>>He is claiming that if Mary was a perpetual virgin she bore no “marital relationship” fruit.
He did not say that. He said this:
I would relate a virgin wife to a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit.<<
Precisely my point. I think our disconnect is that you are interpreting it to be discussing her being a virgin before the birth of Christ. I am interpreting it to cover all those years following His birth. And the “fruit” I interpret it to be discussing is the sexual relationship between her and her husband - not kids.
He referred to Mary, a virgin wife, as a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit.
It could not be more plain...or more false.
I’ve been reading Thiede’s “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity” and it has some point that I think would be interesting for this discussion.
We have a bad habit of looking at the people/events of that period through New Testament glasses. There was no New Testament at the time, no seperate community of Christians (they didn’t even call themselves Christians), nor a seperate Christian mindset. Christians of the day were Jews. They attended synagogue with other Jews, and they identified themselves as Jews. What made them different is they were Jews that believed the messiah had come, while other Jews thought he was still to come.
Christians and Jews would grow apart over the next centuries, but at the time of Christ they were both Jews. To understand Christians of the first century (and the NT Biblical characters) you have to understand them from a Jewish perspective of their time.
He discusses the Essenes’ celibacy and how at odds it is with Jewish thought of the day. God’s command to “Go forth and mulitply” was taken as seriously as any of the 10 commandments. Someone that refused to marry (and procreate within marriage) was commiting a sin on par with worshiping false idols or murder (it may seem odd to us today, but that was the thought in the day.)
Which brings us to Joseph and Mary. Not only was sex within marriage (as Paul also points out in his letters) NOT considered a sin, but a husband and wife not engaging in sex (and procreating) WAS considered a sin in Jewish thought of the day. Joseph and Mary (both being Jews and immersed in the Jewish religion/thought/culture of their day) would have been under tremendous social (and self imposed) pressure to have additonal children beyond Jesus.
The idea that Mary should remain a perpetual virgin to protect her from some taint of sin would have puzzled Jews of the day. Their response would have been “Sex between a husband and wife isn’t a sin; how can engaging in an activity that isn’t a sin (and also mandated by God) taint someone with sin?”