Jesus" siblings

[adrift]

If the Church has had the power to give annulments to couples **married by God **for the last two thousand years that can then lead to re-marriage…and if this was put into place by God Himself…then isn’t it possible that God Himself could have put into place a resolution or made a decision similar to that with Mary?
Thereby freeing her to then be a regular wife to her earthly husband, Joseph, for the rest of their marriage?

Annulments can only be granted if it is determined that NO marriage occurred in the first place. Therefore the marriage wasn’t by God nor is there a re-marriage as there wasn’t one in the first place.

 

[adrift]

What I find interesting in these passages concerning Jesus’ siblings…they speak about Joseph as his father…they speak of Mary as his mother…but when they speak of his “brothers” and “sisters”…they no longer are addressing his immediate family but now an extended family of cousins or other children of Joseph by a previous marriage…yet there’s no hint of the relationship change in the passage to indicate we’re no longer discussing his immediate family.

What I find interesting is that people read this today with today’s understanding. They don’t bat an eye that Joseph is stated as being Jesus’ father. They just put their understand that Joseph was a foster father in place.

they were astonished…Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas?

This is the gossip of what people were saying. Jesus asked His apostles who the people said He was. We don’t then assume that what the people said was right so how come it is assumed here that what they said is correct. We know that Joseph wasn’t His father but according to what the people thought he was. If Joseph did have children by a previous wife, than indeed the people would thing they were siblings. But also the people could have only been saying we know the family in general which is my belief considering the rest of scripture. The family speaking to Him in a way that shows He is younger, the giving of Mary to John not to mention Tradition that has been passed down.

 

[adrift]

God may have considered his impregnation (is that the correct word?) of Mary as a very special, unique coupling outside of regular, mortal marriage (obviously)…and one that was there for a very specific purpose…and then afterward, may have wanted her to go onward to be wife to the man he put her together with on earth–Joseph–after she had done what he asked her to do and fulfilled his wishes to bring Jesus to earth.

We can’t compare her “marriage” to God as the exact same thing He put together between two mortals, so the same rules may not apply.
Maybe with mortals, marriages are annulled and then no marriage ever occurred.
But, um, God is the one who makes up the rules…and He obviously has slightly different rules for He and Mary.

In that way, he may have told Mary to be a wife to Joseph after Jesus was born–that she should now fulfill her mortal wife duties and marital debt, etc…and they may have had many children, under God’s own guidance.

This would be a way to explain children with Joseph, if she had them, and not have to define her as an “adulterer”, as per the poster a few above this.

How could any man think of touching Mary when she contained God. There is no evidence that God intended them to be man and wife in fact the evidence is opposite. I don’t agree with the adultery because I don’t see it as her being married to the Holy Spirit. Scripture shows clearly that Jesus was an only child.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

I think…there is, indeed, a word for “cousin” in Hebrew…and also, in Aramaic?
I just looked them up in both dictionaries.

Maybe Meltzerboy can weigh in?

Yes, of course there is. See Jer. 32:8, 9 and 12 just as examples.

 

[PaddyMac]

Though of course the Protoevangelium of James is not canonical Scripture, it is the earliest written account to provide additional details of Mary’s life, and according to it, Mary was already a consecrated perpetual virgin serving in the Temple in Jerusalem before she was visited by the angel Gabriel and Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Here are some interesting articles:
thesacredpage.com/2008/03/biblical-basis-for-marys-perpetual.html
cantuar.blogspot.com/2011/12/did-jewish-temple-virgins-exist-and-was.html

 

[Erich]

My favorite links on this topic:

Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant
The use of “brothers” in the New Testament
Brothers and sisters of Christ? (this does not exist at its original URL but it has been archived)

 

[adrift]

Yes, of course there is. See Jer. 32:8, 9 and 12 just as examples.

These are translations. The translator chose to say cousin instead of the son of my Uncle which some translations have. Do you have an Aramaic word used in the first century that means cousin?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Why is it only in the last 400 years or less that SUDDENLY a relatively small group of Christians has come up with this ‘gospel of men?’

Christians from AD 33 through AD 1600 or so were not STUPID. Maybe not that many proportionally could read, but they could all listen. And for 1600 years ALL Christians heard those words "and he knew her not until she bore her son Jesus’ and "The brothers of the Lord’. . **while at the same time from the SECOND CENTURY AD (written) forward, Mary was proclaimed as a perpetual VIrgin. **

EVEN THE FIRST PROTESTANTS, READING THE SAME WORDS AND PHRASES THAT ARE HELD UP TODAY AS PROOF THAT MARY HAD OTHER CHILDREN. . >EVEN THEY DID NOT BELIEVE MARY HAD OTHER CHILDREN.

**And in fact, not ALL Protestants believe that Mary had ‘other children’. Isn’t that strange? If it’s so ‘self’evident’ why didn’t the apostles teach it, and why didn’t the Church come down on what would have been the HERESY of preaching Mary as ever Virgin, if she had EVER been proclaimed as being mother of MANY? The Church sure addressed every OTHER Heresy that’s come down the pike. . .Where are all the Christians from AD 33 to AD 1600 who taught this crazy, modern, man-made doctrine? **

Do you really think that God is so uncaring of Mary that He used her like an INCUBATOR and then threw her back to 'have a normal life?"

Yeah. Right. Picture it. You are the mother of God yet a virgin. God has chosen you from ALL WOMEN to bear a child and to love Him and care for Him on earth.

So NATURALLY what is going to be highest on your to-do list? You want to have OTHER BABIES to care for so that you have LESS time to devote to the Son of God! You want to be all focused on life on EARTH as a ‘normal couple’ and not even consider life in HEAVEN . . .even though Heaven is beside you in the form of Your Lord and Master. . .but you don’t want to be thinking about serving GOD when your life is only about the EARTHLY NORMAL ONE of “ANYBODY ELSE”.

Because Mary and Joseph can’t be SPECIAL. They can’t have duties above and beyond being “just plain folks.’ That would make them too important! And nobody is more important than we are! Everybody must be like us; nobody can be different and nobody can be 'better!”

 

[Dave_Noonan]

These are translations. The translator chose to say cousin instead of the son of my Uncle which some translations have. Do you have an Aramaic word used in the first century that means cousin?

The son of my uncle is my cousin, so it’s an accurate translation. The difference is that Semitic languages (up until today in fact) utilize terms that are more exacting for cousins than we do in English–Semitic languages reference something more specific about the family relationship. Further, the form is a smichut (Hebrew) or idafa (Arabic)–a so called “bound form”–something like a compound word in English: “son-uncle” with an implied genitive.

For first century Aramaic equivalents see the Peshitta and/or the Targum of Yohnatan ben Uzziel.

 

[pete_29]

If Jesus had siblings, why did John have to take care of Mary. Wasn’t it Jewish law that one of the children was supposed to take care of his or her mother.

 

[brumano]

Did one of the writers included in the canon write anything about Joseph having another wife and children before Mary? Or Joseph having siblings?
If so, where is that part, please and thanks.

Or, I guess, mary could have had siblings who had children?

It is curious, adding to what Publisher says, that Joseph’s entire line of ancestry on one side are listed one by one at one point (I think? that “begat” page…) for dozens of generations…and yet, no one mentions another wife or if he had siblings?

But if someone does mention it, I’ve missed it…please if someone could tell me which lines. Thank you!

No they weren’t at all concerned with that they were concerned with what they wrote about as they wrote about it; it doesn’t matter if Joseph or Mary had or did not have siblings.

Whether she did or didn’t wouldn’t have the slightest thing to do with whether Jesus had brothers and sisters by Joseph and Mary.

Maybe some of this part of your puzzlement will clear up if you read back on in the Old Testament following the geneology “page” about some of the progenitors, David had more than one wife even while they were still living, some of the descendants of Abraham are from Hagar who was not his wife, the same with Jacob and several others, The Geneology only lists the ancestors that are key to the linkage between the prophecy and the fullfillment of the promise in the birth of Jesus, who was not the son of Joseph the Carpenter but the Son of God.

 

[adrift]

The son of my uncle is my cousin, so it’s an accurate translation. The difference is that Semitic languages (up until today in fact) utilize terms that are more exacting for cousins than we do in English–Semitic languages reference something more specific about the family relationship. Further, the form is a smichut (Hebrew) or idafa (Arabic)–a so called “bound form”–something like a compound word in English: “son-uncle” with an implied genitive.

For first century Aramaic equivalents see the Peshitta and/or the Targum of Yohnatan ben Uzziel.

Yes it is an accurate translation. But the point was that the language they translated from had no word for cousin. They translated it as cousin because we do have a word for the relationship. I would be interested in you providing an Aramaic word for cousin from the first century not English, Hebrew, or Arabic but Aramaic

 

[adrift]

If Jesus had siblings, why did John have to take care of Mary. Wasn’t it Jewish law that one of the children was supposed to take care of his or her mother.

Exactly, a question that is never answered that explains why Jesus would go against Jewish law.
Nor can they explain that when the family talks to Jesus it is as older to a younger person.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Weren’t they already engaged to be married before she found out she was pregnant?

Yes.

Now, here’s the thing.

IF the marriage were meant to be ‘consummated’, then what you have is God acting no better than Zeus. . . ‘taking’ a human woman married to a human man, having a ‘half-god’ child with her, and then throwing her back to the human husband. Zeus’ taking of a married (or betrothed) woman would be adultery, even if the woman was willing. . . a grave sin.

But if the marriage was NOT meant to be consummated --if it were, in fact, to be a marriage of ‘convenience’ so that the woman, who had vowed her virginity to God, could be cared for by a man who had putative legal rights (and in that culture the only men who would be able to have those rights over a Jewish woman would be her father, brother, or husband. If any of them ‘refused’ to exercise that right, she would be put on the streets as a prostitute) –

THEN it makes perfect sense.

IF Joseph, by ‘oral tradition’ an older man, was willing to care for Mary so that she could live out her life as a vowed virgin. . .then even though there was a marriage in ‘theory’ there was no physical marriage. . .Joseph would not be cuckolded, and God would not be committing adultery by using a woman who was the ‘flesh and blood’ of another man!!

Look also at the text and the context.

I’ll reiterate --the first Christians were not STUPID. Anybody reading or hearing the words in the gospel --the same ones we hear today-- would have questioned the idea of Mary’s ‘perpetual virginity’ from the start of the entire Christian religion --IF they thought that Mary’s betrothal AUTOMATICALLY meant that she was destined for sex with Joseph on marriage. . . .

They would have been questioning the Scripture WAY BACK THEN (the way that all the other heretics did on other points) if they thought there was Scripture to ‘back them up.’

But NOBODY even THOUGHT to bring up the Scripture and argue that surely Mary MUST have had other children. Not for 1600 years. Not even by the first reformers.

I will ask again, WHY NOT?

If the words are so self-evident, why were they not brought up and questioned from the start???

 

[adrift]

I think to most people, when they read those words, it doesn’t translate to them at all that she stayed a virgin. I imagine most of those people in the early years just assume she had other children.
It looks as thought the early “church fathers” who were putting everything into place for the religion didn’t address the idea of whether she stayed a virgin or not after Jesus was born until at least a century after they had all died.
Perpetual virginity wasn’t taught as a doctrine by the early church father Tertullian, who died in 225. The doctrine on perpetual virginity, from what I’ve read in Christian history books, wasn’t well established for those who believed in it until the 4th Century.

You think? Well you think wrong. It has been tradition from the very start that Jesus was her only child. Mary asked the angel “how can this be since I know not man?”. The question is interesting in more than one way. First off Mary knew what caused children so the question isn’t about how she would become pregnant. She was already married to Joseph but not yet living with him. That is the meaning of her being engaged. When she asked there must of been something else to her question. Also note what she doesn’t say. She doesn’t say oh Joseph and I will have a child. She doesn’t say Joseph and I aren’t living together yet. She says I no not man. Not that she doesn’t know Joseph but a general statement of man. Tradition tells us that she had vowed virginity. If the people would have assumed anything, it would have been that she did not have other children because she made a vow to God to remain a virgin. It is this vow that she is asking the angel about. She was asking if she were to keep this vow.

**Origen **185-254 AD] Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Book X)
“The Book [the Protoevangelium] of James [records] that the brethren of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife, whom he married before Mary. Now those who say so wish to preserve the honor of Mary in virginity to the end, so that body of hers which was appointed to minister to the Word . . . might not know intercourse with a man after the Holy Spirit came into her and the power from on high overshadowed her. And I think it in harmony with reason that Jesus was the firstfruit among men of the purity which consists in [perpetual] chastity, and Mary was among women. For it were not pious to ascribe to any other than to her the firstfruit of virginity” (Commentary on Matthew 2:17 [A.D. 248]).

**Lactantius **[290-350 AD] The Epitome of the Divine Institutes
“We confess, therefore, that our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, born of the Father before the ages, and in times most recent, made man of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary” (Document of Amendment 3 [A.D. 426]).
Hilary of Poitiers, St [300-367 AD] On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterns
“If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary’s sons and not those taken from Joseph’s former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [crucifixion] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, ‘Woman, behold your son,’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother’ [John 19:26–27), as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate” (Commentary on Matthew 1:4 [A.D. 354]).

Augustine of Hippo, St [354-430 AD] Tractate 8 (John 2:1-4)
“Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband” (Heresies 56 [A.D. 428]).

Leo the Great, Pope [395-461 AD] Sermon 22
“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” (Sermons 22:2 [A.D. 450]).

Tertullian wasn’t he the one who said that widows who remarried were committing adultery? And didn’t he leave the Church and found his own sect?

 

[Erich]

How, exactly, do you imagine Mary and Joseph living their lives as Jesus grew up and after he died?

The last time Joseph is mentioned in Scripture is in the account of finding Jesus at the Temple. Joseph had died by the time of the Crucifixion, which is why the whole “Behold, your mother. Behold, your son” dialog took place at all (i.e. Joseph was no longer around to care for Mary after Jesus’ death).

There are no brothers of Jesus who are children of Mary and Joseph. Consider the following from another thread:

Tantum_ergo:

Also, consider that Jesus is the Son of God. He is the legitimate Son of God.

Did God stop being the Father of Jesus? No. Since God is the legitimate father and Mary the legitimate mother, the only way for Mary to take ‘another’ husband without commiting adultery would be if God wasn’t really the legitimate Father or that He ‘divorced’ Mary.

OR, if Mary had REALLY been planning to marry and consummate the marriage with Joseph, what does that make God? It makes God the kind of God who like the Greek and Roman gods beds human women, has ‘half-human/half God’ offspring and then casts the woman aside as not ‘good’ enough for Olympus. It makes God into the kind of God who takes Mary to be the mother of HIS child and CUCKOLDING Joseph.

Is it FAIR of God to take a woman who was promised and intended to marry another man, impregnate her, and then say to Joseph, “OK, I’ve used her the way I want, NOW you can have her after me?” Is it fair to the relationship of a man and woman who planned to have ‘regular’ sexual relations to have the woman raising (as the man’s) the child of ANOTHER man and expect their lives to ‘go on as planned?’

Is it fair of God to play around with the love of a man and woman, which is what it would have been if Mary had planned to have a ‘sexual’ marriage with Joseph?

Is it fair to JESUS for God to use His mother as an ‘incubator’ and then leave Jesus as a huge reminder to Joseph, always feeling ‘apart’ from the ‘other kids’ who would be both Mary’s and Joseph’s? To put Joseph in the shoes of having to raise "the son of God’ and have that child (who was not Joseph’s ‘own’) always be considered as the oldest son, the heir, while the younger boys who ‘were’ Joseph’s ‘own’ would not have their true rights as the REAL ‘sons’ of Joseph?? How do you think those children would feel about their brother? Would they even really believe He was the son of God, and not some ‘lie’ foisted by Mary onto their father? How would they view their mother --as somebody who tried to lie and cheat and raise some ‘bastard’ above them and take their legal rights and status, take all the attention?

NOT exactly the kind of family you would think that God would want for any child, let alone that by your thinking God would have PLANNED to cuckold Joseph, rob Joseph’s ‘own’ children of their legal rights, and put them in the position of being party to what would have been lies (Jesus was NOT ‘the son of the carpenter’ or the ‘oldest child’, Mary would have been viewed as a slut, the children’s status even when the truth ‘came out’ would have been even WORSE than before). . .

Whereas by the grace of God and the testimony and the grace accorded by the Holy Spirit who LEADS US TO ALL TRUTH – the understanding of the truth --that God did NOT cuckold Joseph, that there were no ‘other children’ who would be robbed of their rights and would be made miserable–we have a situation where Joseph is shown to be a righteous, chaste, and WORTHY foster father to the ONE child for whom he freely takes on responsibility ‘on earth’. . .we have Mary’s love not divided between ‘God’ and ‘earthly’ but fully given to God and SUPPORTED by Joseph–we have Jesus not overshadowing and robbing his brothers and sisters or being unfairly elevated, but living with a father and mother who could devote themselves to GOD and His Son without anything coming between.

It’s so much more reasonable a picture–and it’s also the picture that has been presented through Christianity over the last 2000 years and endorsed by greater thinkers than any of us here –

in fact, the idea that Joseph and Mary were sexually ‘intimate’ was not even a concept which the first PROTESTANTS believed as is shown by the fact that Martin Luther believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. It is very much a ‘modern’ idea based on the hypersexualization of our culture along with the often unconscious desire to try to make Mary (and Joseph, and even Jesus) into more ‘human’ people, i.e., people ‘just like us’. . .and to dismiss as ‘absurd’ ideas such as perpetual virginity, continence, and giving ‘all’ to God instead of living a ‘normal’ life and giving Him anything ‘left over’ when and if it suits us too. . .

As I said earlier, the Bible is an excellent TOOL but it is not self-interpreting nor is it our AUTHORITY. There is a lot the Bible never tells us (what did Jesus do between the ages of 12 and 30, for example), and that’s because it doesn’t HAVE to. The Church has the authority to teach (and the Church’s teachings will not CONTRADICT Scripture and in fact the perpetual virginity does NOT contradict Scripture in any way). . .but it doesn’t HAVE to tell us WHY, WHEN, WHERE and HOW as if it were discussing a movie of the week about Mary’s perpetual virginity, complete with touching backstory and ‘guaranteed proof from eyewitness reports’. The Church teaches that Mary was a perpetual Virgin, it’s in the catechism, it’s in the teachings spread back over the centuries because that’s the way the Holy Spirit wanted to have us taught.

 

[adrift]

Sure, but as you know…just because a perception or idea of something gets passed along, it doesn’t mean it’s the actual truth. Traditions often come about when the answer is murky and an idea is passed on until it “becomes” a truth after a long time.
But that is why it is called “tradition” instead of “fact”.

I guess I wasn’t clear. I was not speaking of small t tradition but Tradition. The bolding is mine.

TRADITION
Literally a “handing on,” referring to the passing down of God’s revealed word. As such it has two closely related but distinct meanings. Tradition first means all of divine revelation, from the dawn of human history to the end of the apostolic age, as passed on from one generation of believers to the next, and as preserved under divine guidance by the Church established by Christ. Sacred Tradition more technically also means, within this transmitted revelation, that part of God’s revealed word which is not contained in Sacred Scripture. Referring specifically to how Christian tradition was handed on, the Second Vatican Council says: “It was done by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received–whether from the lips of Christ, from His way of life and His works, or whether they had learned it by the prompting of the Holy Spirit” (Constitution on Divine Revelation, II, 7). (Etym. Latin traditio, a giving over, delivery, surrender; a handing down: from tradere, to give up.)

I notice that you didn’t address what Mary said to the angel.

The quotes you use above are examples usually described to support that she was a virgin when she got pregnant with Jeshua, not to show she stayed a virgin after that, though.

I don’t think Mary went around telling everyone in Nazareth or elsewhere that she vowed to be a virgin for the rest of her life and haven’t seen any reports on that.
You think she did that?

The quotes show that they support her virginity throughout her life. So because they are used to show her virginity at Jesus’ birth they don’t show she was ever virgin? Strange because each quote I gave, and more I could have given, verified they believed she remained a virgin her whole life.
Your question is red herring that has nothing to do with Mary being a virgin her whole life. Why would it be necessary for her to go around telling everyone If we are going to speculate, then I would speculate that Luke in conversations with Mary learned of her vow of virginity. Jesus may have even have told His apostles since we do not know all that Jesus told them.

 

[brumano]

Yes, I know…but at least we’d know if he had cousins.
And then, the “brothers” who came to see him that day might be cousins.

it’s well known that He had cousins if you think they could have been his cousins, fine but don’t think those brothers are Mary’s sons because they’re not, nowhere near scripture proof if there was we would have been forced to accept it which we would have long time ago.

 

[brumano]

Sure, but as you know…just because a perception or idea of something gets passed along, it doesn’t mean it’s the actual truth. Traditions often come about when the answer is murky and an idea is passed on until it “becomes” a truth after a long time.
But that is why it is called “tradition” instead of “fact”.

The quotes you use above are examples usually described to support that she was a virgin when she got pregnant with Jeshua, not to show she stayed a virgin after that, though.

I don’t think Mary went around telling everyone in Nazareth or elsewhere that she vowed to be a virgin for the rest of her life and haven’t seen any reports on that.
You think she did that?

Our Tradtion on this is not murkky, it is crystal clear Mary’s name is Ever Virgin the angel Gabriel greeted her as Mary Full of Grace. Your misconceptions have now become your Traditions and you might be stuck with them, or was it the other way around, who knows. Do you think it’s kind of odd that if the Lord had all these brothers and sisters and that it was all such common knowledge at the time, that you run into Phillip The Evangelist in Acts i think, who had four virgin daughters who were prophets? And this was well after the first Pentecost. No connection whatsoever to The Blessed Virgin Mary?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

I think to most people, when they read those words, it doesn’t translate to them at all that she stayed a virgin. I imagine most of those people in the early years just assume she had other children.
It looks as thought the early “church fathers” who were putting everything into place for the religion didn’t address the idea of whether she stayed a virgin or not after Jesus was born until at least a century after they had all died.
Perpetual virginity wasn’t taught as a doctrine by the early church father Tertullian, who died in 225. The doctrine on perpetual virginity, from what I’ve read in Christian history books, wasn’t well established for those who believed in it until the 4th Century.

The key words here are ‘you think’. (I don’t mean this in a mean way).

Ever heard the old joke about ‘assume’? When you assume, you make an ***** out of u and me? It has a grain of truth in it.

Basically what you are saying is that people ‘assumed’ one thing (that Mary had other children) for a couple of hundred years, even during a time period when (as has been established on other threads but I’ll recap fast) there would have been people living with knowledge of the existence of those putative children. And that somehow, someway, some ‘body’ decided to claim something completely different a couple centuries after. . .even though it would then ‘fly in the face’ of what the ‘regular normal people’ assumed. And somehow people after a couple CENTURIES of believing Mary had plenty of kids just magically ACCEPTED a completely new teaching? How? Why? Where is the proof?

You are saying that the ‘majority’ of Christians in the first 300 years or so just assumed Mary had other children, based entirely on the ‘evidence’ of a Scripture that WAS NOT EVEN AVAILABLE IN THE WRITTEN FORM AS WE KNOW IT. . . and also on some apparently now ‘lost’ oral tradition from the children themselves, people who knew them, yadda yadda. . .

and that **somehow (and this STILL before the evidence of the canon of Scripture in the form we know it). . .some GUY somewhere decided to claim Mary was a Virgin, and he somehow managed, in the face of a couple of CENTURIES of belief by the AVERAGE CHRISTIAN that Mary had children, managed to get it ‘made into dogma’ by the Church (as though that is the way that dogma is made, but that’s beside the point). . .and despite the fact that we have oodles of evidence regarding every OTHER DISPUTED TEACHING IN EARLY CHURCH HISTORY, everything from whether Christ was God, half God, became God, was always God, etc. . . somehow the entire story of the belief of "Mary, mother of Many’ was WIPED FROM EXISTENCE. The whole record of people believing this was WIPED FROM EXISTENCE. **

**And yet somehow the PROOFS (so-called) were LEFT IN SCRIPTURE to be “FOUND” more than a THOUSAND YEARS LATER by people PROTESTING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. **

I mean, this is a bigger ‘conspiracy theory’ than even the ‘holy grail’ idea. . .

And it all rests not on one single scrap of evidence, but on ‘modern’ people’s ‘assumption’ of what they think Mary ‘should have done’ with her life. . .

Because naturally nothing that the CATHOLIC CHURCH presents as evidence can be evaluated or discussed. Only what a modern person ‘assumes’ based on pure whim and with no proof whatsoever is worthy of being considered as a truth!!!