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The passage of interest is Luke 11:27-28:

And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

The question presented is whether this woman's statement A) validates veneration of Mary as a pattern for veneration of other saints, or B) suggests a contrast between Mary's blessing and the greater blessing of hearing and obeying God's word.

The key to this analysis is the disjunctive "Yea, rather," from Μενουνγε ("menounge"), which is certainly an interesting word. Greek offers a number of words which have a fairly wide range of possible meanings, some of which would even seem contradictory to newcomers, and so context cannot be ignored in resolving proper usage.

For example, the seemingly simple particle και can be translated as: “and”, “also”, “even”, “both”, “then”, “so”, “likewise,” and so forth. Which one is exactly right for a given situation depends a great deal on the surrounding framework of syntax, ideas, and facts, i.e., context.

Nevertheless, we begin at the beginning. μενουνγε is a composite of three particles, each of which offer challenges of their own:

Μεν, for example, can be either confirmatory OR contrastive, as in “true” versus “but.”

ουν can be used to either confirm or to infer, as in “then” or “therefore”

γε is an emphatic particle; it strengthens an assertion. Which assertion it strengthens depends to a large degree on whether the Μεν is being used to confirm or contrast. If confirmatory, it strengthens the supplemental inference following it without contradicting the preceding statement. If contrastive, it deprecates the preceding statement and shifts the focus to the statement following as the thing the speaker truly wants to highlight.

However, as others have noted, the composite form can become greater or at least different in meaning than the mere sum of its parts. Which is why it requires some careful analysis in any given passage to determine the best rendering of the term as a composite.

For example, the Louw & Nida (L&N) Semantic Domains lexicon acknowledges μενοῦνγε as a marker of contrast:

89.128 μενοῦνa; μενοῦνγε: relatively emphatic markers of contrast—‘but, on the contrary, on the other hand.’ (See: Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains. New York: United Bible Societies.)

Nevertheless, to be fair, L&N also recognize the possible effect of confirmation plus inference:

89.50 οὖνa; μενοῦνb: markers of result, often implying the conclusion of a process of reasoning—‘so, therefore, consequently, accordingly, then, so then.’ (Ibid)

Which is why one must get back to context to aid in determining which of the major classes of effect we are seeing.

But before we go on to Luke 11:28, let’s take a look at those other verses that are sometimes used to justify a claim of inconsistency in the AV translation:

1. Romans 9:19-20 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

Clearly here you have contrastive intent in the passage as a whole. Paul imagines his reader raising an objection to the difficult teaching he has just presented on divine election. Does it make sense to see Paul agreeing with his objector? No, it makes far more sense to see Paul as flagging the objection as bogus, then offering his reason why. In this scenario, it makes perfect sense to read μενουνγε as contrastive. A perfectly legitimate translation would be:

“on the contrary [bucko], who are you …”

OK, the “bucko” is paraphrase on steroids, but you get the idea. No way Paul can be seen here as endorsing the foolish words of the objector. So the explicitly and exclusively contrastive use of μενουνγε is confirmed.

Now let's look at some harder cases:

2. Romans 10:17-18 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.

Here, the assertion preceding the "yes verily" (μενουνγε) is Paul’s own didactic statement that faith comes by hearing God’s word. There is no way Paul is going to contradict this, so an exclusively contrastive rendering of μενουνγε is not possible. But if you look closely, there is a contrast. Paul is saying here that not only have his Israelite kinsmen heard the word of God, but that same word of God has gone out into the whole world, so that in some sense everyone has heard, not just Israel.

So there is an expansion of scope. The first assertion is true, but the next assertion dramatically expands the scope.

3. Php 3:7-8 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

“Yea doubtless” is our elusive μενουνγε in this passage. Here, the AV translators use it in an entirely confirmatory sense. But even here I think they may have overlooked a subtle contrast. If Paul had merely wanted to double down on the preceding assertion, he could have used any number of other expressions, such as αμην αμην (“verily verily”), for example.

But μενουνγε is what he used, and it has the potential to be understood as at least partly contrastive, as we have already established. Here again it looks as though he is expanding scope. In verse 7 he recounts his change of perspective concerning his outstanding credentials as an Israelite and a Pharisee, how he came to see all those things as loss rather than gain. Then, using μενουνγε, he opens up the throttle and proclaims EVERYthing loss, as compared with the “excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.”

So the AV translators here were arguably justified in their use of the term as confirmatory, but they might have gotten a little closer to the Greek if they had try to also capture the scope expansion. I might have rendered it something like this:

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. {And not only that,} I count {ALL} things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

My suggested rendering, along with the resulting contrastive emphasis, is enclosed in the curly braces.

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So with these possibilities in mind, let’s look at Luke 11:28:

Luk 11:27-28 And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

The contested phrase is “yea rather” (μενουνγε). What are the major possibilities? Exclusively contrastive, confirmatory AND contrastive, or exclusively confirmatory with subsequent inference.

1. Exclusively contrastive:

Is it possible this is an exclusively contrastive scenario? Yes, it is possible. The subject is blessing. Was it a blessing to Mary for her to be the human mother of Jesus? How could it not be, because she has in Luke 1:48 confirmed her own state of blessing for giving birth to Jesus.

Yet we also know that in Jesus’ teaching he at times used relative contrast to make a point, sometimes in extreme terms. For example, in Luke 14:26, he teaches us we must hate mother and father etc to follow him. This can best be understood as using a relative scale of love to make a teaching point: Our love for Christ must be so absolute that our love for anyone else looks like hatred in comparison.

So here, it is at least possible that the same sort of relative contrast is in view. Certainly it was a great blessing to give birth to the Messiah, as concerning the flesh. But by contrast, it is no blessing at all compared to both hearing and keeping the word of God, which blessing is available not just to Mary, but to everyone who believes.

2. Confirmatory AND Contrastive:

Again, as noted above, we positively know Mary was in fact blessed to be the mother of Jesus, concerning the flesh. Jesus is approached by a woman who is so full of adoration for Jesus that she sees the great blessing it would be to be Jesus’ mother. If μενουνγε is working here as both confirmation AND contrast, it would be easy to see Jesus saying (and I *paraphrase* here):

Yes, it’s true, it was a blessing to be his mother. HOWEVER, by contrast, the even greater blessing is to hear and obey the word of God.

We will come back to this.

3. Exclusively confirmatory:

I think this is the most difficult position to sustain. For it to be true, there could only be a sense of continuation between the preceding assertion by the woman (“it’s a blessing to be Jesus’ mother”), and the follow-up assertion by Jesus (“blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it”). To turn this into a mere continuity, one has to suppose that Jesus is equating being his earthly mother with hearing and obeying the word of God. At best that is an enormous stretch. Yes, Mary did hear and keep the word of God given to her. But that’s not the point the woman is making. For her, it’s simply the fact of being his earthy mother. Leaping from that to veneration of a selective set of saints is not only NOT a continuity; it is a complete non sequitur.

Conclusion:

It seems much more natural to the text that Jesus is taking advantage of a teachable moment to redirect His followers, as He always did, to the honor of God the Father.

For example, when the rich young ruler calls Him good master, Jesus does not deny he is good, but neither does he settle for that, but *rather* redirects the young man to focus on the goodness of God.

Likewise here, Jesus no doubt understands the excitement his presence in earth is creating, along with all the negative possibilities of humanistic hero worship, etc. So it makes perfect sense that while he wouldn’t deny the blessing to Mary of being his earthly mother, he would *rather* redirect his followers’ focus to the main event, the greater blessing, hearing and obeying the word of God. As is true for all of us, even now.