what does the virgin mary represent?

The Virgin Mary is the most mythical figure in the Catholic faith, and it is also an important factor in attracting a large number of female believers to actively join the Catholic Church. They respectfully call Mary the mother of God. Although she is a person, she has no human emotions and desires. She can conceive without any blemish, avoid all the debts of the original sin of mankind, have a beautiful face, perfect divine nature, and pass the world through. Life is the ascension of spirit and flesh, without leaving the body to rot and smell in the tomb.

Who is the Virgin Mary?

　　The record of Mary in the biblical text is quite brief. She was a devout Jewish girl in Nazareth. She was married to the carpenter Joseph, but she felt that the Holy Spirit became pregnant before she got married and gave birth to Jesus after marriage.

　　Religious stories generally cannot be studied deeply, because they are not historical stories, but mythical stories deduced according to religious needs. Just like the story of Mary feeling that the Holy Spirit became pregnant before she got married, it was to prove that Jesus was the Messiah (Christ) predicted by the Old Testament prophets. According to the gospel authors Matthew and Luke The mistranslation of the Greek text of Zi has created a gospel story about a virgin conceiving and giving birth to a child. In fact, in the Hebrew Old Testament Isaiah spoke of young women giving birth to children, not virgin girls. The mistranslation of the Greek text of the Seventies caused errors in the understanding of Matthew and Luke, and then the first myth about Mary was born by mistake, and it became the creed of Christianity.

　　 But, without the first myth about Mary, would Christianity still have the power to sweep Europe to the Americas?

What will Maria in history look like in a patriarchal world? Some Israeli scholars believe that the ideal of the ancient Israelis was to "birth and breed" (see Chapter 1 of "Genesis"), and the value of a Jewish woman is also measured by her fertility. According to the insistence of the Catholic Church, Mary, the mother of Jesus, had only one son, Jesus. If the Bible does not clearly describe her, she might also have another son, Jacques. Obviously, Mary was born too little, and there was a certain gap between the values of the ancient Israelis.

Maria in history is actually very unfortunate. She is a woman. When she was born, she was not as noble as a man. Chapter 12 of Leviticus stipulates: A woman is only unclean for seven days if she gives birth to a boy, and she will be unclean if she gives birth to a girl. Two seven days, but also sixty-six days of home. But Maria's misfortune is far more than that she is a woman. Her even greater misfortune is that she lives early in widowhood, and her child is killed early when she grows up. The death of Jesus was a sign of human suffering, but to his mother Maria, it was tantamount to putting her to death. Religion sometimes conceals the unfortunate facts of mankind, especially after religion dramatizes the death of Jesus. The unfortunate is compensated, and Maria becomes the most blessed woman. But Mary, the mother of God, is a silent statue, and her paintings will peel off accidentally, revealing the simple nature of the mud.

It is said that Mary has been following Jesus during the preaching of Jesus. When Jesus was crucified, Mary stood by the cross, and Jesus entrusted her to the apostle John. After Jesus ascended to heaven, Mary was also there when the disciples gathered to pray at Mark's house in Jerusalem. Legend has it that Mary was later taken to Ephesus by the apostle John, where she was taken to retirement. Nevertheless, the special relationship between Mary and Jesus will inevitably inspire people to go beyond the doctrine and make more reveries. Maybe the masculine God needs to be corrected by female factors, otherwise it will lack beauty. Think of the Buddhist Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva's transformation from a male to a female in China, and one will naturally understand the inevitability and rationality of why the unfortunate Mary went to the altar in Western beliefs.

Of course, the belief in Mary is also the legitimate result of the old belief in the goddess in the West impacting on Christianity. After the Christian Church achieved the status of the state religion, the original Western religion and Christianity repeatedly competed for the dominance of religious influence. In order to peacefully cope with this challenge, the church chose to use the special relationship between Mary and Jesus to transform the pagan goddess beliefs. For the worship of Mary. In 431 AD, Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, used the words that many Ephesian pagans used to call the great goddess Artemis—Diana in a sermon in Ephesus to praise Mary. In the subsequent Ephesus Conference, despite the protests of Constantine Patriarch Nestorius, Mary was crowned with the crown of “Mother of God”, and the goddess of nature, Artemis, Diana and other gods The most beautiful and gentle characteristics of all belong to Maria.

In the Middle Ages, people's enthusiasm for worshiping the Virgin increased unabated. The masses used their rich imagination and unparalleled enthusiasm to "create the most beautiful rose flower in the Middle Ages, making Maria the most beloved figure in history." In this context, the "Gospel of Mary" was also formed. Various miracles about Maria are widely circulated. Driven by this situation, the attitude of the Catholic Church has undergone a major change in the 12th to 13th centuries. In 1230, an abbot of France assembled the legends about Mary into a 30,000-line poem, which narrated countless deeds and stories of Mary. Although the church does not recognize all of the stories, the deeds of the life of the Virgin have evolved into major festivals-the Annunciation (March 25), the Meeting of the Virgin (July 2), and the Feast of Candles (March 25). February 2), Assumption Day (August 15) and so on. In 1854, Pope Pius IX declared that Mary had no original sin, and "The Immaculate Conception of the First Child" became the orthodox doctrine.

As a Christian standing on the stand of maintaining the orthodox faith, he naturally does not want the worship of the Virgin to impact the worship of Jesus Christ. Converting the goddess belief in paganism into the worship of Mary used to be the church's strategy to transform paganism, but now it has the power to alienate Catholicism. This is an unexpected problem. Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, played the role of a speculator in religious beliefs, while the Patriarch of Constantine, Nestorius, who insisted on his faith, was exiled as heresy and died as a guest. The last famous saying was: "Mary is not the one who gave birth to God, but the one who gave birth to Christ. God is not a two or three-month-old baby."

　　 The rise of the cult of the Virgin in the history of Catholicism is an excellent example of the game and interaction between Christianity and paganism. The current result is at least that people’s wishes and needs have created the worship of the Virgin (worship). On the other hand, Maria herself has made a painted clay tire, always accepting the devout worship of the believers with a silent smile.