Something for your read.
I always thought Jesus had brothers.
In fact, I always wondered if he had sisters as well.
Ping...
Um, the essay does not prove Mary had other children after Jesus. The essay does make a great case for Joseph having children who were his by another wife, who perhaps died in childbirth prior to Joseph’s betrothal with Mary. But the Bible really doesn’t make this issue plain. Joseph however is not a part of the New Testament story after childhood of Jesus (the incident where the twelve year old Jesus lagged behind at the Temple and was not missed until the parents were on the road appears to be the last mention of Joseph, IIRC).
No one, picking up a New Testament and reading it through, would conclude Mary remained a virgin. Neither would they conclude that Purgatory is real, that the Bishop of Rome reigns supreme, or that priests are needed to offer a literal sacrifice of the flesh and blood of Jesus each week (or more). Those require scripture to conform to tradition, rather than judge tradition in light of scripture.
Of course she did, there is no reason not to believe she and Joseph did not have children.
>>It is sad to see the Roman Catholic church go to such lengths to maintain Mary’s virginity, something that is a violation of biblical law to be married and fill the earth.<<
I think that is a misinterpretation. The Bible is quite clear of a virgin birth of God’s Son. After that it will take some serious archaeological detective work to determine what happened. We know the last quote from Mary in the Bible is at the “water to wine” wedding and she says “do as He (Jesus) says.”
At least that is how I recall it. If someone knows otherwise I will gladly accept being corrected.
Salvation I ping you because I am pretty sure you know a lot about this kind of thing..
The divinity of Jesus of Nazareth inheres in his being one of the three persons of the Trinity, the Godhead, and not in any sense on whether or not his mortal mother bore additional children. He is God, and nothing that any mortal has done or can do can alter that truth. No Christian believes that Messiah did not exist prior to his incarnation in a manner chosen by God to serve His purposes, or that God could not have achieved His purpose by some other means. We presume too much when we undertake to impose conditions on Jesus’ divinity on the basis of the imaginings of our innately sinful and errant minds.
These are aomong the stupidest threads I have seen on FR in a long time
Mary had a husband, Jesus talks about ‘brothers’
Mary and Joseph were ‘doing it’
What the heck is the problem with that, that it deserves 2 thousands years of speculation?
Oh, goody, the literalists are at it again.
Just a note to the author: Catholic “tradition” and the selections as to what constituted the New Testament of the Bible were one and the same for 15 centuries, and the “Catholic” version of the New Testament hasn’t changed since then. Isn’t it highly unlikely that the Catholic Church just happened to miss, for 2000+ years, that the New Testament contradicted its teaching? But there are still those who think a smoking gun lurks somewhere . . .
This reminds me of the Sarah Palin email dump.
**Did Mary Have Other Children?**
Simple answer — No. If anyone would have touched her, the Ark of the New Covenant, they would have died just like the people who touched the Ark of the Old Covenant died.
Also — look up in your Bible:
How many times is the word “brethren” used?
A lot!
They lived in family courts, usually with relatives around them. These relatives were called “brethren” or cousins. It’s the language of that day.
Virgin Birth—or Prophetic Slip?
The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary
Aeiparthenos (An Anglo-Catholic Priest on Mary's Perpetual Virginity)
[Why I Am Catholic]: Because of the Protestant Reformers Beliefs On Mary
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Mary: Virgin and Ever Virgin
Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
The Protestant Reformers on the Virgin Mary
Zwingli’s’ Mariology: On Mary “Full of Grace”
Again, another problem with the Protestant doctrine of Scriptural exclusivity that suggests that all that was revealed by God, for all purposes, is contained in one handy-dandy book. Let's examine the Bible, not by a dissection of each word and verse, but at the level of its intended scope and purpose.
The Bible was not intended to be a science or a history book, it is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences or history from it. In the words of (then) Cardinal Ratzinger; "Holy Scripture in its entirety was not written from beginning to end like a novel or a textbook. It is, rather, the echo of God's history with his people. It arose out of the struggles and the vagaries of this history, and all through it we can catch a glimpse of the rises and falls, the sufferings and hopes, and the greatness and failures of this history. The Bible is thus the story of God's struggle with human beings to make himself understandable to them over the course of time; but it is also the story of their struggle to seize hold of God over the course of time."
One cannot get from Holy Scripture a scientific explanation of how the world arose or a detailed historical account of irrelevant happenings. Again n the words of Cardinal Ratzinger; "one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time -- from the images which surrounded the people who lived then, which they used in speaking and in thinking, and thanks to which they were able to understand the greater realities. And only the reality that shines through these images would be what was intended and what was truly enduring."
The Holy Scripture is ambiguous on this issue but the Holy Tradition holds that Mary was otherwise childless and that is good enough for me.
Luke 2:7 calls Jesus her first-born son. To me that means she had other children.
People are forever going to argue this one *and* it makes no difference what-so-ever.
I am going to go ahead and say it, the Catholic worship of Mary is heresy.
I’m reminded of my grandmother, a staunch Baptist, explaining the references to wine in the Bible. According to her, the many refrences weren’t about any alcoholic wine, but simply a Jewish version of Welch’s grape juice.
The controversy about the family members of Jesus is discussed in great detail and with lots of scholarly references in the book, “The Jesus Dynasty” by Dr. James Tabor, head of the Dept of Religion at U North Carolina.
You can’t read this book without coming away with the conclusion that the “perpetual virginity of Mary” theory is much like my Grandmother’s Jewish grape juice theory—something that was invented much later to meet the required tenets of a theological matter of faith.
“Did Mary Have Other Children?”
James, Joseph, Simon and Judas.
GOD directed what would be written in what we know today as the Bible. If we needed more details, they would have been provided.