Speaker 1
Yeah, I think first, William's initial point was really outstanding if we go to Isaiah 714 and we understand that tik to can mean something like conceive and bear, meaning in the womb. And if we see that it is God who is being born there by a virgin, it's just in Greek, it's as simple as taking those two words and making a compound out of two separate words. And we do this all the time in English. Sometimes I mess up my English writing because I think high school is one word or two words. And I can't even remember now as I say it, which one it is, but I think it's actually two words and I want to use it as a compound word. We do this all the time. And all that's happening in Isaiah 714 is that the prediction of Mary as bearing God with us is being combined into one word in Greek. So it is biblical in that sense of the language right there. So that was an excellent point that William made. The second is, of course, one that is in our book on Mary that you had mentioned earlier, which I just kind of pull up some of the old notes that I took so that I had my verse down exactly right. And if you see in Luke 142 and 143, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And once does this come to me, the mother of my Lord in so many words. But how does the mother of my Lord comes to me? You'll see various translations of this trying to give a modern English sense of the Greek. What's interesting here is, is we compare Luke 1 and we see how many times the references are made to the Ark of the Covenant from various mentions of David's experience of the Ark, the amount of time that Mary once stayed with her cousin Elizabeth and the amount of time that the Ark was in the house of Obedida, both in the hill country. We see that this is just a rearranging by Luke in Greek. If indeed Luke is being serious at the beginning of his gospel, he says that he's interviewed eyewitnesses and that he's also gathered data, meaning written documents in his gospels, essentially a compilation of that. A lot of biblical scholars nowadays would like to not take him at his word that he interviewed witnesses. I guess kind of begs the question why your bother studying scripture is just kind of a liar, you know. But let's say, let's just assume that he thought he was interviewing real witnesses. So if that were indeed the case and he did have the ability to interview whether directly or indirectly marry through an interpreter, etc. He's free to take into the Greek language. However, Mary said what she said and Elizabeth said what she said and to render it in a poetical or otherwise meaningful way. And here what Luke chose to do when he rendered Elizabeth in Mary's discourses into Greek is Elizabeth says under the Holy Spirit, how is it the mother of my Lord comes to me? And if you see mother of my Lord, how is it that she comes to me? Your question was, what about those who say that you're putting Mary before Jesus, whether chronologically or in some other way in dignity and honor? This is always a strange one because the context here is that John the Baptist can recognize the Lord. He can leap in the womb because the Lord is in his presence. So we have a real sense that there's an emphasis in this last part of Luke's gospel about what children are in the womb are doing. There's a lot of mention of womb talk here, babies in the womb. And there's even a baby that's recognizing Jesus and yet when Elizabeth sees the baby Jesus in the spirit present in Mary's womb, she doesn't say through the Holy Spirit, how is it that the Lord has come to me? How is it that the Savior of all, how is it that God is with us has come to me? She says a prayer or an exclamation, you might say, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb? How is it the mother of my Lord comes to me? This is rather significant that in the presence of the Lord and after having just been reminded that babies can talk, so to speak, in the womb with John the Baptist, she is distracted with Mary and we see that she's not distracted because she's just overwhelmed to see her cousin and she had a little moment, but rather it's under the Holy Spirit. And so the final result is is we have to come up with an explanation of why it's appropriate when the Lord is in your presence to recognize the mother and the biblical precedent is already there.