Why the "Context" Argument - one of the best arguments of the other side - doesn't mean Mary had sex

You wrote on Jul 6, 2007 at 6:17 AM.
You replied to Kevin's post on Jul 2, 2007 at 10:03 AM
Kevin,

"There is no logical reason why the townspeople would connect neices and nephews to Mary and Joseph. Why would they leave out other reletives such as their parents if they were our Lord's cousins? Why is it that these individuals are always associated with Mary and not their supposed birth mother assuming that Mary wasn't their birth mother?"

Behold, the best argument, in my opinion, that opponents of Mary's perpetual virginity bring to the table - the contextual argument.

However, this argument completely evaporates if we go with the predominatly eastern orthodox view that the brethren of Jesus were children of Joseph from a previous marriage.

Now, by what logical reason would they connect nieces and nephews to Mary and Joseph?

Your argument would appear to totally destroy the "cousins" hypothesis (it leaves the children of just Joseph hypothesis intact) - however, I don't see the context as precluding either hypothesis.

If the "brethren" were children of Mary's sister, for example, they would be close enough in relation - especially in the culture of the time - for the Jews to wonder where Jesus got "these things." The Jews were wondering how Jesus was this special when His father and mother were, apparently, at least to them, not so special, and did not have "these things." They would similarly look at Jesus' cousins, notice their effective "normality" and this would be an indication that nowhere in Jesus' family could they find additional examples of the traits Jesus possessed.

It may seem SIMPLER, and perhaps more natural, to assume that these siblings MUST be children of Mary and Joseph. But the line of thinking of the Jews does not NEED to include these brethren as Jesus' siblings.

Perhaps you'd like to tell me why Jesus' siblings at one point rebuked Him - something totally uncalled for in Jewish culture at that time, for the younger to rebuke the older (if they were indeed literal children of Mary and Joseph) and something that they surely would have been rebuked for themselves.

If Mary was a consecrated temple virgin to the Lord, and never INTENDED to have sex with Joseph, but was merely married to him in order for him to be her legal guardian since an unmarried Jewish girl couldn't "legally" live with a man like Joseph without being married to him...well, then that would be a good reason why they couldn't have a normal sexual relationship. However, it appears that an unbiblical "bible alone" mentality is closing off this possibility for you...

- Sean