DP #4: Foreshadowing In the Canticles of Mary and Zechariah

The canticles of Mary and Zechariah are easily read as statements of frustration with an oppressive society, but it is not simply the advocacy of his family and close friends that foreshadows and, eventually, leads him to be an advocate for political change, it is his own experience. While Jesus' family was oppressed in Palestine and the authors of the Gospel later saw fit to add the canticles to show the political instability, the experience in Jesus' early life as a refugee in Egypt not only foreshadows, but creates, a personal frustration with the state of affairs in his homeland. The fact that he was cast out lead Jesus to attack the nature of the Palestinian politics, Roman Imperialism and Jewish hypocrisy that had lead his family to live in exile, even if it was of their own free will. Jesus' political advocacy comes from a personal grievance, and while some of that may have been instilled through the political stances of his mother, Jesus' ability to attack the structure of the Jewish Temple society with the vigour that he did clearly shows the intensity of his own experience and his personal analysis of the issues, not simply of a hatred for the Roman society.