Abbie, it’s nice to know that the Bible has all the answers to every issue at hand. Would you be so good as to post the verses indicating the medical cure for cancer, the secret to establishing a lasting world peace, the eradication of poverty, the means for resolving the political and legal disputes that plague the public forums? For all of that, would you be so kind as to post the evidence that proves or disproves the Doctrines of the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union of Christ’s Natures, and the nature of the Eucharist?
FWIW, people who believe in Mary’s Perpetual Virginity (I don’t, but think that honesty indicates stating the longstanding tradition, shared by the Reformers, that she was in fact evervirgin) are perfectly well aware of the passages about Jesus’s brothers. If you bother to read anything about the Immaculate Conception from the Catholic viewpoint, you’ll find that they agree 100% with you about her having been saved from sin by the Atonement of Christ like everyone else – they simply believe that it was, in her case, a “preemptive strike” to produce a human being protected from sin in order to provide a suitable sin-free place for the infant Christ to be conceived and undergrow fetal development. While I’m not nutz about this doctrine, I see the logic underlying it. And if you care to listen to Catholics on “Queen of Heaven” (as I did), you’ll find that it’s the honorific recognition of her as the Mother of God the Son – and as He is the King, she is the Queen Mother, the position of honor for a woman in Jewish thought.
In short, don’t be throwing the Bible at people as if it is the sole repository of wisdom that the human race has ever had. And I would be very hesitant to completely reject 2000 years of tradition – it might tell you something you need to know. Like, maybe, humility?
Well, sir, your Conception of this idea is Immaculate – but hardly Infallible!
it seems that thomas keeps up his reputation for doubt and tardiness.
there has been a lot of speculation on the ages of various early christian saints, it is very hard to be certain without birth records or
59 is as good a guess as any other. she was 2-3 when given to temple, about 12-13 at annunciation, putting her at 45 or 46 at the crucifixtion. if you go with tapioca’s post of 48ad, that puts her at 60 or 61. if she died before her birthday (like julia child) she could be 59.
The missalette at Mass this morning had a little preamble on the subject of the Assumption - it mentions that while Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul, some people believe that this happened while she was still alive, while others believe that she died first.
This, I must emphasise, was on a document produced for use in Mass, Imprimi Potest, Nihil Obstat, etc., and not likely to entertain heretical doctrine.
Church tradition can be all well and good, Poly, but when it contradicts the Word of God, I’m going to believe God. You believe who you want, but spare me the nonsense about the Bible stating the cure for cancer. I never implied any such thing and you know it.
Look, neither side of your little spat has any rational basis. You’ve veered from answering what various groups say happened (which question has rational, factual answers) to what really did happen, which doesn’t. Take it to GD.
Well, the discussion isn’t about solving all the world’s problems, is it? It’s something related to christianity, and so the bible is a perfectly valid source.
Why would the catholic church know more about this than the bible? Most of the traditions came later, and it’s not out of character for the catholic church to have made things up out of reverence.
Maybe it is you who should learn some humility instead of attacking people for no reason.
I was kind of surprised when everyone was shocked in the movie Dogma when Eddie Murphy said that the Virgin Mary wasn’t always a virgin. I has always assumd that she was known as the virgin because she was a virgin when Jesus was born.
IMO Polycarp, not particularly gracious of you to jump on **Abbie **like that. In Christian circles where I hang out, it is normal practice to take the bible as first authority on such matters. Of course we should look to other sources where the bible is silent on certain facts. But in this case, a plain vanilla reading of the bible would indicate that Mary had other children, and therefore was not a virgin her entire life. In a thread where many have cited various (mostly older) church traditions it is perfectly acceptable for Abbie to put forward a widely held balancing view. To criticise her simply because you hold a different approach to the authority of scripture is not playing fair. Especially in GQ. Poly, you are well liked and well respected on these boards, but this time you are wrong – in manner if not in substance.
No, to Christians, he was both entirely human and entirely divine (a concept to give rationalists a fit, but we’re talking about the supernatural here). He wasn’t God pretending to be a human. As a human, he was the product of his upbringing and environment. And he was capable of sin.
The UN-official line is that she filled the niche of Goddess so missing in Christianity. (and in Judaism, too)
No Mother figure- and Christianity had to be made palatable to many peoples who worshipped a Goddess. Note that is it considered likely by many that St.Brigid/t was originaly the Celtic Goddess Brigit, and converted over to a saint to win more converts. Soon afterwards is when “the Marian Cult” started.
Note that after all that- Mary isn’t much of a “big deal” in the Protesant faiths. Oh, sure, she is certainly revered as the Mother of Jesus, but to some outsiders, it seems that the veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church is greater than that of God or Jesus.
I got no dog in this hunt. That’s just what others have said.
On the money as regards St Brigid, but not as regards the start of “the Marian cult”.
St Patrick arrives in Ireland in 432, and the assimilation of the Brigid cult presumably follows over a period after that.
One year earlier, at the other end of the known world (known to Christians, that is) we have a much more significant event, the Council of Ephesus, in 431, which resolves an arcane but intense theological disupute over the nature of Christ. It does so by declaring Mary to be “Theotokos”, varioiusly translated as “Mother of God” or “God-Bearer” – i.e. it declares that the Christ the man, born of Mary, was fully divine; his divinity was not something separated from his humanity. (And, Abbie, although the term doesn’t appear anywhere in scripture, that doesn’t appear to have deterred the Fathers of the Council from using it.)
The point here is that they choose to explain the nature of Christ by involving Mary, emphasising her special relationship with the divine. They clearly didn’t do so to assist in the impending mission of Patrick to the Irish, of which few if any of them were even aware. They do it, in fact, because the Nestorians, whose views they were opposing, had also explained their view of Christ in terms of the role of Mary. (She could be called “Christotokos”, but not “Theotokos”.) In other words, Mary was already an absolutely central figure in Christology and in – competing – Christian understandings of the Incarnation before Patrick ever sailed.
While Mary’s place in Christianity may well have helped in general terms with the assimililation of pagan practices, it is a great leap to assert that she was given that place in order to assist in the assimilation of pagan practices.
Well, you make a point. But the “cult of Marian worship” (as some non-Catholics have called it) did not get into full popularity until after that. It is quite possible that Mary was given extra emphasis as a recruiting tool- and this is not my idea mind you. Also- maybe not. I don’t know. Sounds plausible to me, but I am not expert.
Cerowyn- true, but we don’t know if those references are from various offshoots from the “true” Jewish faith (The OT mentions quite a few groups of Isrealites who “backslid” into pagan practices), or perhaps a part of the early Jewish faith that was just “written out of the Bible”. Certainly, by the time when we get solidly into recorded History, Judaism is a 100% Monotheistic “Father God” religion, and has remained so.
You are of course correct, and Abbie, I offer my apologies.
In point of fact, however, the issues raised in this thread, including the OP, are not addressed in Scripture, nor are they resolved by any secular sources. The Bible portrays Mary at the Annunciation, her visit to the pregnant Elizabeth, the Birth of Christ, a few incidents during His earthly ministry, the Crucifixion, and Pentecost; it’s silent on what she did before and after those references, most of which merely mention her in passing.
And Abbie’s answer is not Scriptural – nothing she said, AFAIK, is explicitly stated in Scripture, but rather are conclusions drawn from one’s interpretation of the application of verses of Scripture to Mary’s circumstances. (E.g., “Did Mary sin?” The Bible does not say one way or the other, but I suspect Abbie would argue from “All men have sinned, and fallen short…” with that taken to include Mary along with all the rest of us.)
Therefore the elements of Church tradition (which need to be distinguished from specifically Catholic tradition; matters on which Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and other churches giving credence to tradition are in agreement are under discussion here) are quite relevant to pursuing the answers to the OP and the related questions raised.
And it was based on Abbie arguing the exclusivity of what she and her tradition reads into the Scriptural accounts that upset me – because in point of fact it disagrees with what the majority of Christians today and throughout time have held to be the right answers to those questions.
Actually, the Greeks and a lot of others celebrated the Dormition yesterday (Aug. 15, Gregorian calendar). Us Russians will celebrate it on Aug. 28th, which is Aug. 15 on the Julian calendar.
Poly- I don’t want to get into a religous flame war here, but indeed- the fact that Jesus had siblings- especially a brother- is about as clear as the Gospels could be. Not being an expert on Greek/Latin or Aramaic, I will just have to conced to the experts who have said that the words used to designate James (for example) as Jesus’s “brother” mean exactly that “brother”. There is no scriptural reason to suppose that they were anything else. There is no mention that they are Jeusus “half-brothers” or cousins or anything but full siblings, born of Joseph & Mary. Specific mention is made of 4 brothers (by name) and several sisters (not by name). In fact, James moved into a position of authority in the early Church, supposedly becuase he was Jesus’s brother.
One can still assume the “Virgin Mary” and agree that Jesus was simply the first born, I don’t think it was until quite a bit later that the RC Church started to states that she remained a virgin afterwards, and thus had to explain Jesus’s “brethren” which had already made it into canon.
Well, there are indeed four named men (James, Judas, Simon, and Joses) who are described as Jesus’s brothers, and a reference to “sisters” which implies at least two of them.
And Jesus is described as Mary’s firstborn.
That much is clear in Scripture.
Now, there is a longstanding tradition of Mary’s perpetual virginity, which not only Catholics and Orthodox but Martin Luther and John Calvin accepted.
Can these be read to conform to a common understanding? Scholars say that they can, by any of the following:
The early tradition was in error; Mary and Joseph did indulge in marital relations and had other children.
Joseph, believed to have been substantially older than Mary, was a widower, with children from his first marriage. (The problem here is that the inheritance of the Kingship would pass to James, his eldest son, not to Jesus.) This is supported by a tradition that James the Just was in his eighties when he was executed, about 20-25 years after Jesus’s death at age 30-33.
“Brothers” is used in the standard Hebrew/Aramaic broad sense where it can equally well mean “kinsmen, cousins” as “full siblings.”
As an extension of #3, Joseph and Mary adopted orphaned or half-orphaned children kin to them. The Catholic tradition that “James and Jude the sons of Alphaeus” were the sons of “Mary the wife of Clopas” – the two names being different ways of rendering the name of the deceased father/husband in question – suggests this. On this reading, James the Just, brother of the Lord, was in fact James son of Alphaeus, one of the Twelve, and “Jude not Iscariot” was his full brother. And they were, with “Mary wife of Clopas,” taken into Joseph and Mary’s household after Alphaeus/Clopas died.
I have no problem with any of these assumptions. And I see no strong theological points at issue with any of them.
Umm, yes- those are very nice as "assumptions" - but are they backed in any way shape or form by Scripture? I don’t think so. Them being Jesus’s real life siblings is the only hypothesis back by the New Testament.
And I’ll bet that “longstanding tradition” doesn’t date back before 600AD, either.
Funny, i don’t see how the Scripture irrefutably backs the “real life siblings” interpretation. Care to explain it to me? Are you absolutely certain that “brothers” in Scripture means the exact meaning of “brothers” that you think it does? I mean, several of my african american friends are “brothers,” but they aren’t related to me, or each other.
[sarcasm]
I mean, if it absolutely has to be interpreted the way you interpret it to be right, then gee, why do we still have all of this confusion about religion? We oughta just ask you what the correct interpretation is. :rolleyes:
So was earth created in 6 days, each comprising of 24 hours based on our current system of units too? Because I’ve heard that some people think that “days” is a mistranslation, or at least not meant to equate to our version of a “day.” Since you’re the expert here – you know, the only one with the correct interpretation --maybe you can clear this up for us.
[/sarcasm]
The point is, you can’t apply our current understanding of what words mean to the Bible in an absolute sense. Word meanings change over time, and in many cases a word in another language could have several meanings (think of how annoying it must be to other countries who try to interpret the english word “you”, which has several variants).
That’s why the church’s interpretations of things are as important to religion as they are. The bible is not always supposed to be taken at face value, sometimes it needs a little more research and insight than one has at his or her disposal.
And that’s coming from someone who’s not religious at all.
You know, just because something’s not in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s not true.
According to this article on Wikipedia (citations provided therein), the earliest mention is in the Protoevangelium of James (which, while apocryphal, is nevertheless generally accepted as accurate by the Catholics and Orthodox), with other fathers such as Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome, and Siricius promoting the doctrine. The dogma of the BVM’s perpetual virginity was officially proclaimed at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist before then.
