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It was one of several “infancy gospels” circulating during the first few centuries CE that did not make it into the final 4th century version of the Christian Bible because they contained teachings inconsistent with Scripture. The mainstream church pushed back, with an organized media campaign of texts known to scholars as “Apocrypha.” Among the campaign’s key weapons was a 2nd century Greek document titled the “Protoevangelium of James,” meaning the first gospel of the apostle James. Some heretical bishops-mostly located in the Byzantine East-concluded that the only way to explain Jesus’ siblings was through sexual relations between Joseph and Mary after Jesus had been born. The issue of Mary’s perpetual virginity came to head in the 4th century, around the time the books of the Christian Bible were being assembled. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here.
HOW OLD WAS MARY WHEN SHE HAD JESUS FULL
Her perpetual virginity represented her full and everlasting commitment to being the mother of Christ.īy signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. But many in the church believed that Mary lived as a virgin throughout her life.
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If the siblings were the product of unions between Mary and Joseph, then Mary could not have remained a virgin after Jesus had been born. The controversy over Joseph’s age centers around the issue of Jesus’ siblings, who appear in Mark (6:3) and Matthew (13:55-56). So to remove all doubt, theologians aged Joseph. If Mary had sexual relations with Joseph, she would lose that pure and chaste status which was foretold in Scripture. The reason for the “superannuation of Joseph” in art and the popular imagination, as Fredriksen puts it, was a later response to early church debates about Mary’s perpetual virginity. “Girls were usually engaged sometime between the ages of 12 and 15, and would be married sometime thereafter, at 15 or 16, and boys would have been 19 or 20,” Fredriksen says.īut what of the many classic paintings and illustrations, not to mention countless church yard Nativity displays and Christmas cards featuring Joseph as a grey-bearded, almost grandfatherly figure, in contrast to Mary’s eternally glowing, post-natal youth? That has nothing to do with the biblical record, it turns out. In fact, according to Jewish law and customs of the day, Mary and Joseph probably would have both been young when they married.
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“We know virtually nothing about Joseph, and no age is mentioned for either Joseph or Mary in the Gospels,” says Paula Fredriksen, professor emerita of scripture at Boston University, and author of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The Bible offers no evidence that Joseph was older than Mary. They became parents of Jesus.”īut those who ascribe to Ziegler’s reading of Scripture-and many of Moore’s evangelical supporters could be among them-should read more carefully. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. “Take Mary and Joseph,” Ziegler told the Washington Examiner when he defended the morality of Moore’s conduct on November 9, just hours after the Washington Post story broke. Tom Verde has written about religion for the New York Times and AramcoWorld magazine.Īfter allegations broke last week that Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore had pursued relationships with several (and sexually assaulted at least one) teenage girls some 40 years ago, when Moore was in his early 30s, Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler reached for one of the most reliable weapons in the religious right’s defensive arsenal: the Bible.