How did Mary prove her virginity?

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I agree that is is an interesting read and there is nothing wrong in believing partly in it (there is nothing that is contrary to the catholic faith in it), but there is a reason why it isn’t canonical, and it is because it is not reliable in the same way that the gospels are.
 
Please notice how all the ”early church” fathers cited in your link is from the third century and onwards, when the temple was long gone. Many church fathers did not have very much knowledge about jewish customs either.
 
tuffsmurf said:
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”).
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I’m sure you didn’t, and I wasn’t aware that you are not a native English speaker. The past 30 or 40 years, there has been a tendency, at least among younger, more liberal, cosmopolitan speakers of American English, to blur gender distinctions in their speech, even where those distinctions are absolutely called for. I don’t think there was a “plot from on high” (though I can’t discount that possibility) to engineer the language to get people away from the idea of gender differences, it is probably just sloppy speech habits, which leads to sloppy thinking habits.

There are Americans on the lower-education spectrum who have very limited vocabularies and who “get by” with using less than probably 100 different words in everyday speech. For these people, the noun of choice is “thing” — “did you get that thing?”, “you know, that thing I asked you about”, and so on. Being precise, well-spoken, and articulate is not universally prized.
 
Why do you keep insisting they must have lied at some point about the child, the pregnancy or Mary’s virginity?
 
I believe it is called ‘Apologia pro Judaeis’ by Philo.
 
Dan_Defender said:
I believe it is called ‘Apologia pro Judaeis’ by Philo.
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@Dan_Defender, are you sure that is the right book? In the Loeb edition of Philo’s works, the Apologia pro Iudaeis appears under an alternative title, the Hypothetica, in Vol. 9, pp. 415-443 (link below). It’s very short, only 15 pages (in English), and I have read it through carefully. I can see only two places in which he discusses women and marriage. On pp. 423-427 he expounds Jewish law governing the penalties for adultery and rape, a wife’s subjection to her husband, and restrictions that apply to a husband’s right to dispose of his wife’s property. Then on p. 443 he sets out, at some length, the Essenes’ reasons for not marrying. But, as far as I can see, he never mentions the words “virgin” or “virginity” anywhere in these pages.

Is it possible, for example, that in another edition you have found a longer and more complete text of the Apologia pro Iudaeis ? Thanks for your help!

 
The quote is from Philo’s ‘On the Contemplative Life of Suppliants’, chapter VIII. Sorry for the confusion.
 
Dan_Defender said:
The quote is from Philo’s ‘On the Contemplative Life of Suppliants’, chapter VIII.
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In this book Philo describes an ascetic Jewish community that he calls the Therapeutae, living at a lakeside location outside Alexandria and evidently known to him personally. Unlike the Essenes, the Therapeutae admitted women as members of their community. However, it would be an overstatement to claim that this one short passage by Philo substantiates the assertion that in ancient Judaism, in the Herodian period, there were communities of dedicated lifelong virgins among whom a young girl such as Mary might have been placed by her parents to be educated, as if in a convent school. Apart from this one short book by Philo, no other mention of the Therapeutae is found in any ancient author.

What follows is the full text of the brief passage (less than a hundred words) in which Philo describes the “aged virgins” (γηραιαὶ παρθένοι) among the women at the Sabbath feast in the lakeside dwellingplace of the Therapeutae. It can be read on p. 155 of Vol. 9 of Philo’s works in the Loeb edition (link below).

• The feast is shared by women also, most of them aged virgins who have kept their chastity not under compulsion, like some of the Greek priestesses, but of their own free will in their ardent yearning for wisdom. Eager to have her 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 to the birth unaided because the Father has sown in her spiritual rays enabling her to behold the verities of wisdom.

 
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It is evidence against those who say that there were never virgins among the ancient Jews, that marriage was always imposed, especially on women. That is all.
 
To any responsible doctor, that would be incontrovertible proof of sexual intercourse. It is completely within the realm of medical possibility that a woman has sex and her hymen remains intact.
 
That is rare. Mary married Joseph who was advanced in age.
It makes me very uncomfortable to discuss the virginity of The Immaculata. She is our Mother and closest to Jesus and i love her.
She has answered many prayers through Jesus
If the intellectuals who studied this say yes she was immaculateI believe them. If the church fathers,much more educated then me say so I believe them.
I believe in the Catholic church which states she is:
Our Virgin Mother Mary Immaculate.
Why pick on Her?
 
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You do realize that “immaculate” means sinless, which, although linked to her virginity, is a distinct concept?
 
And yes, I agree that the premise of this thread is absurd. That Mary or Joseph would dissimulate about the child, that some kind of physical proof should be required, this is all at odds with what the Gospels actually tells us transpired. St. Joseph, a bit reluctant at first, trusts and loves Mary, accepting her unconditionally. Full stop, that’s all we need to believe.
 
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A doctor cannot tell if a woman has had intercourse any more than they can tell if a man has, and the hymen does not really exist.
 
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