Mark 6:1-6  A prophet in His hometown.  Can you imagine the astonishment when the listeners on the Sabbath heard Jesus teaching in the Synagogue?  They had watched him grow up from being a baby, and He was the carpenter, they knew that He had no formal education.  He had not sat under the teaching of the local religious leaders to be mentored by them.  Yet here Jesus was teaching with authority.  They knew his life, for thirty years or so, they thought they knew Him intimately.  They knew Him so intimately that they knew that He was not Joseph’s son.  I found this interesting note regarding these verses:

“Despite His impressive words and deeds, He was too ordinary for them. The derogatory question, Isn’t this the carpenter? implied, “He is a common laborer like the rest of us.” All His immediate family—mother, brothers, and sisters—were known to the townspeople, and they were ordinary people. The phrase Mary’s Son was also derogatory since a man was not described as his mother’s son in Jewish usage even if she was a widow, except by insult (cf. Jud. 11:1–2; John 8:41; 9:29). Their words, calculated insults, also suggested they knew there was something unusual about Jesus’ birth.

“His brothers and sisters (cf. Mark 3:31–35) were most likely children of Joseph and Mary born after Jesus’ birth rather than Joseph’s children by a previous marriage or Jesus’ cousins. James became a leader in the early church at Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15:13–21), and authored the Epistle of James (James 1:1). Judas was probably Jude, author of the Epistle of Jude (Jude 1). Nothing more is known of Joses and Simon or His sisters. Perhaps Joseph was not mentioned because he was already dead.

“Thus since the townspeople could not explain Jesus, they took offense (from skandalizomai, “to be caused to stumble, to be repelled”; cf. comments on Mark 14:27) at Him, finding no reason to believe He was God’s Anointed One.”^[1]

Grassmick pointed out that Yeshua was spoken of in a derogatory manner. This is not the last time that this will happen. In this passage His family was used to discredit Him and turn Him from being a great prophet to becoming a simple carpenter. Today, the discredit is issued using the siblings in a different manner. When you count up the people, Yeshua came from a family of seven or more children. Yet there are some denominations that declare that Mary only had one child, Jesus. They claim that the other children are “cousins”.

This is so incredibly important that I am going to step outside of the study for a moment to focus on the origins of this teaching:

This teaching is rooted in paganism. Mary is being replaced by this scenario pagan gods.  The Madonna and child statues that are popular today date all the way back to Babylon. These depict Semiramis and the baby Tammuz. Through time she changed her name as she morphed through various religions. However, she did keep the title “Queen of Heaven”. This goddess through the ages only had one child. She had other names that you may be familiar with: Isis, Ishtar and the Greek Diana. Ishtar is where we get the word Easter from. What is significant to our discussion is that she only had one child. When the early church decided to blend paganism with Christianity, they blended the mother of earth (Cybele) with Mary. She was also blended with Diana. This drew converts from two camps of paganism. The common element in all of her personalities through the ages was the association with sun worship.

One blog that I ran across did an excellent job in summarizing the names of the different mother and child combinations:

“”Semiramis and Horus/Tammuz were worshipped as “Madonna and child.” And as the generations passed, they were worshipped under other names in different countries and languages. Many of these are recognizable – such as -Fortuna and Jupiter in Rome; Aphrodite and Adonis in Greece and Ashtoreth/Astarte and Molech/Baal in Canaan.“–Syncretismas!by Martin G. Collins Forerunner, December 1995

“The ancient Germans worshipped the virgin HERTHA with the child in the arms of his mother. The Scandinavians called her DISA pictured with her child. In Egypt, the mother and her child wereworshiped as ISIS with the infant OSIRIS or HORUS seated on his mother’s lap.In India, the mother and child were called DEVAKI and KRISHNA, and also ISI and ISWARA as they are worshiped to this day.In Asia, they were known as CYBELE and DEOIUS; in pagan Rome, as FORTUNA and JUPITER-PUER, or the boy JUPITER; in Greece, as CERES, the great mother with babe at her breast, or as IRENE,the goddess of peace, with the boy PLUTUS in her arms. Even in Tibet, China, and Japan, Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the Roman counterpart of MADONNA and child. SHING MOO, the holy mother in China was portrayed with a child in her armsand a glory (halo – nimbus) around her.”[2]

The problem for the early promoters of the blending of goddesses with Mary was the fact that she had other children who were not gods.[3] The important point in this discussion was that these goddesses only had one child. In order for the merging to work, they had to deny the other children and raise Mary to a goddess standard. This is the reason for the doctrine of the birth of Mary as the “immaculate conception”. The Catholics through the ages have taught that she was born without original sin. In other words, she was sinless. This raised her from being a normal person to becoming like God. This is also one of the reasons that she is prayed to by so many. She also receives worship from her followers…

I do not want to start slamming the Catholic church. They were saddled with this doctrine before they officially became the Roman Catholic church. It is unfortunate that when the early doctrines were hammered out that they did not correct this. It has however, influenced many Christian churches who broke away from Catholicism. Most deny the full package but still cling to some of the ideas promoted by this fallacy. This discussion could be expanded to include many other aspects of blending of the pagan gods with Christianity, but for the sake of brevity, we are going to return to the passage now.

Returning to Mark 6:1-6

Why couldn’t Jesus do a miracle there?  Of course, healing the sick was miracles, but nothing that required great faith.  It is probably because the faith that was displayed was from the sick, and not from the body as a whole.  It seems that the body of this synagogue were hostile toward the Him. It is possible that many considered Him to be an illegitimate child, and therefore tainted. This comes up in the scriptures when the Pharisees were trying to nail Jesus for his questionable birth (John 8:19; John 8:39-41). The discussion gets heated through that passage.

Yeshua stated that a prophet is without honor in his own home. This idea is promoted in several places in the gospels. Jeremiah wrote about this dilemma when he complained about the things his family was saying (Jer 14:6). Teaching was not taking place with that crowd. Yeshua left them with something to think about though. He healed some of the sick people.

I am going to close here. The short six verse passage became quite a discussion.

Thanks, Joe.

^[1] John D. Grassmick, “Mark,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 126–127.

[2] https://wakeupcallpage.tumblr.com/post/31355632800/semiramis-isis-queen-of-heavenmother-of-god, accessed May 28, 2019.

[3] I recall reading in Ancient Near Eastern Literature many years ago that Semiramis had other gods as children, but was unable to find the document. If you know of this please make a comment.