Mary--Perpetual Virgin?

by sinamongurl 18 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  sinamongurl

  i read an excerpt from the book of mary stating that she was a perpetual virgin....joseph was quite up in age and was a widower with children, but was a god-fearing man and so did not sleep with her and kept her chastity...the only reason she was married was because that was apparently the law back then....so "thru god" he was chosen to take care of mary and jesus....apparently he did not have a long life after raising jesus

  jesus was born in a cave and later when everyone was called to their birthplace...joseph, mary, and family all went to bethlehem...with no room in the inn they were in the stables but jesus was already born by then and quite possibly no longer an infant

  this is very interesting to me because i was taught that mary did not stay a virgin (jw teachings) cause the bible mentions that jesus had brothers and sister, but this very well could have been josephs children from a previous marriage...

  the excerpt came from a book called "Lost Books of the Bible" by RH Value Publishing

  what do u all think?
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  peacefulpete

  Step back and the picture gets even more interesting. Lets ask ourselves first why the first of the 4 gospels, Mark makes no mention of the whole story. Matthew and Luke have different versions of it and at the same time present differing geneaologies that would contradict the virgin birth. Other gospels and Jesus traditions abounded , including stories about his birth that differ dramatically from the Mathean/Lukan forms. What we have is myth building at work. It would seem that the author of Mark knew of no birth legends. The author of Matthew, using Mark as outline, felt a birth legend would be an inspiring addition and so drew from both the greater body of religious/political literature wherein kings and sons of gods were given supernatural conceptions and births and from the OT story of Samuel's miraculous birth, Moses's nativity legends and various extracted verses from other unrelated passages. The writer of Luke either revised Matthew or drew from another source for his legend. Therefore the idea of a virgin birth itself appears secondary ( belonging to a second layer of legend) to the Jesus story. Certain 2nd-4th century assetic Christian writers felt that for Jesus to be sinless his mother had to be virgin, merely a vessel contributing nothing to the child. Her virginity was defined as having a tight vagina and therefore the birth too had to be miraculous. In some very early legends Jesus simply appears outside the womb through magic much like what was attributed to the Buddah for similar reasons. Here's threads that touched on some of this: Another early legend about Jesus birth and The Nativity Traditions of Jesus
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  sinamongurl

  thanks pete
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  Uzzah

  Not wanting to distract from your thread, but I couldn't help chuckling...well actually bursting out in laughter when I read the title of the thread and thought, "JWD Mary?!?!" bwahahahahahaha

  Okay I feel better now. Back to our regularly scheduled thread topic.

  Uzzah - who loves to give fellow Ontarians a hard time
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  Scully

  Uzzah - who loves to give fellow Ontarians a hard time

  pun not intended, I'm sure.
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  Uzzah

  My gawd Scully where is your mind! How unusual for you to be here in the gutter with me! smirking

  Uzzah

  PS - It wasn't intended btw. Must have been Freudian.
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  Elsewhere

  Lets see here... my fiance travels to another city to visit her relatives for two months and then comes back knocked-up. What should I conclude happened?

  1. She miraculously conceived a child through the power of an invisible deity and will give birth to the son of god and will remain a virgin for the rest of her life.
  2. She did what most single women do when they go to an exotic European country like Italy or France... they hook up with some stud muffin and do the nasty.

  What is truly sad is the way Joseph totally bought her story... what a pssy. If I were him I would have sent her back to the "relatives" she was visiting for two month.
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  greendawn

  I don't know where the info that Joseph was an old man with children from a previous wife comes from. How do we know that he was not young and never had an ex wife and her children?
  
  That story could have been made up to support the perpetrual virginity concept.
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  sinamongurl

  1. She did what most single women do when they go to an exotic European country like Italy or France... they hook up with some stud muffin and do the nasty.

  What is truly sad is the way Joseph totally bought her story... what a pssy

  LMFAO!!!!!!
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  sinamongurl

  I don't know where the info that Joseph was an old man with children from a previous wife comes from. How do we know that he was not young and never had an ex wife and her children

  i read it in one of those "lost" books of the bible and was curious to see what everyone thought