MARY THE VIRGIN

Arabic Maryam ( مريم‎ ). Heb. ‏מִרְיָם‎ . The mother of Jesus. According to Muḥammadan tradition, and the Qurʾān, she was the daughter of ʿImrān and his wife Ḥannah, and the sister of Aaron. The account of her birth as given in the Qurʾān is in Sūrah iii. 31 :— “Remember when the wife of ʿImrān said, ‘O my Lord! I vow to Thee what is in my womb, for thy special service. Accept it from me, for Thou Hearest, Knowest!’ And when she had given birth to it, she said, ‘O my Lord! Verily I have brought forth a female,’—God knew what she had brought forth: a male is not as a female—‘and I have named her Mary, and I take refuge with Thee for her and for her offspring, from Satan the stoned.’ So with goodly acceptance did her Lord accept her, and with goodly growth did he make her grow. Zacharias reared her. So oft as Zacharias went in to Mary at the sanctuary, he found her supplied with food. ‘Oh Mary!’ said he, ‘whence hast thou this?’ She said, ‘It is from God; for God supplieth whom He will, without reckoning!’ ” In Sūrah xix. 28 , is the story of her giving birth to Jesus. [ JESUS CHRIST .] And when she brought the child to the people, they exclaimed, “O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a bad man, nor was thy mother a harlot.” Christian critics have a umed, and not without much reason, that Muḥammad has confused the Mary of the New Testament with the Miriam of the Old, by representing her as the daughter of ʿImrān and the sister of Aaron. It is certainly a cause of some perplexity to the commentators. Al-Baiẓāwī says she was called “sister of Aaron” because she was of the Levitical race; but Ḥusain says that the Aaron mentioned in the verse is not the same person as the brother of Moses. Muḥammad is related to have said that “no child is born but the devil hath touched it, except Mary and her son Jesus.”