We (Church) need correct translations, especially with apologetics.  Mary said “...I know not man?” (Douay Rheims, Luke).  She makes the statement she does not have relations, ever. May Mary guide and protect us!

I am not disputing the doctrine, but Luke 1 hardly proves it. First, the implication in the announcement of the conception is that is happening right now or soon. Second, Mary objects that she is still a virgin, but not that she is planning to stay one. “I do not know man” is not a proclamation of a vow of virginity.

Again, I am not disputing doctrine. But you can’t proof text it from this.

Other than a consecrated Temple virgin who had already intentionally made a perpetual vow of chastity to God might ask God such a question?

There was no such thing in Judaism as a consecrated Temple virgin. That idea come from the proto evangelion which is ahistorical and which the church does not ask us to accept de fide. Also, if Mary was a consecrated virgin, why was she getting married? 

The Romans had the Vestals but the Jews had nothing like that.

Also, astonishment and disbelief about the angelic announcement of an impending birth is not unknown in Scripture:  Abraham and Sarah, Zechariah….

As the first three paragraphs make clear, first century Judaism *did* have the phenomenon of consecrated virginity.

I still don’t understand why it needs to be proven that Mary was physically and perpetually a virgin.
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Mary is the Mother of Christ; God is his Father—that’s the story and we’re sticking to it. Secularists will not believe it, no matter what. It’s metaphysical truth and does not need “proof.”

I agree with Curmudgeon.  I don’t see how you can extrapolate from this passage that she was saying she had taken a vow of virginity.

Curmudgeon:

The astonishment by Sarah and Zechariah are perfectly logical:  They are too old to have children.  Mary’s astonishment is really weird, for the reason I give—unless she had already been consecrated to virginity.  Then she has every reason, as a betrothed woman, to wonder how she could possibly become pregnant.  My new daughter-in-law would not respond with astonishment if I said, “You are going to have such adorable kids.”  Nobody familiar with the birds and the bees would be.

Bryan:

Catholics don’t believe in sola scriptura.  The faith is not extrapolated from texts.  Rather, the text bears witness to the tradition.  The point is not “You can prove from the Bible that Mary was perpetually a virgin just as you can prove 2+2=4”.  Rather, the point is that the unbroken tradition of the Church is that Mary is a perpetual virgin and the biblical text supports, rather than contradicts, that tradition.

Wisdom:

If you want to understand why the Church regard the Perpetual Virginity of Mary as significant, go back to my September 7 blog and start reading forward from there.

Scripture never says Mary experienced “astonishment and disbelief about the angelic announcement of an impending birth”. Mary was disturbed by the greeting from the angel, “Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you”, just as a humble person should be when addressed in such a manner.

INTERLINEAR SCRIPTURE ANALYZER jives the transliterated Greek as “eipen de miriam pros ton aggelon pOs estai touto epei andra ou ginOskO” meaning (word for word) “said yet Mary toward the messenger how shall-be this since man not I-am-knowing?” Notice, Mary does not say “I have not yet known” (something she would be expecting by getting married), rather she makes her statement as if she has no plan to ever know man.

I am always amazed that those who are furthest from an event (2,000 yrs) seem to believe they have superior knowledge compared to those who witnessed or recorded the event at a time in close temporal proximity. Why would the early Church fathers have ever concocted such an idea if they had not received oral testimony to the fact? Can anyone, after reading the Church fathers, suggest that they were gullible or that they would have missed the fact that Scripture allegedly suggests something else? It is my contention that what Scripture states is no more contradictory to Mary’s perpetual virginity than two eye witness’s testimonies differ when one witness saw the bank robbers leave the bank on foot and run down the street and another witness saw the bank robbers jump in a car and drive off. Both witnesses may be 100% accurate while apparently contradicting each other because of having seen different parts of the event.

When the Gospels were written, probably none of the authors could have imagined that 2012 Christians would be so preoccupied with sex that they could not imagine that this extraordinarily unique historical gateway between heaven and earth, God and man, would not have remained a virgin.

“jives” should be “gives”

Wow.  So many more questions.

Q1. I see in Nestle-Aland-27, Luke 1:27, that the author refers to her as ‘parthenon’ (‘virgin’ in the accusative).  What else could the author have called her?

Q2. What do we know about this word from extra-Biblical sources?  Is ‘parthenos’ the everyday Greek for an unmarried woman?  Or, is this word more technical and restrictive, as in the case of a virgin consecrated for life?

Q3. What do we know about this word from the Bible?  How is ‘parthenos’ used in the Septuagint?  Is it more general, or is it technical and restrictive?

Q4. Again in Nestle-Aland-27, but this time in Luke 1:34, we have ‘andra ou ginwskw’.  That looks like present-simple tense to me, ‘husband not I know’.  Definitely not past tense.  What do we know about this idiom from extra-Biblical sources?

Q5. ...From Biblical sources?

I agree with the previous comments that mary’s comments do not constitute ignorance of how babies are made nor a vow of virginity. this is a very weak argument, especially since it deliberately misleads the reader by not including that second part mary’s statement, that, “she had not [yet] known a man. That’s kind of poor journalism there.

Michael, The scripture you are quoting is actually in present tense, and it does not include the word ‘yet’.  Both the change in tense and the insertion of the word ‘yet’ are insertions on your part, and it is less than perfectly obvious that these maintain the intended meaning of the text.

Why would a betrothed woman be mystified at the possibility that she would soon be pregnant?  The angel doesn’t say, “You are now miraculously pregnant.”  He only says that she will conceive a son.  It’s particularly mysterious how that happens.  Even people 2000 years stupider than us could figure it out.  So why is a betrothed woman asking how she could possibly get pregnant?

Oops.  It’s *not* particularly mysterious…

“Mary’s life is a referred life. The point of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, as of the Virgin Birth, is that—again—the point is not about Mary. It’s about Christ and his Church.”
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Not sure what you mean by a “referred life,” but it sounds like more metaphysical analysis when you write that Mary’s Perpetual Virginity is about “Christ and his Church.” Did I miss something in your point?
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If Mary’s and Jesus’ virginity is symbolic of the relationship between Christ and his Church, so be it. It’s still a story and you are sticking to it. Mary is pure, Jesus is pure, the relationship between Christ and his Church is pure.
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Church dogma is indisputable. The Pope is infallible.  Why go into the analysis of Mary’s physical virginity?

Wisdom:

Mary matters because of her relationship to Jesus.  Without him, you never would have heard of her.  Her whole life is referred to his since she is his first and best disciple.  As such, she is a sort of icon of all disciples and an image of the Church.

Church dogma is plenty disputable.  People do it every day.  My point is here is that there is a basis in history for the dogma.  It’s not simply “Because the Pope said so.”  The Pope says so because the witness of the early Church was that Mary was a virgin. It’s why Churches in the east, which do not regard the Pope as Supreme Pontiff, still hail Mary as a Perpetual Virgin.

The reason I go into the analysis is because the Church sees her Virginity as a Sign.  When the Church says, “Please read the sign” it’s a good idea to read it and find out what it says and what it means.

Pardon me for still being confused, but is this analysis of the Gospels supposed to support the metaphysical or physical virginity of Mary? Are you trying to reconcile scripture to secular reality?

In addition to the reasonable support which Mark offers here for the teaching of the Church on Mary’s perpetual virginity, I would add one more bit.  When Zachariah (the father of John the Baptist) asks this same question, he is punished.  Mary is not.  Why?  Even though it would seem more reasonable from Zachariah since Sara is beyond child bearing years and was seemingly barren.  The difference is that Zachariah doubts the ability of God to do this.  Mary, then, is not doubting.  She’s wondering how is this going to happen and keep her vow.  If we also keep in mind her sinlessness, then we can realize that at this point she has no intention of breaking her vow and at the same time, she trusts that the angel speaks truth.  So how’s it all going to work?

Widsom:

In a sacramental world, physical realities bespeak spiritual ones.  The physical virginity of Mary (like the physical virginity of Jesus) communicates a spiritual truth.  I don’t know what you mean by “secular reality”.  If you mean simply “Virginity is utterly unthinkable to suburban American in the early 21st century therefore it could not have happened with Mary” I suggest you familiarize yourself with other cultures and history, beginning with the beginning of this article.  There are instances in history of couples choosing celibacy. The scriptural record strongly corroborates the Church’s tradition that Mary and Joseph were among them.

Another thought on the comparison of Zechariah and Mary: Zechariah shouldn’t have been too surprised by the announcement of the angel;“Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your *prayer* has been heard…” His prayer was being answered. On the other hand, Mary was not seeking to be the Mother of Messiah, that I am aware of, so their two similar responses would have come from two different motives.

I have no problem believing that married couples, past and present, can live in celibacy. I do have a problem with the Virgin Birth—the idea that Mary had a divine child, who really existed in history, without any sexual encounter at all.
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You wrote:.
“The physical virginity of Mary (like the physical virginity of Jesus) communicates a spiritual truth.”
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Does this mean that in order to believe in the Church, it is absolutely necessary to believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, the Virgin Birth, and the physical death and physical Resurrection of Jesus (before He ascended to heaven)—as actual events on the physical plane? Is it not enough to appreciate the metaphysical symbolism without believing they happened in reality?
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If so, it is no wonder you censored Rita’s posts and were such a jerk.

Yes.  Christians believe that “the word became flesh” not that the word became a bunch of other words.  It is gnosticism that tries to spiritualize Jesus into the ether and insist he is a myth or a concept.  Christianity say that an actual flesh and blood man is God, born of a virgin not once upon a time, but when Augustus was emperor, Herod was king; condemned by a high priest whose existence is attested by several historical sources, physically crucified by a Roman bureaucrat who has left behind a historical record we know about, and raised from the dead and seen by numerous eyewitnesses who leave behind writings recounting their experiences and the experiences of people they know very well.  Paul sums things up pretty well for people who thought exactly as you did in the Church at Corinth:

Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, 2 by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain. 3* For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4* that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5* and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8* Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9* For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. 12 Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14* if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18* Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:1-20)

The physical reality of the resurrection is, in fact, something the witnesses go out of their way to emphasize in order to short-circuit the gnostic urge to do exactly what you are attempting here.

As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” * 37 But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. 38 And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? 39* See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. * 41 And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate before them. Luke 24:36-43

Luke is a very careful historian, working according to the normal rules of first century historiography to pin down the testimony to “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” in order “to write an orderly account for you”.  He is, in fact, an eyewitness to good portions of Paul’s ministry, and has obviously had access to conversations with the original 12 apostles.  Likewise, Mark is an eyewitness to some of the ministry of Jesus and was present in the Garden of Gethsemane, as well as on Easter morning.  James of Jerusalem and his brother Jude are the son of Clopas, who met Jesus on the Emmaus Road on Easter morning.  John is an eyewitness, as is Matthew.  The gospel bear all the earmarks, not of myth, but of historical testimony. And they, interestingly, include saying which nobody, inventing a long ago god figure from cloud cuckoo land, would ever invent.  Clearly the figure they are portraying is a first century Jew, not an Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Meso-American or Nordic archetype.  The gospels, in short, are mythic (in that they fulfil the deepest longings of human myth) but they are weirdly and solidly historical and clearly belong to the category of eyewitness testimony, not fiction.

The question of whether I am a jerk, while excellent polemic, is not germane to the question of whether Jesus existed.  The simple fact is, no reputable historian in the world would deny the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.  Rita’s dogmatic regurgitations of ignorant proclamations and her refusal to listen to anything that might endanger her close-minded high school sophomore dogmatism persuaded me that it was not worth giving her a platform to spew ignorance.  You, in contrast, actually asked a question and seem to be interested in trying to do something more than simply dogmatize.

For further information on the obvious historical character of the gospels and the New Testament, I recommend the work of Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony  Bauckham, as distinct from Some Guy with a Website, is an actual scholar who is familiar, not only with the gospels but, just as importantly, with other kinds of ancient literature.  The gospels, while not history as a modern would write it, are nonetheless rooted in history and in eyewitness testimony to the life, death, and yes, resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  The gospel is, quite simply, about nothing else.  It’s the only news the apostles have to bring.  And they are absolutely adamant that the resurrection is an event which has taken place, not in cloud cuckoo land of myth and legend, but in history, on a particular day, at a particular physical location, leaving behind a tomb with no corpse in it, yielding a glorified human being who both possesses strange properties (appearing and disappearing, for instance) but who also can be touched and who eats real food.

Exactly how different from pagan myth this is can be seen in both your and Rita’s urgent attempts to alter what the gospels in fact say and shove the whole story out of history and back into the realm of cloud cuckoo land.  Pagan myths never bother with such things because no historical claim is ever made for them, just as nobody looks for the house of Jack the Giant killer.  But the Church, beginning with the apostles (and, significantly, their enemies, is born with the knowledge that Jesus was a historical figure).  So early Jewish polemics, for instance, never claim Jesus didn’t exist.  They claim he was a false prophet, a magician, a fake, a liar.  But never ever a myth.  Gnostics attempt to make him one, but their great enemies are the apostles who insist he “came in the flesh”.  And it is, after all, the gnostics who are the johnny come latelies who never met him, spiritual dilletantes (like Rita) who have a theory and who are not interested in any facts that contradict the theory.

I don’t think (bigger minds than me think otherwise) the text of St Luke implies perpetual virginity.  The only explanation I ever heard that makes sense is one told me by an Orthodox priest when he said “You don’t carry the Son of God in your womb nine months, give birth to God incarnate and then just go about your life as though nothing happened.”  It’s going to…Make a big difference.  Her life was different in every way and stayed that way, still is.  If you believe the virgin birth happened it changes everything for everyone—including her!

Well, you could have explained that to Rita instead of this:
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“If you are so incorrigibly ignorant as to maintain that Jesus never existed, then that’s not surprising. Continue your cutting and pasting. It’s easier than thinking.”
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No wonder she thinks your religion is a load of crap.
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You work very hard studying the Bible for “proof” that the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection really happened, but it’s begging the question—You have to believe in order to be Catholic, and the Catholic scripture is the only reference. (Can you site the “other sources” you mention?)
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I also don’t understand why you think Rita’s comments were “urgent attempts to alter what the gospels in fact say and shove the whole story out of history and back into the realm of cloud cuckoo land.”
She obviously did not know of other sources besides the Bible that also “witness” these events. Maybe some other references will make her think about it.
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Instead you angered her and discouraged her from seeking more information. Not a good way to attract skeptics to Christian philosophy.

Wisdom:

There are people like Bart Sibrel (click on link).  They seriously believe they are bold iconoclasts daringly questioning the Official Story.  They are, in fact, clueless people who have cobbled together a crank theory and who are too arrogant to listen to people who know what they are talking about.  When actual scientists get together to talk about space exploration, it is not censorship when they exclude these hectoring and unteachable people from the conversation.  It is common sense. 

Similarly, there are people who actually know something about biblical scholarship and then there are people like Bart Sibrel, who are unteachable cranks with a website and pet theory.  If Rita wished to say, “I’ve heard some people claim that Jesus never existed.  How do historians and biblical scholars respond to that?” I’d have no issue with that.  We live in a world with a lot of voices saying a lot of stuff ranging from “Jesus never existed” to “They never landed on the moon.”  So it’s easy to get confused.

But Rita has no interest in a conversation.  She is the intellectual equivalent of a moon landing hoax enthusiast demanding equal time for her crank nonsense and shouting “censorship!” when people who know what’s going on refuse to let her dominate the conversation with cut and pasted crap from anonymous ignorami on the internet.  I do not owe her a forum when she chooses to behave in this ignorant and arrogant way any more than Buzz Aldrin owed it to stand there and be abused by Bart Sibrel.

And, by the way, playing the victim card is bunk.  She brought her ignorant prejudice with her just like Sibrel did and evinced absolutely no interest in “seeking new information”.  It’s on her to learn something and consider the overwhelming evidence against her position, not on me to treat her with kid gloves when she acts like Bart Sibrel calling all sane people (including non-believing historians) liars, suckers, and conspirators.

Deal with it: Jesus existed.  Only a crank says otherwise.  Even unbelieving historians get that.

As to the rest: my point in writing this series is not to demonstrate that Jesus existed, nor to prove that the Bible is an accurate record of the events of the life of Jesus.  I am writing this series primarily for Christians who accept that contention, but who think that what Catholics believe about Mary contradicts the Bible they believe to be the word of God.  In short, I was not writing for Rita or for anybody else who is asking “Why should I trust a word the Bible says?”  That’s a discussion that is well worth having, but it’s not the discussion we are having here.  A mature person would recognize that.  What Rita chose to do was a) hijack the discussion and b) issue dogmatic edicts that Jesus never existed. That’s not germane to this thread and it is bad netiquette to hijack threads, so I banned her posts.  If she is such a fragile flower that she cannot cope with somebody asking her to behave like a polite adult then that’s her problem, not mine.

I will, in some future post, try to respond to the absurd claim that Jesus never existed, and the equally absurd claim that the gospels are written as myths and not intended as eyewitness accounts of real events seen by real flesh and blood people.  Whether one *believes* those eyewitness accounts is a separate question.  But that they are intended to be read that way by the authors, and not as myths set in cloud cuckoo land, about people who never existed is simply not tenable to anybody who understands how to read a text.

If you are looking for the ancient and archeological sources that attest to the existence of Caiaphas (the high priest who presided over the condemnation of Jesus) and Pontius Pilate, I’d look at any standard encyclopedia or reference work on biblical archaeology.  Luke’s Acts of the Apostles is also abundantly corroborated by all sorts of non-Christian and archeological sources (for instance, Sergius Paulus, one of Paul’s earliest Gentile converts) has his name turn up on a boundary stone in Rome, Pilate likewise has his name carved in a stone discover in 1960, the altar at St. Peter’s is, in fact, located above the grave of a crucified man (Peter was crucified upside down in Rome); archeology in Jerusalem shows that the author of John’s gospel is intimately familiar with the geography of the city as it looked before the Romans razed it in 70 AD, Josephus (a Jewish historian) discusses many of the major figures of the New Testament in his history of the period; a Roman historian talks about the Jews in Claudius’ Rome rioting about “Chrestus” and Claudius evicting them all (an event mentioned in Acts).

Myths aren’t constructed this way.  They happen “once upon a time”.  They don’t get tied to history this way.  Clearly the authors of the New Testament mean to be taken as giving us an eyewitness account to things “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life”.  You can call them liars.  You can call them crazy. Their enemies did both.  But you cannot say that they were trying to communicate fictional myths about things from some imaginary spiritual plane with not actual basis in earthly events.  They assert, to be blunt, a kangaroo court trial by corrupt bureaucrats everybody knows, a cowardly Roman functionary whose name was well-known and universally hated by their countrymen, a horsewhipping, a brutal execution like the one meted out to Spartacus not long before, a tomb owned by a well-known member of the Sanhedrin whose family could easily be interviewed—and then three days later a missing corpse, an investigation by a hostile state (who *never* say Jesus was a myth but who say instead his corpse was stolen by the apostles).  Again, you can call the claim a lie.  What you can’t call it is a story about something that happened in cloud cuckoo land.  Calling Jesus doesn’t just insult Jesus and his friends.  It insults his enemies, who are perfectly aware that Jesus was real, that he was killed, and that something happenened to his corpse.  All that’s left to do is ask whether any of the explanations you can come up with are less incredible than the explanation of the apostles who not only lived the rest of their lives proclaiming the Resurrection, but who virtually all went to gruesome deaths doing the same.

So your call: you can go the Bart Sibrel route with Rita and declare Jesus never existed in the teeth of evidence that even unbelieving historians and enemies of Jesus would laugh at, or you can do the bare minimum commond sense thing and acknowledge the obvious fact that he did exist.  Acknowledging Jesus existed is not even close to acknowledging his deity or resurrection.  But it is to take a step out of the fever swamp of internet conspiracy crankery.  And that’s enough for one day.  It’s the work of another day to consider the claims the New Testament makes about who Jesus is and what he has done.

Well, sources on the web, at least, are sharply divided between apologists and skeptics. The skeptics usually point out that none of the accounts of the miracles that must be believed were written in the lifetime of Jesus. I’m guessing that Rita got most of her information from:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
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The debate is too complex for me—I’ll remain agnostic. As far as I’m concerned, whether the events actually happened doesn’t matter.
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Wisdom:

You just moved the goalposts.  The question is not “Did Jesus work miracles?”  The question Rita was dogmatically asserting an answer to was “Did Jesus exist?”  Sources on the web are also sharply divided between sane people and moon landing skeptics.  So what?  You can find people on the web who say no planes hit the World Trade Center, that Congress is controlled by lizard people, and that JFK is alive.  So what?  Just because some kook has uploaded his ravings to Wikipedia and Rita has cut and pasted them doesn’t mean those ravings are worth a penny.

You were accusing me of censorship and being a jerk because I did not treat Rita’s dominating and abusive domineering with kid gloves.  Why do you expect me to care what you or she thinks when you both transparently have no interest in doing the intellectual heavy lifting of finding out some elementary facts about the question you are pretending to engage?  I think that’s deeply selfish and juvenile.  I am to stand here full of respectful silence while Rita hogs to mike to say ignorant stuff and declare the the New Testament a work of fiction.  When I decline to be thus bullied, you chime in to call me a censorious jerk.  When I reply with, you know, facts and evidence and not just cut and pasted crap from some anonymous crank, you don’t apologize or consider the possibility that you and Rita are out of line. You just lapse into lazy “I’ll remain agnostic” cowardice and refuse to consider the facts that challenge your worldview.  The reality is, it matters *immensely* whether or not the story of Jesus is a true story or a work of fiction.  That’s why both you and Rita have been trying so hard to claim it is the latter and why you are now ducking out of the discussion rather than face any of the facts I pointed out.  The debate is not complex at all: either there is real evidence that the story of Jesus is rooted in history or not.  Rita says it’s not.  I have briefly sketched why Rita’s ignorant opinion is valueless and contradicted by facts.  If Rita would like to show a little humility and not suck all the air out of the room like Bart Sibrel she is welcome to return for a civilized conversation.  But grownups understand that this involves give and take and not simply dominating everybody with baseless statements delivered in a loud voice with ears plugged.  You game?

Mark, I really love your columns, but I think you let people post comments onto your combox thread who should simply be edited out altogether and not talked about, such as Rita and “Wisdom”—you are dignifying their crap by giving them any space at all, and since they are obviously either operating in utmost bad faith or so spiritually dead that only the crassest materialism has any reality for them.
As for me, I will take these persons with me to Eucharistic Adoration this evening and will lift them up to Our Lord Jesus Christ, that He may show them The Way. 
More than that, we really cannot do for them.  Their kind have one foot in hell already, and are going around the gameboard of life with the other one on a banana peel.

Catharine:

Wisdom is willing to ask question.  Rita wasn’t.  So I’m willing to have a conversation with Wisdom.  Our church exists to evangelize. If we simply ignore people who are not Catholic, we fail that mission.  It’s still even possible that Rita may see reason.

It just seems more worth my time to deal with what is happening during my lifetime than to contemplate on what has happened in the past. Even if the man, Jesus, did exist and even if the miracles really happened, it was only one moment in time, and overall human behavior has not been changed by it.
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I know of another story—though I don’t remember the exact source:
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It was predicted that an island was going to be overwhelmed by a flood and never rise above sea-level again. The people on the island were divided about what to do: some made plans to evacuate, others tried to find ways of protecting the island with barriers and structures to divert the water away from the island, some gathered to pray for a savior deity to save the island, and some attempted to figure out how people can live underwater.
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Mark, you are getting hostile at me for not wanting to totally accept that the events in the Gospels really happened. Do you want me to be dishonest? Would Jesus have insulted and censored on his blog?
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I’m sorry if you disagree, but I don’t have the time to ponder the perpetual virginity of Mary and the miracle of the Virgin Birth, which might have happened over 2012 years ago, while the world I’m living in right now is falling apart. It is not really important compared to the reality of trying to pay the rent or put food on the table.
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The “fever swamp of internet conspiracy crankery” is derived from books that were written before the internet existed. This is a long, old debate that both sides refuse to compromise. For all I know you are part of an Catholic internet conspiracy—there are no neutral sources for this kind of discussion. Whether you like it or not, both sides have good points once the logical fallacies identified—but that takes a helluva lot of time that most people can’t spare.
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So worrying about whether Jesus and Mary really existed and the miracles occurred over 2012 years ago is pretty low on my priorities. Life is too short. Deal with it.

“It just seems more worth my time to deal with what is happening during my lifetime than to contemplate on what has happened in the past.”

Thanks for that bulletin from the depths of smug incurious suburban ignorance.  Maintaining that stance while complaining about somebody else’s close-mindedness will be an interesting balancing act.  Meanwhile, I hope that someday you don’t wind up learning the hard way the truth of the saying, “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” 

“Even if the man, Jesus, did exist and even if the miracles really happened, it was only one moment in time, and overall human behavior has not been changed by it.”

If Jesus is who he claims to be, then absolutely everything has changed since God has become man, died for our sins, been raised from the dead, and made eternal life possible for us. It is radically incurious not to want to know if that might be so. I don’t know what you mean by “overall human behavior”.  If you mean we retain freedom and sin still infects the world, no argument.  But there is the little tiny phenomenon of a globe-spanning civilization that owes a massive debt to Christ’s impact on it.  So the claim that *nothing* has changed is as short-sighted and historically illiterate as the claim that Jesus never existed.  But then your opening line would seem to suggest that you regard historical illiteracy as a feature, not a bug.
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“I know of another story—though I don’t remember the exact source:
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It was predicted that an island was going to be overwhelmed by a flood and never rise above sea-level again. The people on the island were divided about what to do: some made plans to evacuate, others tried to find ways of protecting the island with barriers and structures to divert the water away from the island, some gathered to pray for a savior deity to save the island, and some attempted to figure out how people can live underwater.”

You tell this story as though you imagine it has some relevance to the discussion.  You seem to be saying something like “Who cares if God became a human being and conquered death since there are practical problems to solve?”  One of the advantages of knowing something about history and the past and not simply living a life void of rootedness in anything beyond shopping and TV is that you learn that the Christian tradition has little use for empty piety that does not involve itself in the practical problems of the world.  As James, the cousin of Jesus, wrote: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. 18 But some one will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”

If you spent as much time trying to find out what the Christian tradition has to say as you do casually “de-bunking” it and ignoring information you pretended to want, you’d know that your straw man “story” was pointless since no Christian who knows the faith thinks that faith in Jesus means “sit there and do nothing”  On the contrary, Jesus commands us to do the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  That’s why the Church is the mother of fifty bazillion charities, hospital, orphanages, hospices, clothing banks, schools, universities, etc.

“Mark, you are getting hostile at me for not wanting to totally accept that the events in the Gospels really happened. Do you want me to be dishonest? Would Jesus have insulted and censored on his blog?”

Wisdom, it was you who became hostile, calling me censorious and a jerk because I wasn’t interested in allowing the intellectual equivalent of Bart Sibrel to dominate the conversation with clueless and ignorant junk cut and pasted from anonymous ignorami on the web.  I made it clear in my last email that I was not asking for total acceptance of everything recounted in the gospels, merely the elementary acknowledgement that Jesus existed (a fact attested even by non-Christian historians) and that the gospels are not myth literature but present themselves as eyewitness accounts.  You may think them lies and delusions since a mere claim of eyewitness testimony does not establish the testimony as true.  But what they manifestly are not is myth and anyone who claims that they are simply does not know what they are talking about. 

“I’m sorry if you disagree, but I don’t have the time to ponder the perpetual virginity of Mary and the miracle of the Virgin Birth, which might have happened over 2012 years ago, while the world I’m living in right now is falling apart. It is not really important compared to the reality of trying to pay the rent or put food on the table.”

A moment ago, you asked if I wanted you to be dishonest.  You seem to have no trouble being dishonest, since it is manifestly obvious that you have *plenty* of time for the perpetual virginity of Mary and the virgin birth when you are cheerleading for people who are spending days and days indulging in random and illiterate heckling, cutting and pasting historically illiterate junk, and dominating the conversation in the attempt.  Your sudden feigned disinterest now that you find yourself out of your historical depth is transparently dishonest.  If you can’t be bothered to know what you are talking about, then you shouldn’t butt into the conversation and start calling people names for the crime of wishing to stay on topic.

“The “fever swamp of internet conspiracy crankery” is derived from books that were written before the internet existed.”

Wow!  Books!  So that makes the baseless and ignorant junk cut and pasted from the web historically sound.

“This is a long, old debate that both sides refuse to compromise.”

Just like the “debate” between sane people who know what they are talking about and moon landing hoax nuts.  Sorry, but your intellectual abdication of responsibility here is mere cowardice.  You sound like this guy saying “Well, it seems the jury is still out on flying cars.” No.  There is no jury.  There is no “debate”.  There are just people who understand how to do history who know Jesus existed and cranks with a theory that he didn’t, just as there are people who know we landed on the moon and cranks with a theory we didn’t.

“For all I know you are part of an Catholic internet conspiracy—there are no neutral sources for this kind of discussion. Whether you like it or not, both sides have good points once the logical fallacies identified—but that takes a helluva lot of time that most people can’t spare”.

Prescinding from silly Catholic internet conspiracy theories, what your statement above comes down to is yet another complete abdication of intellectual responsibility to know what you are talking about before blathering an empty-headed opinion based on nothing.  You expect that you have not only the right to blather that opinion based on nothing, but even the right to say that Rita can declare everybody who disagrees with her a liar, a dupe, or a fool.  And if somebody declines to give you two a forum for your ignorant blather, you don’t have to bone up and find out if you know the first thing about the subject you choose to blather about.  You instead retreat into a bubble of total historical agnosticism.  You are welcome to do so, but don’t expect an adult to feel obliged to take a word you say seriously when you do.  Rita chose to posture condescendingly, stoop down, and pat Christians on the head about our supposed ignorance of the correspondences between some elements of the Christian story and some elements of pagan culture.  She was transparently ignorant of the fact that Christians themselves have done so ever since Paul spoke to the Athenians on Mars Hill in Acts 17. You chose to join her in that.  Now you are faced with the fact that neither of you know the first thing about the historical basis of the gospels, nor about the two thousand year old tradition of Christian reflection on the relationship of the Catholic tradition to pagan cultures.  So you are now saying, “History is dumb.  Who cares?”

Adults care.

“So worrying about whether Jesus and Mary really existed and the miracles occurred over 2012 years ago is pretty low on my priorities. Life is too short. Deal with it.”

Actually, when you thought you and Rita could score a few “Christians are suckers who believe a myth” licks it was manifestly high on your priorities.  And yes.  Life is short.  And death is certain.  And eternity is a long looooooong time.  The question of whether or not Jesus has conquered and opened the way to eternal life and salvation from hell is therefore very important.

I hope you and Rita will rethink the way you invest great energy in ignorant bigotry and almost none in actual intellectual inquiry.

[It just seems more worth my time to deal with what is happening during my lifetime than to contemplate on what has happened in the past.]

LOL

Then by all means… please *do* and stop *childishly* commenting here.  As you obviously know… your distraction here is inhibiting potential *positive* dialogue between *good* people of *many* faiths interested in discussing and learning about what the Church teaches on the *specific* topic the author has written about.

But then again… that’s your game, huh?

Sad… but *hopefully*... coming to an *end* v-e-r-y soon.

Catherine does make one good point. Life is too short. Why waste ones time debating the dishonest, the post-modernists, the gnostic revivalist libertines, etc.? Shake the dust off your sandals and move onward. Let God deal with them. Only He can prepare their hearts for the Gospel.

In todays society verginity is frowned on .Our young people in the media, magazines, and books are encouraged to be promiscuos by an accent on sexually revealing clothes and nakedness.Even baby girls are shown in the media in adult dresses Attractiveness is considered a must   Sex before marriage is encouraged leading to unwelcomed babies.Unfaithfulness in marriage is accepted as the norm. Women have lost their integrity and regarded as objects of sexual lust. How can this be redressed ,possibly only by the Churches giving prominence to the Virgin Mary and virginity
We can only pray!

I don’t know about Aramaic or Greek, but in English we certainly do use the present tense as a statement of future intention for all time.

For example, say you tell me that despite my fear of heights, I am going to scale Mount Everest and bring back the fabled treasure of Moogoogaipan.

I would perhaps say something like, “How can this be? I do not climb cliffs. I do not climb sheer walls. Heck, I do not climb trees!”

So yeah, it’s a possible usage.

I have absolutely no problem with the virgin birth, if God made the universe then a virgin birth would be easy in comparison.

I appreciate your talmudic quotes because there lies good evidence for the divinity of Jesus as well, much to their astonishment who stumble upon it (Click link)

What I don’t get is how you explain away Matthew 12:46, Luke 8:19, Mark 3:31, and Matthew 13:55, all of which are clear that Jesus had siblings. Why argue with scripture, when it is so clear?

Brad:

Because scripture is not clear and those passages do not, in fact, establish that those people were siblings of Jesus.  Go back and read the whole series here (it started in early September).  The “brothers” of Jesus (James, Joses, Judas (Jude) and Simon) are in fact the sons of Clopas (aka Cleopas of the Emmaus Road appearance) and “Mary, the wife of Clopas” (aka “the other Mary” aka “the sister of Mary the Mother of Jesus”.  And “sister” means “cousin” since it is unlikely two siblings were both named “Mary”.  So Jesus’ “brothers” are cousins.  That’s why James identifies himself as the servant, not brother, of Jesus and Jude identifies himself as the brother of James, but not of Jesus and the Church in Jerusalem makes Simon, son of Clopas (James’ kid brother) the successor of James after James’ martyrdom.