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Mannyfit75
Guest
Don’t you mean Mary lived in Ephesus with John? I know this is a typo. We all make them.
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guanophore
Guest
I do, thank you. However, Jesus was there with them too!
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Mannyfit75
Guest
Can you clearify that information because that is the first time I heard of it? I don’t think Jesus lived in Ephesus with John and Mary after his resurrection. He spend most of his time with in Jerusalem and the Galilee area. On the 40th day, he ascended to his Father in Heaven and is siteth at the Right Hand of the Father.I do, thank you. However, Jesus was there with them too!
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Mannyfit75
Guest
Can you clearify that information? That is the first time I heard of it. I don’t think Jesus lived in Ephesus with John and Mary after his resurrection. He spend most of his time with in Jerusalem and the Galilee area. On the 40th day, he ascended to his Father in Heaven and is siteth at the Right Hand of the Father.I do, thank you. However, Jesus was there with them too!
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Zooey
Guest
Names, along with chapter & verses…
Because I have been reading the Bible for more than a half century, and I have yet to see one single place that Scripture attributes other children to the Blessed Virgin. Every single time someone tries to say this, when the Bible is checked, those people have the names of their actual parents given…either there, or in another verse about them.
Funny, huh?? All those people in the Bible that we have no idea who their families were, but the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of Scripture to make it clear to the honest reader that anyone “appearing to be” a sibling of our Lord, was actually the child of someone other than Mary…In the words of another regular CAF poster, “God is **so **together!!”
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Jaypeeto4
Guest
Scripture does NOT portray Mary as the mother of a number of children presumably born after Jesus.
We all agree that Jesus was the “firstborn” of Mary, she was a virgin for crying out loud.
NOW, about the brothers and sisters of Jesus,
there were, at least til Jesus was 12, no other children of Mary because none of them went with Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover, after which Jesus stayed behind in the Temple unbeknownst to Mary and Joseph. So any “other children” Mary may have supposedly had, would have been born AFTER Jesus’s 12th birthday.
NOW, younger children didn’t tell the eldest son what to do under any circumstances in ancient Jewish culture. It just WAS NOT DONE. Yet, the “brothers” of Jesus act as if they are trying to boss Jesus around when they tell him to go up to Jerusalem for the Feast, and Jesus tells them to go up to the Feast themselves for it is not yet his time to go up to the feast.
Let’s figure this out. Jesus died at age 33 years old.
His oldest younger sibling would have been barely 21 years old at the time of the Crucifixion. Yet there were at least 4 brothers named and three un-named sisters. Assuming Mary had the other children one right after the other, Jesus’s youngest sibling would have been 13 or 14 years old when he died. Yet Jesus on the cross didn’t give Mary AND SOME OTHER CHILDREN into the care of John, but only Mary alone.
But just 6 weeks later at Pentecost, Jesus’s brothers are ALL believers and present in the upper room with some other women and Mary the Mother of Jesus and the rest of the disciples.
This is odd if these are really Mary’s kids.
The oldest universal early Christian belief is that Mary was a perpetual virgin, but that Joseph was around 38 to 40 years old when he married Mary, and a widower with several children, the ones named in scripture as the “brothers” of Jesus. They would obviously have been much older than Jesus and their behavior toward him in trying to tell him what to do would have made perfect sense, since they were older and thought themselves more wise than he. Younger brothers would not, not, not have behaved that way toward their eldest brother.
It was Saint Jerome, centuries later, who posited the view that many if not all of the brothers and sisters of Jesus were actually cousins. I think both views have some truth to them.
I think some of the brothers were Joseph’s children by his first marriage which left him a widower. But also, early Christian recorded history tells us that Joseph had a blood brother named Cleophas who had a wife ALSO named Mary, who was the Mother of James the Less and of Joses. Scripture mentions this particular Mary as well, and she is present at the crucifixion with Mary the Mother of Jesus, and scripture even calls her Mary’s
“sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas.” Now, Mary’s parents wouldn’t have named BOTH daughters Mary, so it is clear that Mary Cleophas was the Virgin Mary’s Sister-In-Law, the wife of St. Joseph’s brother Cleophas. Simon, a bishop of Jerusalem, was said by historian Eusebius to be the son of Joseph’s brother Cleophas.
The early Christians were not crazy. Nor were they ignoramuses about the family of Jesus, who were members of the Church from the beginning. They knew who these people were, and they were NOT children of Mary, otherwise the early church would never have believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, which it definitely did believe in.
Catholic theologians in the late middle ages began to speculate that ALL of the brothers of Jesus were really cousins not half brothers thru Joseph’s brother, and that Joseph himself was very young and a virgin himself when he married Mary. This, however popular, is very late theological speculation and completely at variance with the belief of the early church of the first three centuries A.D.
Either way, Mary had only one child: JESUS, and all earliest Christian writing bears testimony to that fact. The early apostolic communities were very, very Conservative and not at all prone to novelty. This is why the Protoevangelium of James was rejected as not being inspired, even though a lot of it’s information was true (such as that the parents of Mary were Joachim and Anne, which everyone knew from the Virgin herself), but a lot of the Protoevangelium was a lot of hooey. The church separated fact from fiction in that little book, rejected a lot of it, and rejected the book from being considered inspired of God. Some of it was true and some of it wasn’t.
Mary had no other children.
Love,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
We all agree that Jesus was the “firstborn” of Mary, she was a virgin for crying out loud.
NOW, about the brothers and sisters of Jesus,
there were, at least til Jesus was 12, no other children of Mary because none of them went with Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover, after which Jesus stayed behind in the Temple unbeknownst to Mary and Joseph. So any “other children” Mary may have supposedly had, would have been born AFTER Jesus’s 12th birthday.
NOW, younger children didn’t tell the eldest son what to do under any circumstances in ancient Jewish culture. It just WAS NOT DONE. Yet, the “brothers” of Jesus act as if they are trying to boss Jesus around when they tell him to go up to Jerusalem for the Feast, and Jesus tells them to go up to the Feast themselves for it is not yet his time to go up to the feast.
Let’s figure this out. Jesus died at age 33 years old.
His oldest younger sibling would have been barely 21 years old at the time of the Crucifixion. Yet there were at least 4 brothers named and three un-named sisters. Assuming Mary had the other children one right after the other, Jesus’s youngest sibling would have been 13 or 14 years old when he died. Yet Jesus on the cross didn’t give Mary AND SOME OTHER CHILDREN into the care of John, but only Mary alone.
But just 6 weeks later at Pentecost, Jesus’s brothers are ALL believers and present in the upper room with some other women and Mary the Mother of Jesus and the rest of the disciples.
This is odd if these are really Mary’s kids.
The oldest universal early Christian belief is that Mary was a perpetual virgin, but that Joseph was around 38 to 40 years old when he married Mary, and a widower with several children, the ones named in scripture as the “brothers” of Jesus. They would obviously have been much older than Jesus and their behavior toward him in trying to tell him what to do would have made perfect sense, since they were older and thought themselves more wise than he. Younger brothers would not, not, not have behaved that way toward their eldest brother.
It was Saint Jerome, centuries later, who posited the view that many if not all of the brothers and sisters of Jesus were actually cousins. I think both views have some truth to them.
I think some of the brothers were Joseph’s children by his first marriage which left him a widower. But also, early Christian recorded history tells us that Joseph had a blood brother named Cleophas who had a wife ALSO named Mary, who was the Mother of James the Less and of Joses. Scripture mentions this particular Mary as well, and she is present at the crucifixion with Mary the Mother of Jesus, and scripture even calls her Mary’s
“sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas.” Now, Mary’s parents wouldn’t have named BOTH daughters Mary, so it is clear that Mary Cleophas was the Virgin Mary’s Sister-In-Law, the wife of St. Joseph’s brother Cleophas. Simon, a bishop of Jerusalem, was said by historian Eusebius to be the son of Joseph’s brother Cleophas.
The early Christians were not crazy. Nor were they ignoramuses about the family of Jesus, who were members of the Church from the beginning. They knew who these people were, and they were NOT children of Mary, otherwise the early church would never have believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, which it definitely did believe in.
Catholic theologians in the late middle ages began to speculate that ALL of the brothers of Jesus were really cousins not half brothers thru Joseph’s brother, and that Joseph himself was very young and a virgin himself when he married Mary. This, however popular, is very late theological speculation and completely at variance with the belief of the early church of the first three centuries A.D.
Either way, Mary had only one child: JESUS, and all earliest Christian writing bears testimony to that fact. The early apostolic communities were very, very Conservative and not at all prone to novelty. This is why the Protoevangelium of James was rejected as not being inspired, even though a lot of it’s information was true (such as that the parents of Mary were Joachim and Anne, which everyone knew from the Virgin herself), but a lot of the Protoevangelium was a lot of hooey. The church separated fact from fiction in that little book, rejected a lot of it, and rejected the book from being considered inspired of God. Some of it was true and some of it wasn’t.
Mary had no other children.
Love,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
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bigpadre
Guest
The bible does not say there were no other brothers/sisters with them. It merely talks about Jesus staying behind and his mother and father looking for him.
The brothers are not trying to boss Jesus around they are just telling him to reveal himself to the world.
Assuming there were no brothers on the trip to Jerusalem when he was 12, this is a great explanation of why Jesus left Mary into John’s care and not his little brothers.
Are you kidding? Have you ever seen brothers interact with each other?
And that’s the problem. It was centuries later. Ever played the game of telephone?
Why would you base your faith on speculation? The cousins view is as popular as the step-brother view.
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Jaypeeto4
Guest
The brothers are not trying to boss Jesus around they are just telling him to reveal himself to the world.
They were telling him what to do.
That was NOT ACCEPTABLE in ancient Jewish culture.
It doesn’t matter what people today do.
Assuming there were no brothers on the trip to Jerusalem when he was 12, this is a great explanation of why Jesus left Mary into John’s care and not his little brothers.
And into whose care were committed his “little brothers” then???
And all his little sisters??? Did Mary abandon all her “other children”??? How come none of her “other children” were there to comfort her at the foot of the cross? And don’t tell me that it was because they didn’t believe in Jesus, either, cuz that’s no excuse not to be there to comfort your grieving mother who is witnessing the judicial murder of her firstborn. But if they were NOT her children they would feel no obligation to be there. And they WEREN’T there.
These responses of yours to my post are kind of half-baked.
I do not base my faith on speculation. YOU SPECULATE that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were Mary’s children. Scripture never says so. **And all early church testimony **((and these people KNEW Mary and the apostle John AND knew the “brothers” of Jesus and hence KNEW whether they were children of Mary or not)), LONG PRIOR to Saint Jerome, states that Mary was perpetually a virgin. If the early Christians of the 1st and early to mid 2nd century knew that those brothers of Jesus were children of Mary, her perpetual virginity could never have gotten off the ground in the church. Yet it was believed in the ENTIRE Church, everywhere throughout the vast Roman Empire, thus it “didn’t get started somewhere” and spread throughout the Church. It was the original knowledge of the first Christians.
I do not base my faith on speculation. My post was quite thorough. You only addressed a couple of points, and very unconvincingly at that.
God bless,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
They were telling him what to do.
That was NOT ACCEPTABLE in ancient Jewish culture.
It doesn’t matter what people today do.
Assuming there were no brothers on the trip to Jerusalem when he was 12, this is a great explanation of why Jesus left Mary into John’s care and not his little brothers.
And into whose care were committed his “little brothers” then???
And all his little sisters??? Did Mary abandon all her “other children”??? How come none of her “other children” were there to comfort her at the foot of the cross? And don’t tell me that it was because they didn’t believe in Jesus, either, cuz that’s no excuse not to be there to comfort your grieving mother who is witnessing the judicial murder of her firstborn. But if they were NOT her children they would feel no obligation to be there. And they WEREN’T there.
These responses of yours to my post are kind of half-baked.
I do not base my faith on speculation. YOU SPECULATE that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were Mary’s children. Scripture never says so. **And all early church testimony **((and these people KNEW Mary and the apostle John AND knew the “brothers” of Jesus and hence KNEW whether they were children of Mary or not)), LONG PRIOR to Saint Jerome, states that Mary was perpetually a virgin. If the early Christians of the 1st and early to mid 2nd century knew that those brothers of Jesus were children of Mary, her perpetual virginity could never have gotten off the ground in the church. Yet it was believed in the ENTIRE Church, everywhere throughout the vast Roman Empire, thus it “didn’t get started somewhere” and spread throughout the Church. It was the original knowledge of the first Christians.
I do not base my faith on speculation. My post was quite thorough. You only addressed a couple of points, and very unconvincingly at that.
God bless,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
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bigpadre
Guest
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Jaypeeto4
Guest
Not everyone KNEW about Jesus how in the world would they KNOW about Mary? The bible says they were brothers and sisters. And it wasn’t believed by the ENTIRE Church, everywhere. It was not the original knowledge of the first Christians.
Everyone in the earliest churches knew who Mary was
and that she did NOT have other children. It WAS the original knowledge of the first Christians. All evidence supports that.
The Bible does NOT state that Mary had other children.
Name me one verse which states that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were children of Mary’s womb. It is not there.
And as for asking her when we get to heaven, that’s nice, but we really don’t have to wait. She has appeared many, many times over the centuries to many reliable and Godfearing people, not just in visions, but in three dimensional personal appearances, such as to Saint Catherine Laboure in the 19th century, and she has always reiterated her perpetual virginity.
What “necessary for salvation” doctrine does Mary’s perpetual virginity contradict?? None, even by Protestant standards.
Therefore, it cannot be assumed that these appearances of the glorified Mary to Christians on earth were demonic impersonations of Jesus’s mother. It was HER.
Don’t joke, either, that you would believe it IF and ONLY IF,
Mary appeared to YOU personally, because you just might unexpectedly get your wish !!! It happened to Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jewish atheist, who went into a church to scoff at Christ, Mary, and Christianity in general and left that building 100% converted to Christ because – unexpectedly – Mary herself appeared to him in that building and convinced him of God’s Truth.
(( Whether the startling, unexpected personal apparition of Mary scared Ratisbonne so much that he peed in his pants, we do not know
but it made a convinced Christian out of an avowed Jewish atheist ))
Love,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
Everyone in the earliest churches knew who Mary was
and that she did NOT have other children. It WAS the original knowledge of the first Christians. All evidence supports that.
The Bible does NOT state that Mary had other children.
Name me one verse which states that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were children of Mary’s womb. It is not there.
And as for asking her when we get to heaven, that’s nice, but we really don’t have to wait. She has appeared many, many times over the centuries to many reliable and Godfearing people, not just in visions, but in three dimensional personal appearances, such as to Saint Catherine Laboure in the 19th century, and she has always reiterated her perpetual virginity.
What “necessary for salvation” doctrine does Mary’s perpetual virginity contradict?? None, even by Protestant standards.
Therefore, it cannot be assumed that these appearances of the glorified Mary to Christians on earth were demonic impersonations of Jesus’s mother. It was HER.
Don’t joke, either, that you would believe it IF and ONLY IF,
Mary appeared to YOU personally, because you just might unexpectedly get your wish !!! It happened to Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jewish atheist, who went into a church to scoff at Christ, Mary, and Christianity in general and left that building 100% converted to Christ because – unexpectedly – Mary herself appeared to him in that building and convinced him of God’s Truth.
(( Whether the startling, unexpected personal apparition of Mary scared Ratisbonne so much that he peed in his pants, we do not know
but it made a convinced Christian out of an avowed Jewish atheist ))Love,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
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justasking4
Guest
The Scriptures are the only inspired-inerrant documents we have. Their authority is greater than any other non-bibilcal document-teaching.
Do you believe that everything the church for the 1st 4 centuries was the truth?
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justasking4
Guest
Should we not understand this title to mean that she was the mother of the human Jesus since God cannot have a mother?
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justasking4
Guest
This is not the case, justasking. In pronouncing the Marian dogmas as infallible, the Church affirms that the words “Hail, full of grace” is a way of saying that Mary had no original sin.
How can your church affirm something that the Scriptures don’t teach? Look up what “full of grace” means in a greek lexicon. It doesn’t mean she was witthout original sin.
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justasking4
Guest
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justasking4
Guest
Part 1
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justasking4
Guest
Part 2
"Roman Catholic writer Eamon Duffy concedes that, ‘there is, clearly, no historical evidence whatever for it …’ (Eamon Duffy, What Catholics Believe About Mary (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1989), p. 17). For centuries in the early Church there is complete silence regarding Mary’s end. The first mention of it is by Epiphanius in 377 A.D. and he specifically states that no one knows what actually happened to Mary. He lived near Palestine and if there were, in fact, a tradition in the Church generally believed and taught he would have affirmed it. But he clearly states that ‘her end no one knows.’ These are his words:
But if some think us mistaken, let them search the Scriptures. They will not find Mary’s death; they will not find whether she died or did not die; they will not find whether she was buried or was not buried … Scripture is absolutely silent [on the end of Mary] … For my own part, I do not dare to speak, but I keep my own thoughts and I practice silence … The fact is, Scripture has outstripped the human mind and left [this matter] uncertain … Did she die, we do not know … Either the holy Virgin died and was buried … Or she was killed … Or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God and He can do whatever He desires; for her end no-one knows.’ (Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 78.10-11, 23. Cited by juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. II (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), pp. 139-40).
The Scriptures don’t call hardly anyone by name a sinner either. Should i assume they to were without sin?
Since your church is making the claim she was then its up to them to support it either with Scripture (which it can’t) or historically in which there are no records of.
To many problems with “inferring or deducing” something from scripture when you have no facts. With such a method you can make them say about anything. False teachers do this kind of thing to support their false teachings.
This is not just my opinion but also the opinion of a noted catholic scholar-- let me quote him for your:
"Roman Catholic writer Eamon Duffy concedes that, ‘there is, clearly, no historical evidence whatever for it …’ (Eamon Duffy, What Catholics Believe About Mary (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1989), p. 17). For centuries in the early Church there is complete silence regarding Mary’s end. The first mention of it is by Epiphanius in 377 A.D. and he specifically states that no one knows what actually happened to Mary. He lived near Palestine and if there were, in fact, a tradition in the Church generally believed and taught he would have affirmed it. But he clearly states that ‘her end no one knows.’ These are his words:
But if some think us mistaken, let them search the Scriptures. They will not find Mary’s death; they will not find whether she died or did not die; they will not find whether she was buried or was not buried … Scripture is absolutely silent [on the end of Mary] … For my own part, I do not dare to speak, but I keep my own thoughts and I practice silence … The fact is, Scripture has outstripped the human mind and left [this matter] uncertain … Did she die, we do not know … Either the holy Virgin died and was buried … Or she was killed … Or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God and He can do whatever He desires; for her end no-one knows.’ (Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 78.10-11, 23. Cited by juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. II (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), pp. 139-40).
Men can be wrong and even though they may have been the great reformers, they were not infallible.
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zemi
Guest
Justasking4, are you open to discussion and possible rethinking of your position when given a reason from Scripture alone?
You know we only adhere to tradition becasue the “inspired-inerrant” Bible tells us so. Otherwise it would be just a bunch of historical documents (i.e. what the Church fathers were saying). But it’s just more than that. Just as the Bible is more than a book. But I don’t want to get off the topic. If God tells you from Scripture to look also elsewhere, would you look there becasue he would say so?
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guanophore
Guest
Don’t you remember? He said where two or three are gathered in His name? There was a thriving community in Ephesus…
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LilyM
Guest
And if those two are His Blessed Mother and the disciple He loved … you can take it to the bank that He was there in a very special way! :angel1:Don’t you remember? He said where two or three are gathered in His name? There was a thriving community in Ephesus…
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guanophore
Guest
This is a very astute observation.
It is amazing that you spent 13 years in Catholic school, and came out like this! How did that happen?
Yes. Fortunately we have a reliable witness in the Magesterium.
I am not sure, but I am sure that many have lost the Real Presence.
Why do you pray that? Do you want to convince us that the Marian apparitions are demons?
This is great CWT.
I don’t rely on the clergy either, some of whom sadly know less than I do about the teaching of Jesus. However, I know I can rely on the Magesterium, and the examination of the evidence has already been done.
The Magesterium does not “come up with doctrine”. They faithfully pass on what was given by Jesus to the Apostles, and their successors. I am not going to replace the authority Jesus appointed with myself, no matter how flooded I feel with HS goosebumps.
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