Annalex: "Note that it does NOT say that the family included children born of Mary or that Joseph did not keep Mary a virgin after Christ's birth."
So Mary had a perpetual headache throughout her marriage? Was Joseph gay? :) Why would he not touch his wife as a husband? There are many Bible verses evidencing that Jesus had blood related siblings. How do you interpret them all away?
Following the Fall, the union of sacred marriage was darkened and disordered by withdrawal from divine grace and missapplied, concupiscent lust. This is what the appearance of clothing as a necessity of life indicates. Were it not for the original sin, we would walk amid the prettiest young women, all stark naked, and have lust only for our wives. However, God continued to command us to multiply and fill the Earth, and also and at the same time, seek Him and love Him. He wanted to restore the sacred union. So he put in us the yearning for truth and the sexual desire, unitive and procreative in origin, as a foretaste of Heaven. Sex done right, -- in the context of the loving marriage and open to creation of new life, -- is a glimpse at the eternal joy of paradise. Its hormonal effects are tools to an objective, not the objective itself.
Mary had arrived to the unitive and procreative marriage to the Holy Ghost abundantly. Sinless, she was united to Him at all times. Her body gave birth to the perfect new man. She was walking in paradise all her life. The hormonal urgings a lesser woman goes by had no purpose in her; if she had them they were not significant and probably not noticeable to her enlightened mind.
The Catholic world, by the way, is filled with celibate men and women that are not bothered by their celibacy in the least. They have learned to sublimate their sexual energy to intellectual and spiritual creativity. It is not a unique phenomenon.
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)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.kai ouk eginosken auten eos ou eteken ton yion autes ton prototokon kai ekalesen to onoma autou iesoun
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?
As to the "brothers", Jesus Himself loved calling people brothers and they were not blood relatives; he in fact taught us all to do the same. In large families there is a mixture of cousins, second cousins, half brothers, milk brothers, and of course bolld brothers. It is natural to refer to all of them collectively as "brothers". In Greek to this day "adelphoi" (the word used in the Gospel) is used to indicate all kinds of kinsfolk. Likewise, in the Old Testament Lot is called "brother" of Abraham even though the Bible is explicit about his genealogy and he is his nephew. There is no warrant to assume that "adelphoi" in Matthew 12 referred to physical children of Mary (we are all her spiritual children).
Matthew 1:25 shows Mary to be a virgin UNTIL she gave birth. There are other places in scripture that talks about the brothers of Jesus. While some suggest the meaning of this word could also mean "cousin" I remain skeptical. James (from the book) identifies himself as the "brother" of Christ; others books written by Peter, Paul and John do not do this. Another point is that God only came to Mary once choosing to work through Joseph after they were married; since Joseph was now head of the house as God intend. But there is no mistaking the conjunction "until" in Matthew 1:25 which even John Calvin had a hard time explaining away.
To me the problem isn't with Catholic doctrine of Mary being a virgin because we all would agree that she was and remained a virgin until Christ was born. The problem is that this virginity is elevated far beyond reasonableness which has spawned other errors, the chief believing Mary was not tainted with original sin in order for Christ to be born. New Advent states:
This is where this perpetual virginity has led the Church; to compare Mary against Eve. Jesus is to Adam as Mary is to Eve and as Jesus was untainted by original sin so was Mary. Thus Mary becomes a “co-redeemer” in the work of Christ by being untainted with original sin, she freely gives herself to God unlike Eve who gave herself to temptation.
While this is very poetic it is wrong theologically speaking. The scriptures plainly says that Eve was deceived (2 Cor 11:3, 1 Tim 2:14). In other words, Eve was duped. This is important in that sin came into the world through the willful act of Adam-not Eve who was the FIRST to eat of the fruit. It was through Adam that the world was corrupted and condemned-not Eve. (We'll leave out why God didn't give Adam the wisdom and understanding of his action for now.)
One more note of interest as I was looking something up. Please look at how the Catholics interpret Gen 3:15
Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
New Advent on Mary