Mary's Age?

[MarkR]

I always thought, or was told that Mary was about 16 at the time of the Annunciation. Recently I’ve been hearing more and more frequently that she was 13 or 14 (which seems kind of young even for those days). Obviously there’s no reference to her age in the Bible, but is there any reliable tradition that refers to her age? Are there conflicting traditions? Where did this 13/14 come from??

 

[1ke]

Any age proposed for Mary is *speculation *based on the cultural norms of the time-- as determined by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and sociologists.

She was *likely *somewhere between 13 and 16, but we really just don’t know. She could have been older.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the Annunciation, “The opinion that Joseph at the time of the Annunciation was an aged widower and Mary twelve or fifteen years of age, is founded only upon apocryphal documents.”

 

[patrick457]

I always thought, or was told that Mary was about 16 at the time of the Annunciation. Recently I’ve been hearing more and more frequently that she was 13 or 14 (which seems kind of young even for those days). Obviously there’s no reference to her age in the Bible, but is there any reliable tradition that refers to her age? Are there conflicting traditions? Where did this 13/14 come from??

Just as the poster above said, it was more likely speculation based on cultural norms. It’s not like the Jews of 2000 years ago were modern-day Westerners who have 16, 18 or above as a legal age for marrying.

 

[MarkR]

Thanks,

I thought that was the case. It’s just that I hear priests state her age as though it were a fact, and only recently has the 13/14 time frame seemed to come into vogue. Most seem to be saying that now. I thought that there might have been some recent discovery, or educated opinion that I missed.