MARY QUEEN OF HEAVEN NOT A VIRGIN
Catholic doctrine requires the historical belief that Mary had only one child Jesus.
Matthew and Mark and Luke speak of Mary the mother of James and Joseph and some take this to refer to Jesus' mother. If they are right, then is are the gospels wilfully refusing to call her the mother of Jesus because the same gospels speak of Jesus saying that his real mother is not his birth mother but whoever heeds his word?
It would mean Matthew 28:1 hates to mention her and just calls her the other Mary.
The only objection to all that is that Acts 1:14 calls her the Mother of
Jesus. But that proves nothing. That you cannot bear calling her Jesus' mother
does not mean you will never call her that. It is thought that since Luke speaks
well of Mary that he could not have thought she was dirt. But what if she went
astray? The angel called her full of grace but do not forget that grace is seen
as a miraculous power that restrains evil. Paul said that grace abounds for
sinners. Calling her full of grace is not necessarily a compliment.
Matthew says that Joseph did not know Mary sexually until after she had had her
son. This seems to hint that he had sex with her after the birth. Catholics
bellow, “But until in the Bible does not mean what it usually means at times.”
True. But you can tell by the context. But there is the strong possibility that
until means until here. When it could mean the literal until that is what it
should be taken to mean. Matthew was writing a gospel not a puzzle.
In Genesis 8:7 after the flood the raven flies until the earth was dried up but
that does not mean that it settled when dry ground appeared again. Until seems
to mean something like when rather than until here. This was written in a time
long before Matthew so why assume Matthew would have written like that as well?
Why assume he would have meant until the way Genesis means it? Matthew was
writing in Greek not in Hebrew so the Christian habit of sneaking Genesis into
the equation isn’t on.
James D Tabor observes in The Jesus Dynasty page 297 that the natural reading of
Matthew is that Joseph and Mary had sex after Jesus was born. He says the
Catholic argument that until does not mean Mary's virginity was taken away by
Joseph after Jesus was born is strained. He is right. Catholics say the until
has the same sense as, "Stay sober until I come." This does not mean to suggest
that one may get drunk after. But Joseph did not know Mary sexually until after
she had her son is not like that. The until has to be literal here.
In Psalm 110:1 God says to the Messiah that he wants him to sit at his right
hand (rule as next in power) until he makes his enemies his footstool. The
Church argues that until here does not mean that Jesus could be demoted from
God’s right hand so until in Matthew does not mean Mary was only a virgin until
she had her baby. But there is no evidence that the Psalm is speaking of Jesus
at all. Also the enemies could be made footstools forever so the until would not
mean that there is a time limit on the messiah ruling beside God.
Luke calls Jesus Mary’s firstborn which seems to indicate that he was her first
of a number of children. Theologians say firstborn in the Bible is often
supposed to mean the most important to be born not the first to be born. But
there is no evidence of this usage in the Bible. The Christians imagine there is
for Jesus is called God’s firstborn which they do not take literally for they
hold that as God Jesus always existed and what always existed never had a birth.
But this rests on the unproven assumption that the Bible teaches that Jesus is
God.
There are brothers and sisters of Jesus mentioned in the gospels but cousins
were called brothers and sisters. In Genesis 14:14 and 1 Chronicles 23:22 we
find this usage.
So the Catholics could be right except that the Gospels were written in Greek
and there was a word for cousins in Greek. Had the gospels not been saying Jesus
had flesh and blood brothers and sisters another word would have been used.
In those times, people had big families. Why does the gospel speak as if Jesus
did not have many of those alleged cousins? That is strange. It makes more sense
to hold that they were real brothers and sisters.
The Gospel of John says that the disciple Jesus loved and the mother of Jesus
were standing by the cross and Jesus said to him, "See that is your mother", and
to her, "See that is your son". The Catholic Church says this disciple was the
apostle John. In actual fact, there is no reason to think the disciple was John.
The gospel says that John is the son of Zebedee (21:2). That doesn't sound like
John wrote it for his name and who his father was was not being hidden. The
gospel does not claim to be authored by the beloved disciple but to be based on
the writings of the beloved disciple (John 21). To suggest that a disciple would
write anything and keep calling himself the beloved disciple to hide his
identity and to keep Jesus' love for him in people's faces is madness especially
if he was really at the cross.
When Jesus on the cross told the beloved disciple who was not a relation to care
for Mary it is supposed to imply that she had had no other children. But the
gospel simply says that Jesus told the disciple that Mary was his mother and
Mary and the disciple was her son. And then the gospel says that the disciple
looked after her from that moment and took her to his home. But wait, the
disciple becoming Mary’s adopted son does not indicate that he was the only one
who could care for her. (There might have been a spiritual affinity between the
disciple and Mary which was why she wanted him to look after her and when she
would have been 43 then and the disciple a grown man the scandalous implications
of their living together would have been obvious.) If it does, it indicates that
Jesus had no cousins to look after her as well which dismantles the Roman view
that Jesus’ brothers and sisters are just cousins. So if this shows that Jesus
was an only child it also shows that the cousins were invented. The amount of
speculation in Catholic theology that they call truth is scandalous especially
when they read in the gospel of Mark that Jesus’ brothers came with his mother
to talk to him so they were very close to her meaning she was probably their
literal mother.
His saying on the cross when he was dying, "Woman this man is your son" is
clearly Jesus reaffirming that he does not consider her his mother.
Also the disciple might have only taken Mary into his home for a while. The
gospel says all who were close to Jesus were frightened for their lives so the
disciple might have taken her into hiding for a while. And adoptions can be
reversed. Maybe they fell out down the line and so Mary and the disciple ceased
to be mother and son. Rome reads far too much into what Jesus said.
It is indeed a serious problem that the gospel says it was the disciple Jesus
loved that Jesus gave his mother to. We don't know for sure if this really was
John. The gospeller claims to have been this disciple but he never says he was
John. But if he was the apostle John then why hide his identity? How could he
hide it for if Mary was considered important everybody would have known who he
was had he been living with her? The Jewish traditions liked to portray Mary as
a whore so they would have been only too happy to hear that she was living with
a man. This shows both that the Catholic fantasy that Mary was always honoured
in the Church as top saint is rubbish and that the disciple was probably not one
of the twelve apostles at all. That means we are not under obligation to believe
in his gospel for the twelve apostles were the established dogma makers and
prophets of the Church. Also the disciple not being John debunks the legends and
visions from Heaven about John and Mary being mother and son and living in
Ephesus.
In John chapter 2 we read that Mary and Jesus went to a wedding feast to which
they were invited. The wine runs out and Mary asks Jesus to do something about
it. At first he refuses. Then he decides to turn water into wine. She speaks to
him as if he was related to the groom or bride and had authority over the
entertainment. She speaks as if the wine is her concern and his. She even tells
the stewards to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. If the account is not a
badly concealed story about Jesus' own wedding it is certainly an account about
the marriage of Mary's son or daughter. Jesus must have stepped into the void
left by the death or departure of the head of the family, Joseph husband of
Mary. He then was probably older than the brother or sister that got married. It
was most likely to have been a sister that was married for the tradition was
that the parents of the bride organised the wedding entertainment.
We read that Mary had a sister called Mary. Was this a sister-in-law or cousin
or other far outish relation? Did Mary’s father divorce her mother and abandon
her and Mary and take a new bride who gave birth to another Mary? If Mary’s
father had disowned Mary he could have let his wife name the new child Mary.
Some would say this is unlikely but stranger things have happened. If the two
families were separate then it was possible to have two Marys by the one father
for confusion wouldn’t have been an issue. The same names could have been used
when there was no chance of a mix-up. It is possible that Mary’s sister had a
second name which was Mary and used that instead of her first name. There is no
reason to deny that sister means sister here when Mary is said to have a sister
Mary. Mary being the sister of Mary doesn’t prove that the non-literal sister
use was deployed in the gospels. It doesn’t give the Catholics an excuse for
ignoring the references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters.
The view that since Jesus’ father was God then his brothers if any could not be
literal brothers but half-brothers shows that brother could even mean cousin is
incorrect. We all refer to half-brothers as brothers but it is too big of a step
to say that anybody doing that could mean cousin as well! The gospels never
actually say that no male sperm was used in producing Jesus. Luke says Joseph
was supposed to be the father of Jesus but perhaps this is just a reflection of
the unusual circumstances of the conception meaning nobody was sure how Mary got
pregnant. It does not mean Luke didn’t think Jesus was Joseph’s son. When Luke
is read carefully he does not teach a virginal conception.
There is no evidence to support the Roman Catholic habit of saying sisters and
brothers don’t mean that when Jesus is being discussed. In fact it is very
improbable that the Bible supports the Church.
Now, it cannot be proved from the Bible that Mary never had other children and
it cannot be proved that the brothers and sisters are really cousins. Would the
gospels really have been likely to call cousins brothers and sisters and risk
confusing people especially readers who were of Gentile origin and who meant
brother by brother and sister by sister? The law of economy tells us that when
brother could mean cousin and it appears in a book that gives no reason to think
that it is intended to mean cousin then it probably means brother. So, the
Catholic view that Mary was a perpetual virgin is out.
Or were the brothers and sisters the children of Joseph from a previous
marriage? But if the Bible says that Joseph was not Jesus’ father this is
eliminated as well. We are not told that they were Joseph’s offspring and it
seems that we would have been for the apostles were important characters in the
Bible story. Joseph was unlikely to have had a previous family because he was a
poor man and Mary’s father would not sell her to an older man with no money.
Joseph was married only the once and it was to Mary.
When Joseph had to bring his wife to Bethlehem though she was about to give
birth it implies that they were alone in the world. Nobody would look after her
so he had to drag her along with him. The story still seems dubious for she
would have been better off alone at home than travelling in her condition but
there is value in its hint that they had nobody. The appearance of the brothers
and sisters later implies that these were born after Jesus and to Mary. If they
had her relatives or parents these relatives would have seen to her.
The Bible says not a word about Mary always being a virgin and when it does touch the subject of her possibly ceasing to be we are asked by Catholicism to read things into it that are not there.