How did Mary prove her virginity?

[LilyM]

StJosephPrayForUs:

It seems it was less of a proving it to someone and more just a keeping up appearances, since Mary was known to be pregnant early by others in the village, but Joseph and Mary seem to have pretended like that didn’t happen and may have directly lied about it publicly for honor reasons (even though it was known to be a lie). Whether or not pretending like everything was fine before others and lying is the key thing. The groom and family but seems that it is claimed that presenting this sheet was just a standard for the marriage ceremony or they made up one as people were expected to have it, idk if that’s a sin or not.

There was no sheet because there was no such wedding night where they’d have been expected to sleep together. Mary conceived before that happened outside of any official ceremonial night.

And people might simply not have think it appropriate to ask if they had conjugal relations if Joseph never questioned it. This wasn’t the modern day. What questions they did get they could likely have given answers without lying, just being adamant that is it their child (without addressing biology). Or just kept quiet despite rumors if there were any.

I mean, we don’t know what they were asked. It just does not seem anyway necessary to assume they lied.

It’s not so much that they would have thought it inappropriate, I mean people were stoned to death for adultery and other sexual sins.

Simply, given that neither Joseph nor Mary publicly commented on Jesus’ paternity, and his marrying her in the knowledge that she was pregnant was in effect accepting paternity himself, no-one probably cared to question that Joseph was the father.

And unless Joseph and Mary explicitly claimed that Joseph was the biological father, which there is no suggestion they did, then neither were they lying. And it really was no-one else’s business to know if neither of them made an issue of it.

 

[Hodos]

There is quite a bit in the Infancy Gospel of James which doesn’t square with the accounts in Matthew and Luke. I don’t place much stock in it, other than it is interesting what legendary material had grown up in the hundred or so years after the resurrection of Christ and destruction of the Temple.

 

[Hodos]

Simply, given that neither Joseph nor Mary publicly commented on Jesus’ paternity, and his marrying her in the knowledge that she was pregnant was in effect accepting paternity himself, no-one probably cared to question that Joseph was the father.

The Jews actually did in the Gospel of John, chapter 8. It appears this wasn’t just private knowledge.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

Simply, given that neither Joseph nor Mary publicly commented on Jesus’ paternity, and his marrying her in the knowledge that she was pregnant was in effect accepting paternity himself, no-one probably cared to question that Joseph was the father.

The Jews actually did in the Gospel of John, chapter 8. It appears this wasn’t just private knowledge.

They do accuse Him of being Samaritan - like they accused Him baselessly of many things. Remember the Samaritans had different religious practices from orthodox Jews, so the term may (?) refer to his religious beliefs and praxis rather than his ethnicity.

They ask “WHERE is your father”. Notice the question is not “WHO is your father”! There is a world of difference.

Besides which, Mary was still very much alive. If they were actually accusing her of adultery or fornication with a Samaritan gentleman, why was she not prosecuted? What better way to discredit Him than slinging mud at His family members also?

 

[Hodos]

They do accuse Him of being Samaritan - like they accused Him baselessly of many things. Remember the Samaritans had different religious practices from orthodox Jews, so the term may (?) refer to his religious beliefs and praxis rather than his ethnicity.

No, they don’t accuse him of being a Samaritan. Jesus says they are not children of Abraham because they don’t do the deeds of Abraham (namely believe in Jesus as the fulfillment of the covenant made to Abraham). The Jews retort back to Jesus that they were not born of fornication (implying that Jesus was).

Besides which, Mary was still very much alive. If they were actually accusing her of adultery or fornication with a Samaritan gentleman, why was she not prosecuted?

Because Joseph changed his mind and decided not to divorce her after the visitation of Gabriel.

What better way to discredit Him than slinging mud at His family members also?

Which they did.

 

[mythbuster1]

According to the Torah, you can’t convict someone based on circumstantial evidence alone. You need two fact witnesses whose testimony stands up to cross-examination.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

Since lying is intrinsically evil according to the Church, and Mary was a perpetual virgin, how did she and St. Joseph present the tokens of virginity? How did she prove it?

Why would Mary have to prove anything. St Joseph had the messengers og God to inform him what was going on.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

Basically he says that as art of the marriage ceremony there would have been presented a bloody sheet to prove she was a virgin before the people of the ceremony (basically the whole village, who already knew she was pregnant early). This was proof to them, and I don’t know if presenting a fake thing would count as a sin for them

In what culture is this prevalent? Do you know how marriage began in Ancient Hebrew culture.

 

[rosejmj]

I mean no offense, but I would have said “most women don’t bleed the first time…”. I am not one to go all nutsy over using this word, or that word — I have known people like that, and they are very difficult to talk to — but I try to preserve gender specificity when it’s clearly called for. I recently read on Planned Parenthood’s website about “people who have abortions”, and on another site about “people with [female anatomical characteristics, though they phrased it more strongly than that]”. This is no accident. This plays right into the hands of those who want to get us away from thinking in terms of gender. Just my two sesterces’ worth.

Does it really matter? Why not rise above the whole nonsense of being so particular about wordage and just leave it. It sounds as if you are offended they didn’t use a specific word that is less gender inclusive just like the radicals who get offended if one doesn’t use gender inclusive words. Most people just don’t care.

 

[1ke]

claimed that presenting this sheet was just a standard for the marriage ceremony

There was no wedding ceremony. The betrothal was the marriage. Then at some point the couple began conjugal living.

 

[Dan_Defender]

From time to time, on comments threads here at CAF, we read that Mary’s parents handed her over as a child to be brought up in the Temple

Also:
Philo Judaeus (c. 20 B.C.-50 A.D.), a Jewish philosopher, described Jewish women who were virgins who have kept their chastity not under compulsion, like some Greek priestesses, but of their own free will in their ardent yearning for Wisdom. “Eager to have Wisdom for their life-mate, they have spurned the pleasures of the body and desire no mortal offspring but those immortal children which only the soul that is dear to God can bring forth to birth” (Philo, . 68; see also Philo, . 100).

 

[LeonardoArruda]

Mary does not lie, therefore She does not need to prove anything, and the Angel told her what would happen.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

I mean no offense, but I would have said “most women don’t bleed the first time…”. I am not one to go all nutsy over using this word, or that word — I have known people like that, and they are very difficult to talk to — but I try to preserve gender specificity when it’s clearly called for. I recently read on Planned Parenthood’s website about “people who have abortions”, and on another site about “people with [female anatomical characteristics, though they phrased it more strongly than that]”. This is no accident. This plays right into the hands of those who want to get us away from thinking in terms of gender. Just my two sesterces’ worth.

Does it really matter? Why not rise above the whole nonsense of being so particular about wordage and just leave it. It sounds as if you are offended they didn’t use a specific word that is less gender inclusive just like the radicals who get offended if one doesn’t use gender inclusive words. Most people just don’t care.

I’m not nearly as particular about verbiage as some people I know. I do value precise definitions of things. That’s how you get clarity of thought.

And, yes, I think it does matter. When you don’t make gender distinctions in your speech, I think you gradually allow these distinctions to wither away in your mind. I don’t intend to let that happen to me (not that there is much danger of this in my sixtieth year of life). I don’t recommend anyone else do that either. How you speak, and how you formulate your ideas, does certainly influence how you think. “Garbage in, garbage out” — and if the blurring and muting of gender differences isn’t garbage, I don’t know what is. Vive la différence!

 

[Margaret_Ann]

Joseph and Mary seem to have pretended like that didn’t happen and may have directly lied about it publicly for honor reasons (even though it was known to be a lie). Whether or not pretending like everything was fine before others and lying is the key thing.

The Most Holy Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary is the purest creature that God ever created. St. Joseph is “a just man” (c.f. St. Matthew). WHY would they lie about the miraculous virginal conception of the Son of God or “pretend” about it?



PLEASE get a good Catholic Bible and a good Catholic catechism. Don’t feed your soul that junk.

 

[tuffsmurf]

Oh, I meant nothing at all like that with it, of course I meant women! In my native language you wouldn’t say women or people in that sentence, just ”most don’t bleed” (the same thing with pregnant, that word is both an adjective and a noun in my language so you can say ”pregnants” for short when you mean ”pregnant women”).

 

[tuffsmurf]

While the protoevangelium of James is a lovely story, it is very historically inaccurate. There were no temple virgins or girls who were brougt up in the temple at the prescribed time, for example.

 

[Anesti33]

Taylor Marshall seems to disagree with you. Did Jewish Temple Virgins Exist and was Mary a Temple Virgin? - Taylor Marshall

 

[tuffsmurf]

This is a bit off topic for the thread, but Taylor Marshall is wrong here. There is nothing in jewish tradition that supports temple virgins and the idea that Mary would have been was comes from a confusion with the vestal virgins in Rome. Overall, celibacy for God is and was not really a thing in judaism as it is in christianity.

 

[Anesti33]

Huh, that’s funny, because Marshall and Catholic.COM have reached the same conclusion: What the Early Church Believed: The Perpetual Virginity of Mary | Catholic Answers

 

[TMC]

While the protoevangelium of James is a lovely story, it is very historically inaccurate.

It was also written a century (or maybe more) after the events it describes (and obviously not by James). It is an interesting read, nonetheless. It was not included in the Canon, but it remains influential when it comes to certain beliefs about Jesus and His family (e.g. that He was born in a cave, that Joseph was much older than Mary, and so on.)