What information do we have about Mary's cousin Elizabeth?

Answer 1

Luke's Gospel says that Elizabeth was married to a priest named Zacharias and that her only child, John the Baptist, was born miraculously to Elizabeth in her old age.

The problem is that only the author of Luke's Gospel seems to have known anything about Elizabeth or been aware of a family relationship between Elizabeth and Mary, if such a relationship existed. Even the name Elizabeth raises doubts as to the historicity of events that supposedly occurred many decades before Luke was written. John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman) says he is suspicious because Elizabeth in Hebrew would be Elisheba', a name that appears only once in the Old Testament, as the wife of Aaron, brother of Moses. Luke 1:5 describes Elizabeth as the daughter of Aaron, so the author must have had Aaron and Moses in mind when he wrote his Gospel. Until the historicity of this part of Luke's Gospel is resolved, we must acknowledge we really know nothing about Elizabeth.