A Virgin Conceived: Mary and Classical Representations of Virginity

Which Virgin? What Virginity?

Since the earliest decades of Christianity, interpreters and adherents of the tradition have pondered the virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In recent scholarship, biblical interpreters and theologians alike have examined the signi¤cance of Mary’s virginity. Although biblical scholars have given extensive consideration to what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke seem to suggest about Jesus when underscoring the virginity of his mother, much less attention has been given to how such narrative detail ¤gures in the portrayal of Mary herself, let alone how it has helped shape Mary’s place in Christian tradition.1 While the christological relevance of Mary’s sexual status is an undoubtedly important dimension of both texts, we need not assume that christocentric concern exhausts the rhetorical signi¤cance of Mary’s virginity. Instead, Which Virgin? What Virginity? One we may examine what virginity can mean for how readers envision Mary. As Jaroslav Pelikan has observed, scriptural study has dominated but not entirely controlled theological contemplation of the Virgin.2 In contemporary theological circles, feminist interpreters especially have explored the symbolic meaning of Mary’s sexual status.3 Consensus, however, has proven elusive. Some feminist readers have associated Mary’s virginity with a misogyny that rei¤es male power over women, subordinates female sexuality and creativity to a virginal ideal, and perpetuates the notion of femininity as passive receptivity. Others have found in Mary’s virginity a positive expression of female autonomy and power. Thus feminist re®ection demonstrates both the positive and the negative connotations that Mary’s sexual status can evoke. As fruitful and provocative as previous studies have been, none has focused primarily on the signi¤cance and meaning of virginity in the ancient narratives that provide the basis for Christian veneration of Mary. The roots of the traditions and celebrations associated with the virginity of Mary are, for the most part, connected with narrative details located in Luke’s Gospel and the second-century extracanonical composition the Protevangelium of James (hereafter also identi¤ed as PJ). Although scholars have addressed the development of virginity as a Christian ideal in late antiquity, much more can be said of the early texts that served as a foundation for later Christian understandings of Mary and female sexuality.4 The Virgin(s) of Early Christian Imagination Modern interpreters of Luke-Acts and the Protevangelium of James have long regarded allusions to Mary’s virginity as signi¤cant in both narratives.5 Lucan scholars have most often pondered the virginity of Mary in the context of asking whether or not Luke’s story implies the virginal conception of Jesus (Lk 1.26–38). Interpreters of PJ have noted both the narrative’s emphatic portrayal of Mary’s sexual status and the theme of purity that permeates Mary’s story. In Luke’s writing, Mary is in priA Virgin Conceived
2 mary focus only in the ¤rst two chapters of the Gospel and then again at the opening of Luke’s sequel, Acts. In contrast to its canonical predecessor, the second-century Protevangelium retains Mary as its central protagonist and narrates her biography, rather than that of her son. Despite the prominence that virginity enjoys in both canonical and extracanonical portrayals of Mary, critical differences in the way that each narrative refers to her virginity quickly emerge. In the Lucan account, Mary’s sexual status is mentioned twice, but in only a single scene (Lk 1.26–38). She implicitly relinquishes her virginity when she weds Joseph. In PJ, Mary’s virginity is repeatedly underscored, and her sexual status remains unchanged even after she marries Joseph and gives birth to Jesus. Her virginity yields to nothing and no one. Thus the well-known designation virgin birth properly refers to PJ, not to the more familiar Gospel of Luke.6 Whereas Luke focuses on the extraordinary nature of Mary’s pregnancy, the apocryphal text casts Mary’s virginity itself as cause for wonder and praise. In short, each text’s contextualization and emphasis of Mary’s sexual status differs from the other’s. With respect to these two early Christian texts, it is clearly insuf¤cient to speak of the Virgin Mary. Instead we must ask, which Virgin? And of what virginity do we speak? Although each ¤gure is identi¤ed as a parthenos, from their respective narrative contexts the Lucan and apocryphal Mary emerge as distinctly different parthenoi. Thus it is immediately...