Did Jesus have brothers? Article dealing with the question of whether Mary was always "the Virgin Mary."

[Cathoholic]

BartholomewB . . .

how many possible answers are there to the question of the actual, historical parentage of Simeon, Jude and the others named in the Gospels and Epistles as “the brethren of the Lord”?

I will attempt to put up an extended quote from Dr. Pitre’s book on this question. Maybe even today.

See this image

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah Hardcover – October 30, 2018​

by Brant James Pitre (Author)

Good question.

 

[Crocus]

Brilliant post. I recognize sympathetic flashes of it occurring the back of my mind a few times over the past year I have been reading here. Thanks for articulating it.

 

[Cathoholic]

The late Pope John Paul II the Great put it this way . . .

POPE JOHN PAUL II THE GREAT "It is a well-known fact that some of the Church Fathers set us a significant parallel between the begetting of Christ ex intacta virgine from the inviolate Virgin] and his resurrection ex intacto sepulcrofrom the sealed tomb] . In the parallelism relative to the begetting of Christ, some of the Fathers put the emphasis on the virginal conception, others on the virgin birth , others on the subsequent perpetual virginity of the Mother, but they all testify to the conviction that between the two saving events – the generation–birth of Christ and his resurrection from the dead – there exists an intrinsic connection which corresponds to a precise plan of God: a connection which the Church led by the Spirit, has discovered, not created.

Pope John Paul II, June 10, 1992, during a talk in Capua, Italy

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Catholic Deacon and Theologian Dr. Mark Miravalle states:

Further, the miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth is not an indictment of human birth as being “indecent,” but rather fully congruent with the saving purposes of the Incarnation. As Pope St. Leo the Great preached:

The Lord Jesus Christ came to take away our maladies, not to contract them; to bring a remedy to our vices, not to succumb to them. … That is why it was necessary for Him to be born in new conditions ( propter quod oportuit ut novo nasceretur ordine ). . . . It was necessary that the integrity of the One being born preserve the pristine virginity of the one who gave birth. . . . .

(Dr. Miravalle continues

St. Thomas says that the hymen pertains to virginity only per accidens, and that its rupture by any means other than sexual pleasure is no more destructive of virginity than the loss of a hand or foot (cf. ST 2a2æ q. 152, a. I, ad 3). However, he also holds that bodily integrity belongs to the perfection of virginity (see Quæstiones quodlibetales 6, q. 10, prol). (36) (bold and underline here mine)

Could we expect that God would do less for His Virgin Mother?

 

[Cathoholic]

The late Fr. Stanley Jaki . . .

As to his mother, they (some modern “divines” or clergy such as ministers and even sadly some priests) naturalize her (Mary’s) divine motherhood in three stages in which the sequence begins with what is least firm in Christian consciousness about Mary.

Many modern Christians have indeed accommodated themselves to the claim, first tolerated among early Christians but then strictly forbidden to them, that Jesus had indeed brothers and sisters in the strict sense of these English words . These Christians still have to wake up to the age-old information that in Hebrew the word "brother" (ah) can readily mean cousins , second cousins , third cousins , and even more distant cousins .

The next stage, which relates to Jesus’ miraculous birth in Bethlehem, is usually handled with a sleight of hand which sheer fictions deserve. Nothing essentially more is at play when solemn references are offered to Jesus’ true humanity as a factor that requires a human birth attended with all its clinical and quasi-clinical inconveniences .

Once those two stages have been disposed of, little remains of the inborn Christian resistance to attempts whereby Jesus’ miraculous conception is presented as a disparagement of Joseph’s maleness .

Parenthesis mine.

Bold and underline mine.

According to Fr. Jaki, one such “divine” among the “theologians” failing to produce a scholarly reply of modern attacks on the Virgin Birth, is the now late Fr. Karl Rahner who himself was alive when Fr. Jaki wrote this book on the Virgin Birth.

Father Jaki continues . . . .

Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine and quite a few other Fathers who were unanimous in seeing Mary’s virginity as being incompatible with the phenomena they call sordes . Such is their tactfully graphic shorthand for the physiology of ordinary births. In fact, Rahner ends up by saying that no realistic detail may be specified in Mary’s virginity in partu. That her hymen had to be preserved intact, Rahner considers as a futile obsession with culturally conditioned aspects of virginity. He also dismisses in a line or two the patristic and post-patristic comparisons of Jesus’ miraculous passing from Mary’s womb with His passing through a closed door after the Resurrection.

With that Rahner shuts the door through which he could convincingly lead himself and his still many admirers to the ground where something physically miraculous is on hand in Mary’s giving birth to Jesus.

The Virgin Birth and The Birth of Science, by Fr. Stanley L. Jaki. Real View Books 1998. See pages 18-19. Bold and underline mine.

 

[Cathoholic]

Mary is both fruitful mother (mother in the order of nature to Jesus
and mother in the order of grace to the rest of us) and virgin.

VATICAN II (Lumen Gentium) 63. By reason of the gift and role of divine maternity, by which she is united with her Son, the Redeemer, and with His singular graces and functions, the Blessed Virgin is also intimately united with the Church. As St. Ambrose taught, the Mother of God is a type of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ.(18*) For in the mystery of the Church, which is itself rightly called mother and virgin, the Blessed Virgin stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother. (19) By her belief and obedience, not knowing man but overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, as the new Eve she brought forth on earth the very Son of the Father, showing an undefiled faith, not in the word of the ancient serpent, but in that of God’s messenger. The Son whom she brought forth is He whom God placed as the first-born among many brethren,(299) namely the faithful, in whose birth and education she cooperates with a maternal love.

Notice the Church just matter-of-factly just refers to Mary as the Blessed Virgin (NOT the Blessed EX-Virgin). . . . "the Blessed Virgin stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother."

 

[Cathoholic]

Here is that excerpt from Dr. Pitre that I said I would post.

p. 116-119

The "Brothers" of Jesus = Sons of a Different Mary

The first and most important reason for concluding that the "brothers" of Jesus are not children of Mary is also the most often overlooked. It is this: The Gospels themselves explicitly state that the so-called brothers of Jesus are in fact the children of another woman named Mary.

In order to see this clearly, all we need to do is compare the identities of the “brothers” of Jesus in the account of Jesus’ ministry in Nazareth with the accounts of the people present at his crucifixion and burial. For the sake of convenience, I will focus on the evidence in the Gospel of Mark, paying close attention to the names of Jesus’ “brothers”:

He went away from there and came to his own country … And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue; and many who heard him were astonished, saying, "… Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" (Mark 6:1-3)

And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last… There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him. (Mark 15:37, 40—41)

On the one hand, the Gospel of Mark indisputably identifies 'James" and “Joses” as two of the “brothers” (Greek adelphoi) of Jesus (Mark 6:3). As any Greek dictionary will tell you, the most common meaning of the word “brother” is the same as in English: "a male from the same womb."26

On the other hand—and this is crucial—the Gospel of Mark also provides solid evidence that the same two men, “James” and “Joses,” are the sons of a different woman named Mary. This other Mary is mentioned three times in the account of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. At the crucifixion, she is called “Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses” (Mark 15:40). At Jesus’ burial, she is called “Mary the mother of Joses” (Mark 15:47). On the morning of the resurrection, she is called “Mary the mother of James” (Mark 16:1). Who is this woman? Obviously, Mark would never refer to the mother of Jesus as “the mother of James and Joses,” or “the mother of James,” or “the mother of Joses,” especially when he has already referred to Mary as Jesus’ “mother”

1/2 . . . . .

 

[Cathoholic]

2/2 . . . .

twice in his Gospel (Mark 3:31, 32).27 Although scholars come up with some rather desperate attempts to avoid the obvious, the only plausible explanation is that the mother of James and Joses is a different Mary, and therefore, James and Joses are not the sons of the virgin Mary.28

In support of this conclusion, it is important to emphasize that the same thing is true of James and Joses in the Gospel of Matthew (although Matthew uses the proper Hebrew form "Joseph" rather than "Joses"). In fact, Matthew even refers to Mary the mother of James and Joseph as "the other Mary"!

There were also many women there, looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee … And Joseph [of Arimathea] took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the sepulcher. (Matthew 27:55-56, 59-61; cf. 13:55)

It is not believable that Matthew would refer to the mother of Jesus as “the other Mary.” Because of this, the Protestant scholars W. D. Davies and Dale Allison admit that this evidence suggests that “the brothers of Jesus” who are named earlier in the Gospel (Matthew 13:55) "were not the sons of Jesus’ mother but of another Mary."29 I agree. But I would add that the brothers of Jesus also cannot be the sons of Joseph from a previous marriage, as some people suggest.30 The reason is simple. For Joseph to be a widower, his wife has to have died. But Mary the mother of James and Joseph is obviously still alive at the time of the resurrection!

In fact, when Luke refers to her simply as “Mary the mother of James” (Luke 24:10), a strong case can be made that he must be referring to the famous leader of the church in Jerusalem, also known as “James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19). The reason is simple. In the words of Richard Bauckham: “Normally in the early church only James the Lord’s brother could be called James without risk of ambiguity” (see Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; 1 Corinthians 15:7; Jude l).31

This leads us to the important question If James and Joseph are the children of another Mary, then why are they called Jesus’ “brothers”? The answer is quite simple: in an ancient Jewish context, the Greek for word “brothers” (adelphoi) could be used as a synonym for close relatives, such as cousins. Many examples of this usage could be given.32

 

[Elf01]

Good start but there are multiple people called James in the New Testament. How can you show that the brothers of the Lord are the same people whose mother is at the foot of the cross?

 

[Cathoholic]

OK. I am going to begin more reverse timeline items from about 650 A.D. backwards and cut and paste from our local area men’s Bible study.

Not because I have too little in quotes, but because I have too many!

I have been working for days to try to squeeze in an orderly timeline and there are hundreds of pages.

So I am going to go “orderly” with SOME of the quotes from 650 A.D. to earlier.

THEN I am going to go back and put in some other quotes and let you guys look up the dates if you want.

Here goes (the program will only let me do three successive posts at a time. So when I am out, I will have to wait for your reply to put more here just so yall know) . . .

We will use very brief quotes here. The quotes may seem to lack context but if more context is desired, see many of the same quotes in an extended format in the segment titled Jesus And Mary—As “A Sign Of Contradiction” And How This Concerns Mary’s Perpetual Virginity .

649 A.D.​

The Lateran Council in 649 A.D. (a non-Ecumenical Council but held under Pope St. Martin I and is thus considered authoritative) asserts the Blessed Virgin Mary’s in-partu inviolability.

LATERAN COUNCIL If anyone does not, according to the holy Fathers , confess truly and properly that holy Mary, ever virgin and immaculate, is Mother of God, since this latter age she conceived in true reality without human seed from the Holy Spirit, God the Word himself, who before the ages was born of God the Father, and gave birth to him without corruption, her virginity remaining equally inviolate after the birth, let him be condemned .

— The Lateran Council in 649 A.D.

St. Ildephonsus before his death in 667 A.D. wrote a treatise on this subject (that I do not have an English translation of). But the title in and of itself is revealing.

"De virginitate perpetuâ sanctae Mariae adversus tres infideles" (these three unbelievers are Jovinianus, Helvidius, and "a Jew").

The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

The literary work of Ildephonsus is better known than the details of his life, and merits for him a distinguished place in the roll of Spanish writers. His successor, Julianus of Toledo, in the notice already referred to, informs us that the saint himself divided his works into four parts. The first and principal division contained six treatises, of which two only have been preserved: "De virginitate perpetuâ sanctae Mariae adversus tres infideles" (these three unbelievers are Jovinianus, Helvidius, and "a Jew") . . .

By the time we back up to 553 A.D. we see the associations of this heresy tied to denying the Incarnation of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

D-H 503TCP 703] quoted in: Mariology. A Guide For Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, And Consecrated Persons. See specifically p. 311. See Chapter on “Our Lady’s Perpetual Virginity” by Monsignor Arthur Burton Calkins (see pp. 277-315).

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07649b.htm

 

[Cathoholic]

553 A.D.​

The General or Ecumenical Council back in the 500’s A.D. referred to Mary as “EVER-VIRGIN” FOUR TIMES! Now someone might object and say: “Well the focus on these admonitions of Constantinople II were on Jesus as Incarnate and true God and true Man, I would say YES! But the Council tied it to Mary EVER-Virgin. Why? Because the heresies were likewise tied to the doctrine of Mary as Ever-Virgin, and these heresies all dovetail one upon the other. So even though the Councils’ reprimand focuses on heresies concerning Jesus, they ASSUME the Perpetual Virginity of Mary and they see a synthesis between the Christologic heresies associated with the Mariologic heresies.

This is WHY we keep saying throughout this book, “Marian doctrines have Christologic implications.”

COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II Can. 2 . If anyone does not confess . . . . of the holy and glorious Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary , and was born of her, let such a one be anathema.

COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II If anyone declares that it can be only inexactly and not truly said that the holy and glorious ever-virgin Mary is the mother of God, . . . . and it was in this religious understanding that the holy synod of Chalcedon formally stated its belief that she was the mother of God: let him be anathema.

COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II If anyone defends the letter which Ibas is said to have written to Mari the Persian, which denies that God the Word, who became incarnate of Mary the holy mother of God and ever virgin, became man, . . . . . or supports those who are bold enough to defend it or its heresies in the name of the holy fathers of the holy synod of Chalcedon, and persists in these errors until his death: let him be anathema .

COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II Additionally, we anathematize the heretical letter which Ibas is alleged to have written to Mari the Persian. This letter denies that God the Word was made incarnate of the ever virgin Mary , the holy mother of God, and that he was made man.

Even the Protestant reformer, Zwingli saw this fact that Marian doctrines give us a reflection of other theological issues as well! Zwingli – “To deny that Mary remained ‘inviolata’ before, during and after the birth of her Son, was to doubt the omnipotence of God . . .”

450 A.D.​

Pope St. Leo the great linking “Christ’s origin, to Mary and the fact that Mary was EVER-Virgin (“a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and Virgin she remained”).

POPE SAINT LEO THE GREAT "His [Christ’s] origin is different, but his [human] nature is the same. Human usage and custom were lacking, but by divine power a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and Virgin she remained "

—Pope St. Leo I (also called Leo the Great)

Died in 461 A.D. ( Sermons 22:2A.D. 450]).

 

[Cathoholic]

430 A.D.​

We just keep reminding people about how Marian doctrines reflect on Jesus Christ. I was dialoguing with a Protestant over this issue of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity. I was showing him how Mary is the fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant among other things. He said “No Ark”. He could see how the Ark that contained the 10 Commandments, Aaron’s staff, and manna from Heaven, was utterly holy and sacred and deserving of all these special precautions and privileges. But when the “New Ark” came along, when Mary came along, who contained NOT MERE stone tablets, etc. he just couldn’t see Jesus as being holy and sacred enough to deserve His own Temple.

He didn’t deny the parallels between the Ark and Mary, he just couldn’t see Her as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and how fulfillments are GREATER than prefigurements.

I said to him, “Jesus just ISN’T THAT SPECIAL in your eyes to deserve a more majestic treatment than a container for sacred tablets, a staff, and manna is He?”

He never responded. But here is what St. Cyril of Alexandria said back in 430 A.D.

St. Cyril of Alexandria is teaching people to beware of people who deny Mary as ever virgin and St. Cyril ties this to WHO Jesus is (“The Word (Jesus) . . . . assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin”)!

ST. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA "[T]he Word himself, coming into the Blessed Virgin herself, assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin and came forth from her a man in all that could be externally discerned, while interiorly he was true God. Therefore he kept his Mother a virgin even after her childbearing "

— St. Cyril of Alexandria Against Those Who Do Not Wish to

Confess That the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God 4A.D. 430].

St. Cyril can readily see; Marian doctrine and Christologic doctrine are integrally involved with one another. Many people cannot see this. Notice there is a need in 430 A.D. for St. Cyril to “get more specific” than we will see earlier in the Church. Why? Because people were now denying these truths openly that’s why. We will see that phenomenon shortly.

429 A.D.​

Nestorius is now denying other Marian doctrines to . . . .do what? . . . . To deny the full Divinity of Jesus Christ!

Objection : “Well this doesn’t have anything to do directly with Mary’s Perpetual Virginity.”

Answer : Since all of Mary’s other titles and privileges flow from Her being the Mother of God, it does, but even if it didn’t just keep Bishop Nestorius in mind because we will come back to him and will see ties earlier in history concerning Bishop Bonosus who we will soon introduce and how Bonosus did explicitly deny the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.

The Catholic Encyclopedia . . .

At the end of 428, or at latest in the early part of 429, Nestorius preached the first of his famous sermons against the word Theotokos , and detailed his Antiochian doctrine of the Incarnation.

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At this point I will need your help to post more.

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