And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" -- Luke 1:39-45). With her advanced age, especially compared to Mary's, Elizabeth also begins to have a protective role towards her younger relative and, by correlation, towards the yet unborn Jesus. Following the storyline and considering the times, Mary became pregnant without being Joseph's wife in a physical sense. Given the traditions, this may have meant that Joseph's family would have had the opportunity to kill her in order to save their honor. .

The fact that Mary chooses Elizabeth as the relative where to take refuge shows the importance of Elizabeth's character in the biblical storyline and the fact that she offers sufficient guarantees to ensure that she is chosen for that. The previously mentioned characteristics of Elizabeth blend in to ensure that she is the protective individual that can take Mary in.

Following her birth, there are few subsequent scenes in which Elizabeth appears. The storyline is focused on different, more important characters, so she last appears when deciding on the name of the child and attending his circumcision. She strongly argues that the child's name will be John, emphasizing, once more, not a stubborn nature, but rather the certitudes and sound truths that are hard to deny for somebody who has accepted God and his decisions.

Naming the child John was equivalent to breaking with the family tradition, a tradition in which the child would be named after one of the relatives or ancestors. The fact that he does not take the name of anybody else in the family means that he will start a new tradition and will belong to a new familial...

His break with the world he belongs to, as a first step to becoming the Messenger of the Messiah, is, in fact, started by Elizabeth's stubbornness in insisting that he will be named John.
As a secondary character in the New Testament, Elizabeth has, however, a tremendous impact on Christian faith, because of different reasons, which were discussed in this paper. She is, first of all, a symbol of faith and of accepting God's way and God's decisions, even if she does not always understand them. She cannot conceive a child until she is in her 60s, but she accepts this with the certitude that this is God's decisions and this is how things are meant to be.

At the same time, she is carrying the Messenger, he who will announce the coming of the Messiah. In that quality, she does everything possible to ensure that this occurs, including breaking with tradition and giving him a new name, one that had not been previously used in the family.

Finally, her character is the protective one towards Mary and the unborn baby Jesus and it is to her that Mary turns in her initial months of pregnancy. In her role, she is able to convey the conscience of safety to the pregnant Mary and, thus, contribute to the successful completion of the pregnancy.

Bibliography

1. Capoccia, Kathryn. The Woman who bore John the Baptist. 2000. On the Internet at http://www.biblebb.com/files/kss/kss-eliz.htm. Last retrieved on June 9, 2010

2. HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. New York Bible Society. 1978

Capoccia, Kathryn. The Woman who bore John the Baptist. 2000. On the Internet at http://www.biblebb.com/files/kss/kss-eliz.htm. Last retrieved on June 9, 2010