‘the other women who followed him from Galilee’.202 It is hinted that these independent women with the freedom to travel may even have been bankrolling the entire operation, possibly as wealthy widows.203
Both the mother of Jesus and the mother of the disciples James and John are amongst the travelling group, and there may be other kinship relationships amongst the travellers. Several members of the group could be close relatives of Jesus and his mother Mary, including the brothers James and John and their mother, the disciples Jude and the other James, the brothers Simon and Andrew, and Matthew. Far from being a relatively minor figure given undue prominence, Mary the mother of Jesus could be right at the heart of this network.
201 The reference making the comparison explicit is at Mathew 19:28, where Jesus says to the disciples, ‘You shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’.
202 Matthew 20:20, Matthew 27:55-56, Mark 15:40-41, Luke 8:1-3, Luke 23:49&55, Luke 24:10
203 Matthew 27:55, Mark 15:40