πππ«π², π ππππ§ππ π ππ«π’ππ ππ§π π ππ¨ππ‘ππ«
Mohamad Mostafa Nassar
Twitter@NassarMohamadMR
Note:
Islam Compass regularly quotes articles written by non-Muslims to evidence that the Islamic view is Correct, especially when Some Christians try to point the finger at our Beloved Prophet Muhammed’s peace be upon marriages.
The following article has been written by a non-Muslim which proves that Mary carried Prophet Jesus while she was very young at her VERY EARLY TEENS. This means between 10-12 years of age.
In fact the Rabbis LATER [after the New Testament period] the rabbis fixed the minimum age for marriage at twelve for girls and thirteen for boys.β Check the bold statements towards the middle of this article and the reference number [3] at the end of this article.
Islam Compass is not responsible for any words or statements that conflict with Our religion of Islam- We in Islam Compass merely quote this article written by a Christian to evidence that Mary was not much older than her actual age as some Christians try very hard to give such false idea in their attempts to demonise Islam.
Start of the article as written by the Christian writer:
Mary, a Teenage Bride and a Mother
This article will answer two very common questions:
βHow old was Mary (the mother of Jesus) when she became pregnant?β & βHow old was Mary when she gave birth to Prophet Jesus, the Christ?β
Thousands of paintings, drawings, statues, and even βliving manger scenesβ portray Mary, Jesusβ mother, at the time of Jesusβ birth. However, most of them portray her as a young woman in her 20βs.
To be sure, Mary was a remarkable woman. For one thing, she truly understood what it meant to sacrifice for the sake of doing Godβs will, an example her son, Jesus, noted and would later follow. For example, apparently no one at that time, including she herself, was expecting the Messiah to be born of a virgin.
This is why she asked the angel Gabriel how she was going to bear the Messiah when she was not married and sexually active (Luke 1:34), why Joseph decided to divorce her, and why, years later, the religious leaders still thought that Jesus was a bastard child, born of fornication (John 8:41 β KJV).
She knew that accepting pregnancy from God would cause turmoil and pain to her and her loved ones, but she accepted Godβs plan for her life, saying, ββ¦Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your wordβ¦β(Luke 1:38 β ESV [1]).
One very remarkable thing about Mary is that she would almost certainly have been 12-14 years old when the angel Gabriel appeared to her. We know this because the common custom at that time was for girls to marry early, at that age.
The Bible never gives Maryβs age when she got pregnant or gave birth to Jesus, and that is because when something happened that was common in the culture, nothing was said about it. We write the same way today, leaving out any details that everyone knows by custom and culture.
If we read in the newspaper that a thief drove down the road for miles while being chased by police, we do not think, βDrove? What is βdrove?β I wonder how he got down the road all that distance?β We all know what βdrove down the roadβ means, so we exclude the details when we write about it.
Similarly, if I tell someone, βI called Dan and talked with him,β it is clear from our culture that I called on a telephone, even though I do not say it. Many years ago I was teaching my kids the Bible, and I read them that Deborah the prophetess βcalled Barakβ (Judg. 4:6 β KJV). My little daughter interrupted me and wanted to know Barakβs phone number. Her comment made sense given her understanding of custom and culture.
In ancient Israel, girls married in their teens, even EARLY TEENS. [2] For Mary to be betrothed (engaged) but not yet formally married, yet old enough to have and nurse the Messiah, she would have been 12-14.
The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible points out, βIt appears that both boys and girls were married VERY YOUNG.
LATER [after the New Testament period] the rabbis fixed the minimum age for marriage at twelve for girls and thirteen for boys.β [3]
Some customs of biblical Palestine continued through the centuries, and after her trip to the Near East around 1910, Alma White commented on the age of marriage in Palestine, βA girl is usually married in her twelfth or thirteenth year, and sometimes as early as her tenth year.β [4]
W. M. Thompson, a missionary in the Middle East for some 30 years, attests to the same thing. [5]
James Neil points out that everyone married, because they felt obligated to fulfill Godβs command to be fruitful and multiply, and that, βGirls are βgiven in marriageβ at eleven or twelve years of age, though this is not the limit. They are frequently married as young as nineβ¦.β [6]
Marrying young was the custom in many ancient cultures. Two cultures that had particular influence on the biblical world were the Greeks and Romans. Isomachus, a character in the Greek writer Xenophonβs Oeconomics, mentions that when he married his wife, she was not yet fifteen. [7]
Roman girls also married very young, sometimes even before puberty. [8]
Women married early because it was they who bore the children who continued the family line and provided economic strength and physical protection for the family, and it was generally desirable to have many children. Furthermore, lots of children died young, and many women died in childbirth.
We know from Matthew and Luke that Mary was a virgin, and had never been married before, so her marriage age would have been set by common custom. Also, as was common, Mary had a large family, with at least seven children. Her male children were Jesus, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas (Matt. 13:55), and she had at least two daughters, for Jesus had βsistersβ as well as brothers (Matt. 13:55 and 56). [9]
Boys also married early, but somewhat later than girls. Jewish boys were expected to marry at sixteen or seventeen. [10]
Similarly, in the Roman world, the age at which a Roman boy discarded the white toga with a red border, the symbol of youth, and wore the pure white toga of a Roman man and citizen, was generally between 14 and 17. [11]
Just how old Joseph was when he married Mary is not as easily determined as Maryβs age, because although men customarily married in their mid to late teens, for a number of reasons they sometimes married later.
It is often assumed that Joseph married late in his life, because it is almost certain that he had died by the time Jesus started his ministry. We draw this conclusion from a number of biblical records in which Joseph was conspicuously absent, culturally speaking. One is when Jesus moved his headquarters to Capernaum his mother and brothers came, but not his father (John 2:12).
Even more significant is that while on the Cross, Jesus instructed the Apostle John to take care of his mother and told Mary to treat John as a son, which would never have occurred had Joseph been alive (John 19:26 and 27).
However, the fact that Joseph was dead by the time Jesus was 30 does not necessarily mean that Joseph was a much older man when he married Mary, because many people died young from accidents or disease.
If we are going to paint a picture of the birth of Christ, or cast a woman for a living nativity scene, there is some room for interpretation, but if we want to show Mary as she actually was, having a girl of twelve to fourteen as an actor or model would be the most proper thing to do.
Endnotes
[1] Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Versionβ’ Β© 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.
[2] Philip King and Lawrence Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2001), p. 37.
[3] Merrill C. Tenney, editor, The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Regency Reference Library, Grand Rapids, MI, 1976), Vol. 4, βMarriage,β p. 96.
[4] Alma White, Jerusalem, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, (Pillar of Fire, Zarephath, New Jersey, 1936), p. 83, 173.
[5] W. M. Thompson, The Land and the Book, (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1880, reprinted 1973), p. 293.
[6] James Neil, Everyday Life in the Holy Land, (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1913), p. 223.
[7] Robert Flaceliere, Love in Ancient Greece, (Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1962), p. 110; Mary Johnston, Roman Life, (Scott, Foresman and Company, Chicago, 1957), p. 145.
[8] Robert Flaceliere, Love in Ancient Greece, (Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1962), p. 115.
[9] It is sometimes said that these brothers and sisters were not Maryβs children, but that argument is not based on good exegesis or the natural reading of the text. The people of Nazareth, who made the statement, were not making a comment about Jesusβ relatives, but about his family.
[10] Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, reprinted 1979), p. 147.
[11] Mary Johnston, Roman Life, (Scott, Foresman and Company, Chicago, 1957), p. 146.
End of Quote
References:
MARY, A TEENAGE BRIDE AND MOTHER