Was Jesus Mum the perpetual virgin?
The doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary became the official teaching of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. In the liturgies of these churches, Mary is referred to as 'aeiparthenos' “the ever-virgin” or “the perpetual virgin”; that is, she was a virgin before and after the birth of Jesus Christ. But is this view in keeping with Matthew 1:25a: “But he (Joseph) had no sexual relations with her (Mary) until she had given birth to a son”? Does the word “until” imply that sexual relations began after birth? After establishing the Davidic ancestry of Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, by tracing the genealogy of Jesus (Matt 1:1–17), Matthew proceeds in 1:18–25 to describe the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. Verse 25a states the one qualification (introduced by “But”) to the statement “he took Mary home as his wife” (v. 24b): “But he did not know her.” “Know” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. There was an ...