Bill Moore's Commentary: Virginity of St. Mary.
DISCLAIMER: The discussion that follows is offered in the spirit
of free, academic discussion. Some of my friends and colleagues consider
the following questions and assertions blasphemous, although I hope not
obscene. If this sort of talk offends you, PLEASE STOP READING NOW.
The Virginity of St. Mary has been one of my favorite topics,
ever since it was used by religious young women
to fend off my advances on dates, back in the days
when I was an unmarried adolescent.
Much of what I am about to say is distilled
from a conversation I had with an Old Testament
professor from the Virginia Theological Seminary
(Anglican) at Alexandria, Virginia,
about a decade ago; and from [1].
The traditional doctrine is that St. Mary,
the mother of Jesus, was a virgin,
and Jesus was begotten not by the
ordinary mechanism, but, as we say
in the Anglican church, by the 'power
of the Holy Spirit'. A huge body of
additional legends, not supported by
a single word of scripture, but concocted
by a thousand years of sex-starved,
medieval monks with way too much leisure time
on their hands, has grown up around this basic concept.
The highlights are:
1. The Immaculate Conception of St. Mary
in the womb of St. Anne, declared an infallible
Roman Catholic doctrine by Pope Pius IX in 1854.
The need for an immaculate conception
is a logical necessity resulting from
the Doctrine of Original Sin,
a concept too silly for Jesus to have
asserted Himself in His own words.
Instead, this doctrine is an infernal
witch's brew of lame thoughts,
assembled from shards of discussion
in the letters of St. Paul (esp. Romans 5:12ff),
and fleshed out by a long tradition of prudish
reverends, starting with the worst of them all,
St. Augustine of Hippo,
a fourth century North African monk,
who lived his early days as a playboy,
and then spent his declining years trying
to prevent anyone else from having any happiness.
According to the Doctrine of Original Sin,
we are born with an enormous baggage of sin,
based not upon a single action that we have
voluntarily carried out ourselves, but instead
harking all the way back to Adam and Eve,
and resulting from the fact that
we were conceived by a sex-act,
an automatically sinful activity.
That is, in the mind of St. Augustine,
there is no difference between
responsible and loving sex
versus irresponsible and exploitative sex.
It's all sin. Thank God that Jesus
never said any of this rubbish.
By introducing the bogus concept
of Original Sin, St. Augustine and
his cronies painted themselves
into a theological corner. For if St. Mary
were the result of an ordinary sex act
(which now assumes an automatically sinful status),
how could Jesus have spent nine months
in St. Mary's tainted uterus? So, the monks
invented a companion concept, the
Immaculate Conception of St. Mary
in the womb of St. Anne. That is,
St. Anne was a sinner, but her only
daughter, St. Mary, was conceived spotlessly.
2. The Assumption of St. Mary, at death,
without bodily decay, into the arms of God,
and reunited with her soul at that time.
The only other Biblical persons
with this distinction are Enoch and Elijah.
The rest of us become worm-food at death.
According to Job, we get a brief replay
in our physical body at Judgment Day.
The Assumption of St. Mary was
declared an infallible
Roman Catholic doctrine by Pope Pius XII in 1950
("Hitler's Pope", according to John Cornwell).
The only other infallible
Roman Catholic doctrine is
the fact of infallibility
of ex cathedra Papal pronouncements.
3. There is a serious movement afoot
in the Roman Catholic Church,
with at least some support from Pope John Paul II,
to elevate St. Mary to a status on par
with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
a sort of Holy Quaternity to replace
the existing Holy Trinity.
Returning to Mary's Virginity. I am not a scholar of Hebrew
(the original language of the Old Testament), nor of Greek
(the original language of the New Testament),
but I am given to understand that the Old Testament word
for virgin is
HULMH
(העלמה,
Isaiah 7:14), an ambiguous word meaning either virgin or young-girl.
On the other hand, in Greek, as in English, there are two, distinct words,
and the writer must make a choice. In the New Testament, the word used
is parthenos, παρθενος,
which means virgin, unambiguously.
A Bible-reader less cynical than I might conclude that
the appropriate word WAS virgin
(parthenos/παρθενος),
and that the Holy Spirit simply guided the gospel writers
to make the correct choice.
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the Gospel writers
devoted a considerable effort toward demonstrating that Jesus
was the Messianic fulfillment of the late, pre-Christian-era Jewish prophets,
most notably Isaiah. Aficionados of Handel's Messiah,
will recognize the famous passage, predicting the birth of a child to
King Ahaz of Judah, from Isaiah 7:14: Behold, a
HULMH / העלמה
shall conceive, and bear a Son, whose name shall be called Emmanuel,
God with Us. (See also Matthew 1:23.)
In the three centuries immediately preceding
the birth of Jesus, the knowledge
of Hebrew deteriorated even among
moderately-well-educated Jews,
and Isaiah was probably read by
most Jews, including St. Matthew, in Greek.
According to tradition, the Greek translation
of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Septuagint,
was miraculously translated by seventy-two scholars
(septuagint = 70 in Greek;
six scholars for each of the twelve tribes of Israel),
who worked independently,
but who all produced word-for-word
identical translations, through the agency
of God's Grace. As stated above,
the Greek translators of Isaiah had
to make a choice about
HULMH / העלמה,
and that choice was
parthenos/παρθενος.
So when Jesus was born, in order
to fulfill the predictions of the prophets,
St. Mary had to be a virgin.
Please note: I am not necessarily
asserting that St. Mary WASN'T a virgin.
After all, in God, all things are possible.
I am simply asserting that the
scriptural record is muddy in this area.
So, let's lay off St. Mary's sex life,
and get on with some of the more serious
business of religious life, such as
loving and honorably living with
our fellow man. Let's have less Virgin Mary,
and more Good Samaritan, Prodigal Son,
Workers in the Field, etc.
Having said all this, let me give a word or two
in defense of muddy documents, such
as the Holy Bible. Kenneth C. Davis
expends a great deal of printer's ink
on demonstrating that we don't necessarily
know where (Bethlehem? Nazareth?)
or when (between 1 BC and 9 BC) Jesus
was born. So what? I assert that
any large, rich document, whether it
be the Holy Bible, the Holy Koran,
or Harrison's Textbook of Medicine,
will contain inconsistencies.
Consistency is an important tool
in philosophy and mathematics,
but if we dispense with inconsistent
documents, our culture will be intellectually
and spiritually impoverished in the extreme.
Furthermore, don't think for a second
that debunking all this hocus-pocus
about St. Mary's sex-life in any way
detracts from my Christian faith.
Quite the reverse. Christianity
is such a powerful faith that it needs
no smoke and mirrors to keep it afloat.
Jesus' own words in the Gospels,
regarding the relations of human beings
to God and to one another, are the
strength of Christianity.
Also, as much as I dislike St. Paul's
concepts, I have to concede that the guy
was a great church administrator,
he documented his work, he logged in
an impressive number of frequent-flier miles,
and he put his life on the line for the faith.
A prude, a misogynist, and a homophobe,
yes, but he worked hard for his vision.
I just wish that the patriarchs of Christianity
would lay off the magic tricks and the prudery,
and get on with the real business of Christian life.
Finally, having revisited my adolescence
briefly to explicate the possible non-virginity
of St. Mary, I'm afraid that I still fail
the religious-girl test. For even if we
dispose of Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception,
Original Sin, and all the other aforementioned
sexual baggage, let me say that responsible
sexuality was NOT what I had in mind in those years.
REFERENCES.
Davis KC.
Don't Know Much About the Bible : Everything You Need
to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned~.
Hardcover / Published 1998.
Amazon.com Price: $17.50.
2.
Cornwell J.
Hitler's Pope.
3.
Crossan J.
Historical Jesus.
4.
Hebrew Font (from Israeli government).
International Standards Organization, ISO-8859-8.
http://www.gshmuel.gov.il/
Last Updated: 11/22/2003, by Bill Moore.