Interesting what reading the Bible yourself can do when the gatekeepers couldn’t keep it hidden, but also to fact check this lie as well:
Helvidius challenged it in Rome around A.D. 383, arguing from the Gospel references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters that Mary had later children; Jerome wrote Against Helvidius in response while both men were in Rome.
So the claim that “no one questioned it until after the Protestant Reformation” is simply wrong. The real history is that the doctrine was disputed.
Tertullian, centuries before the Reformation, rejects the virginity after birth aspect, saying Mary was “a virgin when she conceived” but “a wife when she brought forth her son.”
The argument admits the key problem: adelphoi can sometimes be broader, but the question is what it means in these specific passages. In Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55–56, Jesus’ “brothers” are listed with His mother and sisters in a normal household context. That strongly reads as siblings, not vague “community members.”
The “other Mary” argument also overreaches. Matthew 27:56 and Mark 15:40 mention Mary the mother of James and Joses, but they never say she is the mother of all four men named in Mark 6:3, nor do they identify Judas, Simon, or Jesus’ sisters as her children. It assumes what it needs to prove.
Greek also had a word for cousin, anepsios, used in Colossians 4:10. So while adelphoi can be flexible in some contexts, the ordinary reading here is brothers unless the text gives a reason otherwise.
The broader NT fits that reading: “His brothers” are distinguished from Mary in Acts 1:14, they did not believe in Him during His ministry in John 7:5, and Paul refers to “James, the Lord’s brother” in Galatians 1:19. None of that proves perpetual virginity. The natural reading is that Jesus had real brothers and sisters through Mary and Joseph after His birth.
Why is it that when I interact with my community in a small town, many of the Catholics admit to not reading scripture?
Nice people but admittedly very Bible illiterate…
Granted there are “Protestants” that have the same issue and then there are certain churches that churn out a higher percentage of laypeople that admit to regular Bible reading and their lives show it - that’s the church that I am always going to want to be involved with? (And it has yet to be the town’s Catholic Church having that impact)
@Truth_matters20 “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”
Romans 1:28
@farmingandJesus “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.”
1 Corinthians 2:14
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?”
Psalm 2:1
@Protestia “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”
1 Thessalonians 5:22
“I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.”
Psalm 101:3
“The bed is undefiled only where marriage is honourable, not where lust is justified.”
Hebrews 13:4
Perfect and now to the original post, did Jesus elevate her above any other believer this is essential doctrine right? - come on Catholics correct Jesus and make sure he knew that he was wrong to not elevate her like he should have
Thank goodness we got popes to tells us when Jesus is wrong
Yikes - you might have a problem with what Jesus thought of his own mother too, it’s actually black and white that rather than “bless” Mary he contended that the believer and doer of His ministry is the blessed one….
“And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”
Luke 11:27–28
1. Baptism is NOT salvific. We are saved by grace through faith
2. Candace Owens doesn’t share the truth of The Gospel on her platform
3. She is literally a force of evil
4. The fact the Roman Catholic Church would confirm this vile woman, shows how much discernment they lack
So you are saying it’s possible for a human of their own volition and free will to be sinless; what Christ exampled had already been done through Mary and God was no better than creation
That even though Mary was born of the first Adam, she had no real need of the second Adam - throwing the most of scripture out with that presupposition