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To: DallasMike
The best thing is to accept the Bible, contemporary church accounts, and contemporary secular accounts for what they say: Mary and Joseph had other sons and daughters after Jesus was born. The notion of Mary's perpetual virginity was a later invention.

The Bible, a Catholic document, confirms that the Blessed Mother gave birth to only one child, Jesus Christ. The Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph had no children together. Even people like Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, etc. believed in and taught of the Blessed Virgin Marys' perpetual virginity. Revisionists have attempted to diminish this fact by abridging, editing and misinterpreting Scripture, to fit their agendas.

16 posted on 07/23/2004 10:53:02 AM PDT by A.A. Cunningham
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To: A.A. Cunningham
The Bible, a Catholic document, confirms that the Blessed Mother gave birth to only one child, Jesus Christ.

No, it doesn't.

Matthew 13:55:  "Is he not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?"

Matthew 27:56:  Among them were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Mark 3:31:  His mother and his brothers arrived. Standing outside they sent word to him and called him.
32 A crowd seated around him told him, "Your mother and your brothers (and your sisters) are outside asking for you."
33 But he said to them in reply, "Who are my mother and (my) brothers?"
34 And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers.
35 (For) whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

Note that Jesus is going from the narrow, literal sense (his actual mother, brothers, and sisters) to the expanded, figurative sense (everyone doing the will of God is a mother, brother, or sister). If the visitors had not been Jesus' literal mother, brothers, and sisters, then the point would be meaningless.

Mark 6:3:  "Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.

John 2:12:  After this, he and his mother, (his) brothers, and his disciples went down to Capernaum and stayed there only a few days.

Note here that John differentiates Jesus' brothers from his disciples and thus was not using the term brothers in the figurative Christian sense.

The Bible was given to the entire church by God and is not a "Catholic document" any more than it is a "Protestant document."

I've written about the Aramaic-has-the-same-word-for-brother-and-cousin argument so many times that I don't want to do it all over again. To summarize, the entire New Testament, with the possible exception of Matthew, was written in Greek. The apostle Paul mentions the brother(s) (adelphos -- literally "sharing of the womb") of the Lord in both Galatians and Corinthians, and there is absolutely no doubt that he was writing in Greek, which was probably his primary language. He described Barnabas as the cousin (anepsios) of Mark, so he was certainly familiar with the distinction between adelphos and anepsios.

The Bible also uses another Greek word -- suggenes -- (note the word "gene" in the word, the root of our word genetic) -- to describe a close relative. Luke 1:36 says, "Even Elizabeth your RELATIVE (suggenes) is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month."

Note also that Josephus, a Jew writing in Greek, used anepsios several times in his works, but uses the term adelphos when referring to the "brothers of Jesus." Like Paul, Josephus was using the correct word for the correct relationship.

If you ever hear somebody say that Aramaic and Ancient Greek didn't have a word for cousin (or something along that line) then you can correct them because they're wrong. The New Testament was written in a language that had separate words for cousin or close relative and used them where it was appropriate. Where it was appropriate to use the word brother -- adelphos, or "sharer of the womb" -- then the Bible used it.

Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born but had additional children afterwards. The idea of perpetual virginity was unknown to either the early church or to early secular writers.


20 posted on 07/23/2004 2:07:08 PM PDT by DallasMike
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