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To: annalex
Joseph and Mary had sex. The Bible says so.

Matthew 1:24
 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:

25  And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

1,628 posted on 02/24/2006 2:22:15 PM PST by Full Court (Keepers at home, do you think it's optional?)
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To: Full Court
The Bible says so

This is a good example of reading a translation and imagining the meaning. This is an excerpt from my post from another thread that gives a little bit of a background, then explains Matthew 1:25.

Regarding the verses. The Greek word in Matthew 1:25 is "eos" and it simply means "prior to".

And he knew her not till she brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS. (Matthew 1:25, Douay-Rheims)

kai ouk eginosken auten eos ou eteken ton yion autes ton prototokon kai ekalesen to onoma autou iesoun

Sometimes "eos" means that the action (or in St. Joseph's case, inaction) before the moment it points to has ceased and sometimes it means that the action continued. We understand which is the case from context, and when we need to translate into English, which has a more finely defined words, we choose between "until", "till", "to" or "before". Both Douay and King James translate it as "till"; I am not suprised that mariophobic translations, that abounded in modern times and Harley is using, mistranslate it as "until". It is most similar to the English "till" which also does not have the strict "before, but not after" meaning. For example, if I say "I did not drink alcohol till the blood test" the likely context is that my blood work should be good, not that I went to the bar right after I went to the clinic. But if I say "I did not drink alcohol till I joined a fraternity in college" then the context is, most likely, that I drank once I joined because that is what fraternities are for, are they not? In Matthew 1 the context is that Christ's birth was miraculous, not the relations John and Mary had after the focus of Matthew's story shifted away. It is reasonable to assume that Mathew's focus was on the absence of marital act before the birth of Christ, not after, all the more so since the testimony of Joseph to that effect had to me made at the time of Christ's birth, but testimonies of one's sex life for reasons other than establishing paternity are not common. Matthew simply had no way of knowing what Joseph and Mary's intimate life was the rest of their days.

Go to The Unbound Bible and select any Greek NT as fist choice. Byzantine/Majority (2000) is the easiest to read and is authoritative. Select any other translation unless you fluently read Greek. Configure the criteria New Testament, Matthew, 1, 25. The results should be just that verse. Find the word "eos" ("o" is "omega", looks like "W") in it, copy it and paste it in the search engine. Clear the Matthew, 1, 25 boxes. This will give you the list of all occurences of "eos". See for yourself if it is used in "before not after" sense all the time. For example, see Matthew 23:35 "That upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed", -- surely the Pharisees did not stop killing the just after Zacharias. Or see Matthew 27:8 "the field was called Haceldama, that is, The field of blood, even to this day" -- did Matthew indicate here that the field is about to be renamed?


1,633 posted on 02/24/2006 2:42:20 PM PST by annalex
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