The Answer Led to an Off Topic Debate

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Is unbroken history necessary for true Church? · The Answer Led to an Off Topic Debate · Great Bishop of Geneva!: Refuting CARM and Matt Slick

Cecilio J. Morales, Jr.

Thu

Excellent answer.

I would argue that the “perpetual” virginity of Mary is a case of mariological inflation, just as the immaculate conception and other such concepts.

Myriam of Nazareth’s virginity has more to do with the abysmal biology of the day than with proven, incontrovertible facts. Until 1836, it was not scientifically known that the woman had an ovum that contributed half of the fetus. The sperm was thought to be a “little man” and women merely vessels for it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Fri

Excuse me, but where exactly does the lack of embryologic knowledge come into play with the dogma?

Cecilio J. Morales, Jr.

Fri

I’m explaining how a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors could have come to that conclusion. Dogma was much later.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sat

Dogma or not, why would the lack of scientific knowledge, or presumed lack, have any more to do with it than exact knowledge of the actual facts, obtained because they knew Her Son and because they knew the Beloved Disciple who hosted Her, and because they knew Her?

What makes you think it was a conclusion than a straight off being told the fact from the ones knowing them?

Cecilio J. Morales, Jr.

Sat

The ones who knew it? How many friends have told you how their mothers lost their virginity?

Cecilio J. Morales, Jr.

23h ago

My point is that virginity was obviously a point raised in discussions among the Nazoreans well after Jesus was raised. It was a discussion that got out of hand. There was a defamatory story circulating that Myriam had been impregnated by one Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859). The virginity claim was a response by believers.

Cecilio J. Morales, Jr.

23h ago

To be clear: I don’t deny the virginity of Myriam as a matter of faith. I just place the teaching in its historical context.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Jesus gave His disciples a good overview of OT exegesis as it applies to Him. Some of them, like the tax collector who was also a Levite were very well familiar with the texts before that.

Genesis 3:15 involves His mother as sinless (being sinful is against being enemy of the serpent).

Gideon’s fleece involves combining motherhood and virginity. This is the point here.

More practically. Jesus’ siblings were older ones, from St. Joseph’s previous marriage. When He was born, St. Joseph seemed to take up married life and yet produce no children. This needed some explaining.

Again, the Blessed Virgin was one of the people St. Luke interviewed. She was what some might consider “obsessed by” virginity. If She had been hysteric, this medical practitioner might have concluded against it being true. Since She was perfectly calm and holy and since Her Son had proven to be God, he trusted Her word.

This is tradition, basically.

Your idea that lack of scientific knowledge would have been involved in concluding this without evidence, is about as intelligent as a story I will now tell on the US War of independence. George Washington had no access to BBC. He never came to master British English, and even written English, as he was from Ozark. He nevertheless became governor of Virginia under George III. Now, he was himself fine with remaining under British rule. He thought he was obeying George III, when he had misheard someone else’s reading of the king’s letter to him, which included some conditional of the unreal and he took it for a future in the jussive meaning, when he sat down with friends to get penned a Declaration of Independence. Obediently, he sent it back to his king, not quite sure what the declaration contained either. George III was furious, and sent soldiers. George Washtington was surprised and took this as treason on the king’s side. Hence the war in 1776. In 1783, the treaties did get properly signed on all hands, because Lafayette had mastered the Ozark English of George Washington and George III mastered French. Credible reconstruction? No, I don’t think so, and I don’t think you think so either.

As to Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, if his tomb was found in Germany, how does one know he was ever in Palestine? And that the diffamatory story is not from Jews later, making his tombstone in Germany the origin of their character?