Jennifer Houston McNeel
And when I hear you say that, one of the mothers of the New Testament comes to mind, which is Mary [the mother of Jesus] and her Magnificat. Mary proclaiming that the ones who are or have lifted themselves up, are going to be brought down, and the lowly will be exalted. So that really is at the heart of the message.
David Capes
Yes. I find the last chapter of your book fascinating as well, because you talk about an image in the book of Revelation. It’s a dragon in the in the delivery room. That’s a brilliant way of putting it. You talk about real people like Mary of Nazareth, but you also talk of this figurative person that’s described in, Revelation 12.
Jennifer Houston McNeel
I spend a lot of time on the quote, unquote, real mothers of the Gospels. For example, the women who appear in the gospels, who are mothers. Then in the later parts of the New Testament, I spend more of my time on the figurative language of the New Testament around motherhood and the symbolic figures, because that’s the way that motherhood shows up more often in the letters of the New Testament and in Revelation.
David Capes
Well, one of the themes that you highlight is the one of suffering. Motherhood and suffering. Would you unpack that a little bit for us?
Jennifer Houston McNeel
Yes. I think that goes a little bit back to what you were saying earlier about some of the differences between life today and life in the ancient world. One of those really important differences for mothers between life today and life in ancient world was how dangerous it was to give birth in the ancient world. It was many, many, many times more likely. Some historians estimate, perhaps as much as 200 times more likely that a woman in labor would die in childbirth, as compared to a place like the United States today.
Women who were pregnant were facing that reality. So right from the beginning, before you had gotten very far along, you’re still pregnant. You’re facing this idea of the possibility of death. That is associated with motherhood in the minds of ancient people.
David Capes
Wow. You think about new life, on the one hand, the glory of new life, and bringing it into the world. It was preceded by a lot of suffering, but you also had the possibility that the mother or the child, either the mother or the child, wouldn’t survive very long.
Jennifer Houston McNeel
And then even going beyond childbirth itself. Let’s say both the mother and the child survived childbirth. The danger is not over, because in the ancient world, children died, at much, much higher rates than today, because of diseases, infection, malnutrition and all these kinds of things. So even a mother who successfully comes through childbirth with her infant still has to face the reality that she doesn’t know if that child is going to make it to adulthood or not. Child mortality may be as high as about 50% of infants born alive don’t make it to 10 years old in the ancient world.
So these are some of the reasons that the idea of suffering, danger, and risk swirls around motherhood in the New Testament. We see, for example, in Matthew, in the birth story, we have what we’ve come to call the slaughter of the innocents, where Herod kills all the children two years old and younger. And the image of motherhood is given to us in the text, of Rachel weeping for her children. That’s an image that really resonates with that kind of reality that people experienced in the ancient world.
David Capes
Rachel, as I recall in Jeremiah, was described because the people were being marched into exile (Jeremiah 31:15). And so many died along the way. She’s the mother, far removed, in a sense, but yet she’s mother to all of these people who are going to be taken into exile. Many of those would perish on the journey, because it was a brutal journey, and others would never, never come home. It would be generations later before their children might be allowed to come home.
Jennifer Houston McNeel
Yes. We talked earlier about real mothers and figurative mothers. She’s a bit of both at once. You know, she’s a real mother in the story in Genesis, but in Jeremiah, she becomes this type of symbolic mother figure. She’s the mother, not just of Joseph and Benjamin now, but of the whole nation. And then Matthew draws on that image of Rachel as the mother of the nation to express this mourning and weeping over the slaughtered children.
David Capes
Is there a similar book from Old Testament scripture? It would probably be bigger than yours, because there’s a lot more people there. But is there a book similar to Under Her Wings: Mothers and Motherhood dealing with the Old Testament, because I’m not familiar with one.
Jennifer Houston McNeel
No, there is a book by Bronner about mothers though it wouldn’t be the Old Testament, because she’s a Jewish author. It’s called Stories of Biblical Mothers. It’s the one book I know of about mothers in what [Christians] call the Old Testament. I’m not aware of any others.
David Capes
As a writer, what are your hopes for the book?
Jennifer Houston McNeel
Well, one thing I hope is that it does the very thing we were talking about earlier in giving women a sense that they are included in the story of the New Testament. Because sometimes our churches and our classrooms don’t make that clear to people. That women are also a part of this story, and that women matter in the gospel and to Jesus. And are empowered to participate in the ministry of sharing the gospel as well. So that’s one thing.
Another thing, though, is that I don’t actually intend the book to be only for women or only for mothers, but also for anyone interested in understanding the New Testament better. As I said before, these ideas, these maternal images, are central to the heart of the gospel message as presented by the New Testament.
So I hope that people who aren’t mothers, including men, will be interested in learning more about that. I like to say that just because you’re not a farmer doesn’t mean you don’t pay attention to the agricultural parables that Jesus tells. Or just because you’re not a fisherman, it doesn’t mean you don’t care about learning about Peter. So, these maternal images are really important, I think, for understanding the New Testament itself.
David Capes
Dr. Jennifer Houston McNeil, thanks for being with us today on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Jennifer Houston McNeel
Thank you very much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
