Virgin Mary

As no mention is made of the fall of Jerusalem in AD70 by Luke, either in his gospel or in his book of Acts, it is highly likely that he wrote both of these books before this time, probably around 50-60AD.

However, Luke did not write the 'Hail Mary'

The Catholic Hail Mary prayer is:

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Luke actually wrote the following:

Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. [Luke 1: 28-31]

The Catholic 'Hail Mary', also known as the 'Angelus'includes Roman Catholic doctrine about Mary being the 'mother of God' who 'intercedes for sinners', but has absolutely no foundation in scripture. The Angelus probably originated with the 11th century monastic worship. The first written documentation stems from Italian Franciscan monk Sinigardi di Arezzo (died 1282). Franciscan monasteries in Italy document the use in 1263 and 1295. As for the actual origins of the Angelus, the Catholic Encyclopedia states that "The history of the Angelus is by no means easy to trace with confidence, and it is well to distinguish in this matter between what is certain and what is in some measure conjectural." In other words, no one knows who wrote it, but it certainly wasn't Luke.

What IS certain, however, is that as it is a man-made concept, and a concept that has no basis in scripture, the vast majority of non-Catholic Christians regard the Angelus as contrary to scripture, where God is seen as eternal and infinite, and a 'Mother of God' superfluous and elevating Mary almost to the point of being a goddess herself, and also her role as interceder as abhorrent to the Word of God, as scripture dictates that Jesus alone is our only mediator and advocate.

487 What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.

We celebrate her birth as that of the first of our race to achieve the perfection that God wants for each one of us, she is the perfect example of what Our Blessed Lord's saving grace can accomplish if we willing let Him.

As the Scriptures themselves tell us, not everything is written down, and the New Testament was not written until many years after Our Blessed Lord's assumption into heaven, nor formed, as we have it today, until centuries later. The Bible, specifically the New Testament, was written as a preaching tool, NOT as a compedium of Christian doctrine. No dogma may contradict Scripture, but it is not all contained in Scripture, that is a protestant heresy.

Answer:

Because the central or key character in the entire Bible is Jesus Christ - from the Creation in Genesis to the return establishing the Kingdom of God on Earth in Revelation. He is the God Family member who is putting God's Plan to re-create Himself in a family of sons and daughters in action. No other individual from Adam to the last person born of men is as vital as Jesus Christ. Indeed, the Scripture tells us numerous times that the only path of Salvation is through Him - our only intercessor. As Scripture was completed before the end of the 1st Century AD via John's last Book of Revelation, we read in Jude 3 of our common salvation via Jesus Christ alone as '...that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.'

Those who preach the immaculate conception of Mary say that it really means she was born free of the stain of original sin. The thought was that Jesus would have inherited a sinful nature from Mary had she been a sinner. But if God was capable of protecting Mary from sin, he would surely have been able to protect Jesus from sin in the same way. Thus, from a Protestant point of view, a circular argument.

The Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception was unknown in the early years of the Church, but arose in the Middle Ages. The doctrine was endorsed by the Council of Basel (1431-1449), and by the end of the 15th century was widely professed and taught in many theological faculties. However, the Council of Basel was later held not to have been a true General Council with authority to proclaim dogma. Pope Pius IX formally defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception ex cathedra in 1854, stressing that Mary's sinlessness was not due to her own merits, but by the merits of her son, Jesus.

So, whether or not Mary was conceived without sin is a matter of faith, a faith held by members of the Roman Catholic Church.

No, Mary was not conceived without sin. In the Bible, only male offspring can be the product of God assisted pregnancy, never female.

All women (and men) are born with sin because of what Eve (and Adam) did in the Garden. Mary was born with sin.

No. We are all sinners, born sinners so we die, so was the case with Mary and Joseph.(Romans 3:23)(Ecclesiastes 7:20)(1 John 1:8)(James 3:2) (Luke2:22-24/Leviticus 5:7+ 12:8)

Answer #2

This is one issue where where Protestants and Catholics disagree. Protestants believe all but Jesus are free from original sin, while Catholics believe in the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin and the immaculateness of her conception to which Mary was conceived without sin. All Christians believe Jesus was without sin but the issue with Mary is controversial.

The Annunciation

The Visitation

The Nativity of Christ

The Adoration of the Magi

The Finding in the Temple

The Resurrection

The Assumption of the Blessed Mother

There is no record in the bible of Marys age at the time of her death. Since she was in her mid teens, probably 14 when she gave birth to Jesus and she was there when he was crucified, she would have been in her mid to late 40's at his death. It is unknown how long she lived after that.

The bible does not mention it at all. Please note the bible says in Hebrew 9, That it is recorded for man to die but once and then the Judgement. It also says The wages of sin is death. So we will all die.

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

1) Mary the "Mother of God" (Theotokos) The official, dogmatic proclamation of this dogma was made at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, in response to the heresy of Nestorianism.

Scripture implicitly affirms Mary's Divine motherhood by attesting, on the one hand, the true Divinity of Christ, and on the other hand, Mary's true motherhood. Thus Mary is called: "Mother of Jesus" (John 2:1) ...

"Mother of the Lord" (Luke 1:43). Mary's true motherhood is clearly foretold by the Prophet Isaiah: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14) . . . . the woman who bore the Son of God is Progenitress of God, or the Mother of God [ see also Matt. 1:18, 12:46, 13:55; Luke 1:31, 35; Gal 4:4]. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 196-197)

The doctrine of Mary as Theotokos flows consistently and straightforwardly from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus. Cardinal Gibbons explains:

We affirm that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God, who in His divine nature is from all eternity begotten of the Father, consubstantial with Him, was in the fullness of time, begotten, by being born of the Virgin, thus taking to Himself, from her maternal womb, a human nature of the same substance with hers.

But it may be said the Blessed Virgin is not the Mother of the Divinity. She had not, and she could no have, any part in the generation of the Word of God, for that generation is eternal; her maternity is temporal. He is her Creator; she is His creature. Style her, if you will, the Mother of the man Jesus or even of the human nature of the Son of God but not the Mother of God.

I shall answer this objection by putting a question. Did the mother who bore us have any part in the production of our soul? Was not this nobler part of our being the work of God alone? And yet who would for a moment dream of saying "the mother of my body," and not "my mother"? . . . (Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, 137-138)

In like manner . . . the Blessed virgin, under the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, by communicating to the Second Person of the Adorable Trinity, as mothers do, a true human nature of the same substance with her own, is there really and truly His Mother.

2) The Immaculate Conception of Mary Pope Pius IX (in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus) infallibly defined this doctrine as binding upon all Catholics on December 8, 1854.

Genesis 3:15 (known as the "Protoevangelion"): "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Ludwig Ott expounds this verse:

The literal sense of the passage is possibly the following: Between Satan and his followers on the one hand, and Eve and her posterity on the other hand, there is to be constant moral warfare. The posterity of Eve will achieve a complete and final victory over Satan and his followers, even if it is wounded in the struggle. The posterity of Eve includes the Messiah, in whose power humanity will win a victory over Satan. Thus the passage is indirectly messianic.

The seed of the woman was understood as referring to the Redeemer, and thus the Mother of the Redeemer came to be seen in the woman. Since the second century, this direct messianic-Marian interpretation has been expounded by individual Fathers, for example, St. Irenaeus, St. Epiphanius .... St. Cyprian ... St. Leo the Great. However, it is not found in the writings of the majority of the Fathers . . . According to this interpretation, Mary stands with Christ in a perfect and victorious enmity toward Satan and his following. Many of the later scholastics and a great many modern theologians argue, in the light of this interpretation . . that Mary's victory over Satan would not have been perfect, is she had ever been under his dominion. Consequently she must have entered the world without the stain of Original Sin. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 200)

Most Protestant Bible translations follow the King James, or Authorized, Version's lead in rendering kecharitomene, the Greek word, as "favored," as indeed also some recent Catholic versions. The favored (no pun intended!) Traditional Catholic rendering (actually the more literal rendering) is "Hail, full of grace" (for example, Douay, Confraternity, Knox). The word Mary (after hail) is not in the text, but strongly implied, as the angel is addressing her by title; thus we arrive at the phrase "Hail, Mary, full of grace,"

The Bible speaks only implicitly of many things that Protestants strongly believe, such as the proper mode of Baptism (immersion, sprinkling, or pouring?). The Immaculate Conception is entirely possible within scriptural presuppositions.

Luke 1:35 (The Annunciation; Mary as a type of the ark of the covenant): "And the angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the pow3er of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

Overshadow is derived from the Greek, episkiasei, which denotes a bright cloud or cloud of glory. It is used in reference to the cloud at the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34) and hearkens back to instances of the Shekinah glory of the God in the Old Testament (Exod. 24:15-16, 40:34-38; 1 Kings 8:10).

The Septuagint uses episkiasei in Exodus 40:34-35. Mary, as Theotokos, becomes, in effect, the new temple and holy of holies, where God dwelt in a special, spatially located fashion. In particular Scripture seems to be making a direct symbolic parallelism between Mary and the ark of the covenant. She is the bearer and ark of the New Covenant, which Jesus brings about (Heb. 8:6-13; 12:24).

The Assumption of Mary

Pope Pius XII, in his Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, of November 1, 1950, proclaimed this dogma in the following carefully selected words:

By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we proclaim, declare, and define as a dogma revealed by God: the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of Heaven. (CCC, pars. 996, 974; Hardon, CC 154-155, 160-163; Hardon, PCD, 32)

Ludwig Ott presents some of the biblical indications of the Assumption:

Direct and express scriptural proofs are not to be had. The possibility of the bodily assumption before the second coming of Christ is not excluded by 1 Corinthians, 15:23, as the objective Redemption was completed with the sacrificial death of Christ, and the beginning of the final era foretold by the prophets commenced. Its probability is suggested by Matthew 27:52-53: "And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, and coming out of the tombs after His Resurrection came into the holy city and appeared to many." According to the more probable explanation, which was already expounded by the Fathers, the awakening of the "saints" was a final resurrection and transfiguration. If, however, the justified of the Old Covenant were called to the perfection of salvation immediately after the conclusion of the redemptive work of Christ, then it is possible and probable that the Mother of the Lord was called to it also.

From her fullness of grace spoken of in Luke 1:28, Scholastic theology derives the doctrine of the bodily assumption and glorification of Mary. Since she was full of grace, she remained preserved from the three-fold curse of sin (Gen. 3:16-19), as well as from her return to dust . . .

Modern theology usually cites Genesis 3:15 in support of the doctrine. Since by "the seed of the woman" it understands Christ, and by "the woman", Mary, it is argued that as Mary had an intimate share in Christ's battle against Satan and in His victory over Satan and sin, she must also have participated intimately in His victory over death. It is true that the literal reference of the text is to Eve and not Mary, but already since the end of the second century (St. Justin), Tradition has seen in Mary the new Eve. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 208-209. For the "New Eve" typology, see Catechism of the Catholic Church, pars. 411, 494, 511, 726, 975.)

Lest one think that a bodily ascent into Heaven (of a creature, as opposed to Jesus) is impossible and "biblically unthinkable," Holy Scripture contains the examples of Enoch (Heb. 11:5; cf. Gen 5:24), Elijah (2 Kings 2:1, 11), St. Paul's being caught up to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2-4), possibly bodily, and events during the Second Coming (1 Thess. 4:15-17), believed by many Evangelicals to constitute the "Rapture," an additional return of Christ for believers only. All of these occur by virtue of the power of God, not the intrinsic ability of the persons.

The Assumption of the Blessed virgin flows of necessity from the Immaculate Conception and Mary's actual sinlessness....

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.