Was the Virgin Mary actually a virgin?

Answer 1

of course!!! The Bible DOES NOT lie! marry was only betrothed to Joseph when she became pregnant with Jesus, and it wasn't because she was "with" Joseph. the holy spirit, by the power of God, caused Mary to be with child. it was not through Joseph, but Joseph was Jesus's father on earth.

Actually, the bible says Mary was only a very young woman (in her teen years), and the thought of her having intercourse with another man before that time it would seem highly unlikely that she would have been with another man before.

Answer 2

Roman Catholic Answer

, we believe that Jesus was born by the power of the Holy Spirit and Mary had no relations with a man. We also believe she remained a virgin throughout her life.

Biblical Answer (New Testament)Other Christians also regard Mary as a virgin at the time of Jesus' birth, having been made pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is confirmed in Luke's gospel:

(1: 26 -35) In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever; his kingdom will never end."

"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be calle the Son of God.

However , most non-Catholics do not accept the Catholic doctrine that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life. The evidence for this is Biblical where several references are made to Jesus' brothers and sisters, for example, Matthew 12:46, Luke 8:19, Mark 3:31 Matthew 13:55, Matthew 13:56, John 7:1-10, Acts 1:14 and Galatians 1:19. Some Roman Catholics claim that these 'brothers and sisters' were, in fact, his cousins but the Greek words used are reserved for siblings and not cousins. Another theory is that Joseph had a previous family, and that thse brothers were step-brothers, but there is no evidence for this at all.

Therefore non-Catholics believe in the virginity of Mary until Christ's birth, but then she began a normal loving sexual relationship with her husband, Joseph.

Answer 3

Catholic AnswerYes indeed, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord and Savior, was a Virgin before, during, and after the birth of Our Blessed Lord. The very thought of another occupying the womb which was reserved for God is kind of hard to think about, if you have any respect for Our Blessed Lord. Regardless, this has been the constant teaching of the Church, and was preached and believed in, very firmly, even by those who left the Catholic Church to start their own religions - Calvin, Luther, and Henry VIII were all firm believers in the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

from

A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, by Dave Armstrong, Sophia Institute Press, © 2003

The Perpetual virginity of Mary

Pope Paul IV, in his Constitution, Cum Quorumdam Hominum, of 1555, expressed the constant teaching of the Catholic Church concerning both the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and the perpetual virginity of Mary:

We question and admonish all those who . . . have asserted, taught, and believed . . . that our Lord . . . was not conceived from the Holy Spirit according to the flesh in the womb of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, but, as other men, from the see of Joseph . . . or that the same Blessed Virgin Mary is not truly the mother of God and did not retrain her virginity intact before the birth, in the birth, and perpetually after the birth. (In Neuner and Dupuis, The Christian Faith, 217. See CCC, pars 484-486, 496-498, 502-506, 510, 723 (for the virgin birth); pars 499-501, 507, 510, 721 (for the perpetual virginity of Mary))

The Greek word for brother in the New Testament is adelphos. The well-known Protestant linguistic reference An Expository Dictionary of the New Testament Words defines it as follows:

1. Male children of the same parents . . .

2. Male descendants of the same parents, Acts 7:23, 26; Hebrews 7:5 . . .

4. People of the same nationality, Acts 3:17, 22; Romans 9:3 . . .

5. Any man, a neighbor, Luke 10:29; Matthew 5:22, 7:3;

6. Persons united by a common interest, Matthew 5:47;

7. Persons united by a common calling, Revelation 22:9;

8. Mankind, Matthew 25:40; Hebrews 2:17;

9. The disciples, and so, by implication, all believers, Matthew 28:10; John 20:17;

10. Believers, apart from sex, Matthew 23:8; Acts 1:15; romans 1:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:4; Revelation 19:10 (the word sisters is used of believers, only in 1 Timothy 5:2) . . . . (Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New testament Words, Vol. 1, 154-155.)

It Is evident, therefore, from the range of possible definitions of adelphos, that Jesus' "brothers" need not necessarily be siblings of Jesus on linguistic grounds, as many commentators, learned and unlearned, seem to assume uncritically. Be examining the use of adelphos and related words in Hebrew, and by comparing Scripture with Scripture ("exegesis"), one can determine that most sensible explanation of all the biblical date taken collectively. Many examples prove that adelphos has a very wide variety of meanings:

In the King James Version, Jacob is called the "brother" of his Uncle Laban (Gen. 29:15; 29:10). The same thing occurs with regard to Lot and Abraham (Gen. 14:14; 11:26-27). The Revised Standard Version uses "kinsman" at 29:15 and 14:14.

Use of brother or brethren for mere kinsmen: Deuteronomy 23:7; 2 Samuel 1:26; 1 Kings 9:14, 20:32; 2 Kings 10:13-14; Jeremiah 24:9; Amos 1:9).

In Luke 2:41-51, ... it is fairly obvious that Jesus is the only child....

Jesus himself uses brethren in the larger sense: Matthew 23:8, 23:1; 12:49-50.

The term Firstborn means pre-eminent and nowhere assumes later siblings, etc.

Answer 4

John Shelby Spong, former Episcopalian bishop of Newark, says (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus) that that the virgin birth is not a historical fact, but a later invention. This is something a Catholic theologian could never say, as evidenced by the fate of Uta Ranke-Heinemann, the first woman in the world to hold a chair of Catholic theology, who lost her chair at the University of Essen in 1987 for doubting the virgin birth.

Answer 5

Yes, Mary was a virgin before she conceived of Jesus and continued to be a virgin for her entire life. It was foretold in Isaiah 7:14:Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.

This was confirmed in the New Testament including in Luke 1:

And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

Answer 6

If the gospels correctly said that Mary was a virgin, then they must have been inspired by God, since there is no way that the authors could have known this. Not only was the birth of Jesus many decades before Matthew and Luke were written, how does one enquire on these matters?

So, it comes down to evidence that the two gospels really were inspired by God. Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament ) says, "Inspiration does not guarantee historicity or reconcilability; otherwise God should have inspired the two evangelists to give us the same record." The differences in the two gospels show that they were not really inspired. If the gospels were not inspired by God, then we have no reason to believe that Mary was a virgin. There was an expectation that the mother of Jesus would have been a virgin, and this is what the evangelists wrote.

Answer 7

Catholic Answer

Yes, our Blessed Lady was actually a virgin her entire life, before, during, and after Our Blessed Lord's birth; she was and remained a virgin until she was assumed into heaven. This has been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church and was restated by Pope Paul VI.

from A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, by Dave Armstrong, Sophia Institute Press, © 2003

The Perpetual virginity of Mary

Pope Paul IV, in his Constitution, Cum Quorumdam Hominum, of 1555, expressed the constant teaching of the Catholic Church concerning both the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and the perpetual virginity of Mary:

We question and admonish all those who . . . have asserted, taught, and believed . . . that our Lord . . . was not conceived from the Holy Spirit according to the flesh in the womb of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, but, as other men, from the see of Joseph . . . or that the same Blessed Virgin Mary is not truly the mother of God and did not retrain her virginity intact before the birth, in the birth, and perpetually after the birth. (In Neuner and Dupuis, The Christian Faith, 217. See CCC, pars 484-486, 496-498, 502-506, 510, 723 (for the virgin birth); pars 499-501, 507, 510, 721 (for the perpetual virginity of Mary))

The Greek word for brother in the New Testament is adelphos. The well-known Protestant linguistic reference An Expository Dictionary of the New Testament Words defines it as follows:

1. Male children of the same parents . . .

2. Male descendants of the same parents, Acts 7:23, 26; Hebrews 7:5 . . .

4. People of the same nationality, Acts 3:17, 22; Romans 9:3 . . .

5. Any man, a neighbor, Luke 10:29; Matthew 5:22, 7:3;

6. Persons united by a common interest, Matthew 5:47;

7. Persons united by a common calling, Revelation 22:9;

8. Mankind, Matthew 25:40; Hebrews 2:17;

9. The disciples, and so, by implication, all believers, Matthew 28:10; John 20:17;

10. Believers, apart from sex, Matthew 23:8; Acts 1:15; romans 1:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:4; Revelation 19:10 (the word sisters is used of believers, only in 1 Timothy 5:2) . . . . (Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New testament Words, Vol. 1, 154-155.)

It Is evident, therefore, from the range of possible definitions of adelphos, that Jesus’ “brothers” need not necessarily be siblings of Jesus on linguistic grounds, as many commentators, learned and unlearned, seem to assume uncritically. Be examining the use of adelphos and related words in Hebrew, and by comparing Scripture with Scripture (“exegesis”), one can determine that most sensible explanation of all the biblical date taken collectively. Many examples prove that adelphos has a very wide variety of meanings:

In the King James Version, Jacob is called the “brother” of his Uncle Laban (Gen. 29:15; 29:10). The same thing occurs with regard to Lot and Abraham (Gen. 14:14; 11:26-27). The Revised Standard Version uses “kinsman” at 29:15 and 14:14.

Use of brother or brethren for mere kinsmen: Deuteronomy 23:7; 2 Samuel 1:26; 1 Kings 9:14, 20:32; 2 Kings 10:13-14; Jeremiah 24:9; Amos 1:9).

In Luke 2:41-51, ... it is fairly obvious that Jesus is the only child....

Jesus himself uses brethren in the larger sense: Matthew 23:8, 23:1; 12:49-50.

The term Firstborn means pre-eminent and nowhere assumes later siblings, etc.

Answer 8

yes! Mary would never lie as she is the mother of god

Answer 9

Yes, the Catholic Church holds that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

Answer 10

Yes, 2000 years of Catholic Tradition has always held that she was a virgin before, during and after the birth of Christ. It is an article of faith of Catholicism.