“A Protestant is not going to accept this answer.”
Why not? The founders of Protestantism not only believed that Mary was ever virgin but they declared so in writing.
Luther:
Christ, our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary’s virginal womb . . . This was without the cooperation of a man, and **she remained a virgin after that. **
{Luther’s Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan (vols. 1-30) & Helmut T. Lehmann (vols. 31-55), St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House (vols. 1-30); Philadelphia: Fortress Press (vols. 31-55), 1955, v.22:23 / Sermons on John, chaps. 1-4 (1539) }
**Christ . . . was the only Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no children besides Him **. . . I am inclined to agree with those who declare that ‘brothers’ really mean ‘cousins’ here, for Holy Writ and the Jews always call cousins brothers.
{Pelikan, ibid., v.22:214-15 / Sermons on John, chaps. 1-4 (1539) }
Zwingili:
Code:
I have never thought, still less taught, or declared publicly, anything concerning the subject of the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of our salvation, which could be considered dishonourable, impious, unworthy or evil . . . I believe with all my heart according to the word of holy gospel that this pure virgin bore for us the Son of God and that **she remained, in the birth and after it, a pure and unsullied virgin, for eternity**.
{Thurian, ibid., p.76 / same sermon}
Bullinger (in 1575):
“The Virgin Mary . . . completely sanctified by the grace and blood of her only Son and abundantly endowed by the gift of the Holy Spirit and preferred to all . . . now lives happily with Christ in heaven and is called and
remains ever-Virgin and Mother of God.”
Even John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church stated:
“The Blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as when she brought him forth,
continued a pure and unspotted virgin.”
But the Neo-Protestantism had found a new way to attack the Virginity of the Blessed Mother. I came across this on one discussion forum and I posted in “Ask an apologist” section but I think no one read it yet. So I am putting it up here so any good apologist may provide refute:
It says:
“…From the earliest days of Christianity, Jewish critics have argued that
Christians were mistaken in their reading of almah in Isaiah 7:14.
Because the author of Matthew 1:23, believed that Jesus was born of a
virgin, he quoted Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and
shall bring forth a son” as a proof-text for the divine origin of Jesus.
Jewish scholars declare that Matthew is in error, that the word almah
means young woman (just as the male equivalent elem means young man). It
does not denote a virgin or sexual purity but age. Because a different
Hebrew word, bethulah בתולה(” "), is most commonly used for virgin even
in modern Hebrew, the prophet could not have meant virgin in Isaiah 7:14.
Almah means simply a young woman, of marriageable age, whether married
or not, or a virgin or not; in a broad general sense exactly like girl
or maid in English, when we say shop-girl, parlor-maid, bar-maid,
without reference to or vouching for her technical virginity, which, in
Hebrew, is always expressed by the word bethulah. But in the Septuagint
translation into Greek, the Hebrew almah was erroneously rendered into
the Greek parthenos, Virgin.
“As early as the second century B.C.,” says the distinguished Hebrew
scholar and critic, Salomon Reinach, “the Jews perceived the error and
pointed it out to the Greeks; but the Church knowingly persisted in the
false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she has clung to her
error.” (Orpheus, p, 197.) The truth of this accusation of conscious
persistence in known error through the centuries is proved by confession
of St. Jerome, who made the celebrated Vulgate translation from the
Hebrew into Latin, and intentionally “clung to the error,” though Jerome
well knew that it was an error and false; and thus he perpetuated
through fifteen hundred years the myth of the “Prophetic Virgin Birth”
of Jesus called Christ…"
Is this justifiable and correct information?
