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Virgin Mary....
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The Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of
Jesus Christ, the mother of
God.
In general, the theology and history of Mary the Mother of God follow the
chronological order of their respective sources, i.e. the
Old Testament, the
New Testament, the early Christian and Jewish witnesses.
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The first prophecy referring to Mary
is found in the very
opening chapters of the Book of Genesis (3:15): "I will put enmities between
thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and
thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." This rendering appears to differ in
two respects from the original Hebrew text. The second prophecy referring to
Mary is found in Isaias 7:1-17. Critics have
endeavored to represent this
passage as a combination of occurrences and sayings from the life of the
prophet written down by an unknown hand [6]. |
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The credibility of the contents is not necessarily
affected by this theory, since prophetic traditions may be recorded by any
writer without losing their credibility. But even Duhm considers the theory
as an apparent attempt on the part of the critics to find out what the
readers are willing to bear patiently; he believes it is a real misfortune
for criticism itself that it has found a mere compilation in a passage which
so graphically describes the birth-hour of faith. |
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A third prophecy referring to Our Blessed Lady is
contained in Micheas 5:2-3: "And thou, Bethlehem, Ephrata, art a little
one among the thousands of Juda: out of thee shall be come forth unto me
that is to be the ruler in Israel, and his going forth is from the
beginning, from the days of eternity. Therefore will he give them up till
the time wherein she that travaileth shall bring forth, and the remnant of
his brethren shall be converted to the children of Israel." Though the
prophet (about 750-660 B.C.) was a contemporary of Isaias, his prophetic
activity began a little later and ended a little earlier than that of
Isaias. There can be no doubt that the Jews regarded the foregoing
prediction as referring to the Messias. |
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