Here is today’s Gospel:
Mk 3,31-35.
His mother and his brothers arrived. Standing outside they sent word to him and called him.
A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.”
But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Some Protestants (and even Catholics) use this passage to deny the veneration that Catholics give to the Mother of God. They think that here, Jesus is putting down his mother and saying that she is just like anybody else.
They fail to see that Jesus is in fact praising her. Jesus is saying that she is more blessed because she believed in the message brought to her and obeyed it. She did the will of God. So she is more blessed because of that than because she is his physical mother. St Augustine says that she “conceived Him in her heart through faith (obedience) before she conceived Him in her womb”.
And she is the only creature who faithfully did the will of God throughout her entire life, at every moment – so she is the most blessed creature to have ever lived.
Some also use this passage to say that Jesus had brothers ansd sisters, thus implying that Mary wasn’t an “ever-virgin” and had sexual relations with St Joseph. But what is missed here is the terminology that the Jews often used to refer to cousins. Brothers means cousins in this sense. Martin Luther even said as much.
Let us give thanks that the Church continues to safe-guard the Deposit of Faith for us; and teach the truth contained in the Scriptures.
Don’t forget St Jerome’s theory that “brothers and sisters of Jesus” could refer to children that Joseph had from a former marriage.
Scripture seems to suggest that Mary was planning to be a consecrated virgin.
In the Annunciation passage in the Gospel, Mary asks the angel “how can this be?” after she is told that she will conceive a child.
Yet when the angle came to visit her she was already betrothed to Joseph, and if she planned to have a normal Jewish marriage, complete with sexual relations, then the question “how can this be?” makes little sense.
It does make sense if you don’t plan to have sexual relations with your husband, which was the case with consecrated virgins – who had to marry to find protection under the Jewish law which did not recognise women as legal entities.
The one question mark over St Jerome’s suggestion about half-brothers and sisters of Jesus comes at the foot of the cross, when Jesus entrusts Mary to John.
This is unlikely to have happened in Jewish culture if there were other male relatives alive at the time.
But then they could have been dead by the time Jesus was crucified, and thus the theory still stands.
Ox,
What if they were still alive but not there at the time? Perhaps they had fled and run off and that’s why Jesus thought John would do a better job looking after Mary?
Also, on St.Jerome’s theory (which I subscribe to), doesn’t that also support the theory that Joseph was an old(er) man and most likely a widower (with children) as that would be the type of man who would be a candidate to marry a consecrated virgin? Which would also explain why there is no mention of Joseph as Jesus grows up.
I have always like St.Jerome’s theory because it seems to wrap things up nicely. What I am interested in is any documentation/proof that this was the custom at the time – i.e. consecrated virgins had to marry to find protection under the Jewish law which did not recognise women as legal entities. Can anyone out there give me some help in proving this?
James,
“What if they were still alive but not there at the time? Perhaps they had fled and run off and that’s why Jesus thought John would do a better job looking after Mary?”
There could have been half-sisters alive, but it’s highly unlikely that any half-brothers would have been alive as Jewish culture dictated that sons were to care for their mothers if the father died.
There is also the fact that Jesus was revealing an important theological truth with his actions on the cross – by giving Mary to John (the disciple who represents the Church) He is giving Mary as mother to all Christians.
But we also know that Mary actually went to live with John in His house, so Christ was doing both a theological and natural work with this action.
I have to confess that I got my historical documents around the wrong way!
It is the Protoevangelium of James – an early Church writing from about 120AD (less than sixty years after Mary’s death) – which records that Joseph was an older widower who had children from a previous marriage.
St Jerome (about the fourth century from memory) was the man who taught us about the fact that in the Hebrew language and culture they call cousins “brothers and sisters” as they don’t have extended family breaks like we do today.
“What I am interested in is any documentation/proof that this was the custom at the time – i.e. consecrated virgins had to marry to find protection under the Jewish law which did not recognise women as legal entities. Can anyone out there give me some help in proving this?”
Well, for starters – we definitely know that women had no independent legal status under Jewish customs – this is why they couldn’t be called upon as witnesses in court trials (which makes feminist claims about the early Church look rather weak when one considers that the Gospels record that Christ showed Himself first to women after the resurrection – so in effect He chose women to be the witnesses to His resurrection).
And it is well established that women dedicated their lives to serving the Lord in the Temple, as we see with Anna in Luke 2:36:
“There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four.
She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.”
And once again, the Protoevangelium of James records that St Anne (Mary’s mother) vowed that she would devote her child to service of the Lord as Samuel’s mother had done with him.
We know that Jewish customs required a lot of ceremonial cleanliness related to sexuality, etc.
It is well established that women could consecrate themselves to the Lord, as is evidenced in Numbers 6:2, where women or men can take the Nazarite vow and all the abstinence vows that go along with that.
Despite the fact that Protestants today reject the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, two of the most prominent leaders of the Protestant Reformation, Luther and Zwingli, actually defended the perpetual virginity of Mary.
Luther even stated that anyone who denied Mary’s perpetual virginity was doomed to hell!
Even crazy old John Calvin argued against those who claimed that Mary had other children.
Ox,
I actually just stumbled across this article on whether or not Joseph had a previous marriage. It is quite a long article but the end result of it is that I am quite confused.
Basically, it says that St.Jerome was against the notion that Joseph had children from a previous marriage. A quote attributed to him states:
What’s more, St.Jerome continues to actually assert that Joseph too was perpetually virginal!
Now, I don’t know much about the author of this article, and I don’t have much experience in the historical documents, so I’m keen to get someone as yourself, Ox, to clear a few things up for me if you can?
1) Where does the Protoevangelium of James (great name!) fit in to our historical document library? I understand that it is not Holy Scripture, but it’s not seen as heretical is it?
2) Can you outline the difference between apocryphal and gnostic gospels?
3) Does any of the stuff in the article I linked to make sense?
Personally, I have always found the theory as put forth by you in #1 to make total sense, and to protect the perpetual virginity of Our Lady.
Hi James,
1) Where does the Protoevangelium of James (great name!) fit in to our historical document library? I understand that it is not Holy Scripture, but it’s not seen as heretical is it?
You are right; the Protoevgangelium of James is definitely not Scripture, but it is also definitely not held to be heretical or false.
Proto means “first” or “before” and evangelium merely means “gospel” – basically it means “pre-Gospel account of James”
It is sometimes called the Gospel of James, or the Infancy Gospel of James.
It was written sometime between 120 and 150AD, and alhough it is attributed to James (even signed of by James) some scholars suggest that it may have been written by someone else in his name (a common prctise of the time).
As far as I am aware, it is considered one of the Patristic writtings (from the Latin pater (father) – referring to the Church Fathers (those who came after the Disciples – people like Augustine, Polycarp, Ignatius, etc).
In fact, Origen even quotes from the Protoevangelium of James in his Commentary on Matthew from A.D. 248.
Anyway, you can actually read the whole Protoevangelium of James online here:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm
2) Can you outline the difference between apocryphal and gnostic gospels?
Apocryphal (from “Apocrypha”) simply means “hidden” in Greek, and when speaking of “Apocryphal Gospels” it merely refers to writings which were not deemed to be divinely inspired, and therefore they weren’t included in the final Cannon of the New Testament.
Now, people often refer to the Old Testament books that were removed from the Bible by Luther as the “Apocrypha”, but in actual fact these books are not apocryphal at all.
The Church included them in the final Cannon of the Old Testament – and they are still there in proper Bible translations, and it was Luther, acting under his own authority, who removed them.
So, they aren’t actually apocryphal at all, and if you have a Bible translation that doesn’t include those books then you don’t have a whole Bible, and I recommend that you get yourself a new one.
As a side note – Luther also considered the letter to the Hebrews, the book of James, the book of Jude and the book of Revelation to be apocryphal as well – although he never removed those books – he just lumped them together in the back of his translation of the Bible.
Now the Gnostic gospels are also apocryphal, but the difference is that they were written by, or contain, false teachings of the Gnostic heresy.
So not only are they not part of the Bible, but they also contain heretical teachings which contradict Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
An apocryphal writing is merely a writing that didn’t make it into Scripture, but a Gnostic writing is one that was written by, or for, the false heresy of Gnosticism and it contains serious doctrinal errors.
The Gnostic gospel of Thomas is a classic example of a Gnostic gospel, sometimes referred to as the gospel of Thomas, and sadly, it was even doing the “recommended reading” rounds in Catholic circles up here a few years ago.
Although Gnostic gospels carry the names of actual disciples and followers of Christ (like St Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, etc) they were definitely not written by those Apostles!
3) Does any of the stuff in the article I linked to make sense?
Yes it does.
Firstly, the ossuary (burial box that contained a person’s bones – they were used in high density populations where they had little space for graveyards, etc) that it refers to at the beginning of the article has definitely been proved to be a hoax.
It has since been revealed that the inscription on the ossuary is a fake that was recently added to the box, in fact I believe there was some suggestion that Oded Golan (the Israeli collector who brought forth the ossuary) and another man had actually perpetrated the hoax.
Modern technology showed that Long after the natural processes of a damp cave environment had coated the ossuary with “biovermiculation” and patina, someone carved a series of letters through this natural varnish. They then covered the freshly cut letters with an imitation patina made from hot water and ground chalk – a sort of baked on “soup”, microfossils and all.
It has been stated that if this hoax had been perpetrated fifty years ago we would not have had the technology to detect the forgery.
Now in regard to the stuff about the “brothers of Jesus” that that article mentions…
Basically the Church does not hold an official position on this issue – so both options are speculative theology.
The Church is clear – and so is the evidence and the writings of the early Church Fathers – on the fact that Mary was a perpetual virgin and that she never bore any other Children apart from Jesus.
But on the matter of who the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus were; either theory can be validly held to by Catholics.
The main thinking behind the virginity of St Jospeh theory (which applies to the cousins of Jesus theory) is that it would have been unbefitting of Mary’s virginity to have a husband who was not a virgin himself.
But then Joseph is always held up by the Church as the model of chastity (because he was married to the most beautiful woman on earth and he protected that virginity with his chastity).
In fact, St Jospeh is even referred to as “the Most Chaste Spouse” in the Divine Praises we sing at Benediction during Eucharistic Adoration.
I can’t see any theological reason why Joseph needed to be an unmarried virgin as well – but I am open to correction.
Personally, I hold that either theory on the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus could be correct – and just like the Church I don’t hold a firm position either way.