Anna was a Jewish prophet and widow who spoke about the infant Jesus at Jerusalem’s temple. A prophet is someone who speaks for God. Luke names her among the people who welcomed Jesus near the beginning of his life.
Birth year: Unknown.
Death year: Unknown.
Active during: Around the turn from the first century BC to the first century AD, when Jesus was an infant. The exact calendar placement depends on the chronology used.
Role: Prophet and worshiper at Jerusalem’s temple.
Family: Daughter of Penuel (pee-NYOO-ehl), from the tribe of Asher.
Main passage: Luke 2:36–38.
What Luke tells us
Anna had been married for seven years before becoming a widow. Prayer, fasting, and temple worship marked her life. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple, she approached, thanked God, and spoke about the child to people hoping for Jerusalem’s deliverance.
Was she eighty-four?
The NIV main text describes her as a widow until age eighty-four. Its footnote gives another possible reading: she had been widowed for eighty-four years. The Greek wording allows this difference in translation. Neither reading tells us she waited eighty-four years to meet Jesus.
Her age at marriage is not stated. We should not invent that age, calculate a precise lifespan, or assign a birth year from it. BiblicalTraining discusses both readings.
Her place in Jerusalem
Luke emphasizes her constant worship at the temple. That does not securely establish that she moved into a room within the complex. Her exact home is unknown.
The temple stood on the raised sacred site in the eastern Old City of Jerusalem. Its building was destroyed in AD 70, also called 70 CE. These are two labels for the same calendar year. Today’s buildings on the site belong to later periods.
Keeping the people distinct
This Anna is the woman in Luke 2. She is not the woman called Anne or Anna in later traditions about Mary’s mother. Her short biblical account does not provide a fuller biography or details about her death.
The portrait is an imagined historical illustration, not a record of her appearance.
Explore the temple site in modern Jerusalem.
Read further
Luke 2, NIV, including the footnote to verse 37; BiblicalTraining: Anna; Leen Ritmeyer: the temple site in the Herodian period.