From: vojavoja@windstream.net   
      
   The ever-virgin not so “ever”?   
      
   Mary was certainly a righteous person. She was picked out of all the   
   Jewesses living at that time. She bore the Son of God. She certainly   
   was blessed.   
      
   Joseph had no intercourse with her all the time of her first   
   pregnancy.   
   That's right, FIRST pregnancy. God did not punish Joseph by denying   
   him his marital due after Jesus' birth.   
      
   Paul later wrote that marriage couples should not be depriving each   
   other of  it except by mutual consent. And this was certainly true in   
   Mary's and Joseph's case. (1 Cor 7:1-5)   
      
   But wasn't Mary a special case by God? Did God want her to remain   
   always virgin? The Bible does not anywhere say or hint at that. On the   
   contrary, the Bible shows she was quite active in bearing Joseph sons   
   and daughters. She had many other births, which was common for Jewish   
   women at that time. Notice Mt 1:24,25 . In the Catholic Bible it   
   reads:   
      
   "24. When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded   
   him and took his wife into his home. 25 He had no relations with her   
   until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus." (NAB)   
      
   Take note of the word “until”. Yes, she bore Joseph his reward for   
   enduring the nine months, till Jesus was born.   
      
   And the Scriptures go on to show that Jesus had many other sibling   
   brothers and sisters. That same Catholic Bible reads Mt 13:55,56 this   
   way,   
      
   "55. Is he not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother named Mary and   
   his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?   
    56. Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all   
   this?" (NAB)   
      
   The context clearly shows that Jesus' home town people that personally   
   saw him raised as a child, were naming the sibling family members that   
   they also knew to be a part of Joseph's family.   
      
   Also the Greek words used there for "brothers" and "sisters" (adelphai   
   and adelphoi) have this meaning according to the The New Catholic   
   Encyclopedia:   
      
   "have the meaning of full blood brother and sister in the   
   Greek-speaking world of the Evangelist's time and would naturally be   
   taken by his Greek reader in this sense."   
      
   Thus unless they are all miraculous births also (which the Bible does   
   not say at all), there is no reason to believe that Mary gave birth to   
   those children other than normal sexual relations with her husband,   
   Joseph, sometime after Jesus was born.   
      
   Notice the brief explanation from this publication, and the quotes   
   from a Catholic encyclopedia:   
      
   "Was Mary always a virgin?   
      
   Matt. 13:53-56, JB: "When Jesus had finished these parables he left   
   the district; and, coming to his home town, he taught the people in   
   their synagogue in such a way that they were astonished and said,   
   'Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This   
   is the carpenter's son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called   
   Mary, and his brothers [Greek, adelphoi'] James and Joseph and Simon   
   and Jude? His sisters [Greek, adelphai'], too, are they not all here   
   with us?'"   
      
   The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967, Vol. IX, p. 337) admits regarding   
   the Greek words adelphoi' and adelphai', used at Matthew 13:55, 56,   
   that these "have the meaning of full blood brother and sister in the   
   Greek-speaking world of the Evangelist's time and would naturally be   
   taken by his Greek reader in this sense. Toward the end of the 4th   
   century (c. 380) Helvidius in a work now lost pressed this fact in   
   order to attribute to Mary other children besides Jesus so as to make   
   her a model for mothers of larger families. St. Jerome, motivated by   
   the Church's traditional faith in Mary's perpetual virginity, wrote a   
   tract against Helvidius (A.D. 383) in which he developed an   
   explanation . . . that is still in vogue among Catholic scholars."   
      
   Mark 3:31-35, JB: "His mother and brothers now arrived and, standing   
   outside, sent in a message asking for him. A crowd was sitting round   
   him at the time the message was passed to him, 'Your mother and   
   brothers and sisters are outside asking for you'. He replied, 'Who are   
   my mother and my brothers?' And looking round at those sitting in a   
   circle about him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone   
   who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and   
   mother.'" (Here a clear distinction is drawn between Jesus' natural   
   brothers and his spiritual brothers, his disciples. No one claims that   
   the reference to Jesus' mother means anything different from what it   
   says. Is it consistent, then, to reason that his natural brothers were   
   not that but were perhaps cousins? When what is meant is not brothers   
   but relatives, a different Greek word [syg·ge·non'] is used, as at   
   Luke 21:16.) (Reasoning From the Scriptures, 1985, pp. 255-256.)   
      
   So to conclude, the Bible shows that Mary had many other sons as well   
   as daughters. Her virginity was long gone. To pronounce her as   
   ever-virgin is to call the Bible a liar. Something that the demons   
   loved to do.   
   Concerning this, notice this Catholic Bible at 1 Tim 4:1,   
      
   -- New Jerusalem with Apocrypha   
   1 Timothy 4:1 The Spirit has explicitly said that during the last   
   times some will desert the faith and pay attention to deceitful   
   spirits and doctrines that come from devils,   
      
   How the Catholic Church can go against their own Bibles, and teach   
   this heresy is a mystery to me.   
      
   James, John 4:23,24 ,www.jw.org   
      
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