'Mother of God with us' — and why honoring her isn't worship. (Chapter 4 · 4.3 Mother of "God with Us")	Isaiah's virgin bears Immanuel, 'God with us,' which Matthew applies to Jesus. Because her Son is God-with-us, Mary is rightly the 'Mother of God' — a claim about who Jesus is. And honoring the queen mother is not worship. Pitre's criterion is precise (p 88): in ancient Judaism and Christianity the essence of worship was sacrifice; honour, petition and praise can all be given to human beings, but sacrifice is offered to God alone. That is why Epiphanius condemned the Collyridians, who offered the eucharistic bread to Mary, while insisting she be honoured — 'Mary is to be held in honor, but the Lord is to be worshiped!'	catena::topic-theotokos
Christology first — CCC 487 and the three things Notre Dame taught him (Chapter 1 · 1.3 Through Ancient Jewish Eyes)	Pitre structures his own change of mind as three discoveries. First, the Catholic beliefs about Mary — perpetual virginity, sinlessness, 'Mother of God,' intercession, bodily assumption — are ancient and were held by Christians across the Holy Land, Syria, Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor and Rome. Second, those beliefs flowed out of what the early Christians believed about Jesus; he quotes CCC 487 in full. Third, and 'most important of all,' the ancient Christians got their beliefs about Mary from the Old Testament, read typologically. From this comes the book's rule: 'in every chapter, before we look at Mary, we will consider Jesus.'	catena::topic-theotokos
Elder Elizabeth honours younger Mary; 'my Lord' is a Davidic — and perhaps divine — title (Chapter 4 · 4.2 Mary the New Queen)	Elizabeth is Mary's older kinswoman, and 'it would have been unheard of for an older relative to honor a younger cousin in this way — unless of course the younger person was royalty.' Her words, 'the mother of my Lord,' echo the court's address to the Davidic king as 'my lord' (2 Samuel 24:21; Psalm 110:1). Pitre then cites the Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine, who takes kyrios here as a divine title: 'Mary is not just the mother of the messianic king; she is also the mother of the divine Lord.' The Theotokos section later in the chapter rests on this.	catena::topic-theotokos
If Mary is the Ark, Jesus is God — Hippolytus, Athanasius and Jacob of Serug (Chapter 3 · 3.3 Assumed into Heaven)	'If Mary is the new Ark, and the Ark is the dwelling place of God on earth, then, by implication, Jesus is God on earth.' The typology about Mary illuminates the deeper mystery of her Son's divinity, and three Fathers 'writing in Rome, Egypt, and Syria' saw it. Hippolytus: Christ's human nature 'of incorruptible wood, that is to say, of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit, overlaid within and without… by purest gold of the word of God.' Athanasius: 'O Ark of the New Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold!… the flesh in which divinity resides.' Jacob of Serug: 'that maiden was the Ark of the Godhead,' before whom John leaped as David danced. They got this from the Old Testament, and they based what they believed about Mary on what they believed about Christ (CCC 2676).	catena::topic-theotokos
Theotokos — Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Ephesus 431, what 'Mother of God' does not mean, and the word assembled from Matthew 1:23 (Chapter 4 · 4.3 Mother of "God with Us")	Athanasius, defender of Nicaea and first to list the twenty-seven New Testament books, gives one of the earliest indisputable uses of 'Mother of God' — inside a treatise defending Jesus' divinity. Gregory Nazianzen: 'If anyone does not admit that holy Mary is Mother of God, he is cut off from the Godhead.' The Council of Ephesus (431) proclaimed it: 'the premier example of how ancient Christians' beliefs about Mary were ultimately based on what they believed about Jesus' (CCC 466, 495). The title does not mean Mary is equal to or greater than God, or not fully human, or mother of the Trinity: 'she is a mere human being, a creature,' mother of the divine Son who became man. And the word itself is biblical: theos, 'God,' and tokos from tiktō, 'to bear,' are both in Matthew 1:23 — 'a virgin shall… bear (tiktō) a son… God (theos) with us.' 'There it is, right there, on the first page of the New Testament!'	catena::topic-theotokos
Whoever Immanuel is, his mother is the queen mother — and Micah 5 as the oldest reading of Isaiah 7 (Chapter 4 · 4.1 The Queen Mother in Ancient Israel)	Pitre steps around the old debate over Isaiah 7:14 — the meaning of the 'sign,' the sense of 'almah, whether the child is Hezekiah or a future king — with one observation: 'However one interprets the prophecy, the maiden is the mother of the future king. As such, the mother of Immanuel would by definition also be the queen mother.' Then Micah: several scholars hold that Micah's prophecy of the woman who 'gives birth' to the Bethlehem ruler is based on Isaiah 7, which makes it 'the most ancient Hebrew interpretation of the birth of Immanuel that we possess' — and it reads Isaiah 7 of the Messiah, whose origin is 'from days of eternity' and whose human mother is 'she who gives birth.'	catena::topic-theotokos