Virgin Mary

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.

from Radio Replies, by Fathers Rumble and Carty, 1942, vol 2

670 To my Protestant mind your worship of Mary is little short of idolatry.

That can only be because you have no understood Catholic doctrine on the subject. The Creator alone is God. Mary is as much a creature as any other human being. But whilst she is as much a creature as we are, we have not been honored by God nearly as much as she.

671. Does not the elevation of Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, to a rank quasi-divine, find an illuminating analogue in the ancient Egyptian cult which gave Isis the divine rank of Mother of Heaven?

Firstly, Mary has not been elevated by the Catholic Church to a rank of quasi-divine, or even remotely divine. In Catholic theology she falls as far short of divinity as I do, and that's infinitely. Secondly, there is no true analogue between the historical Mother of Christ and the purely mythological Isis, and still less can any illiminatino be derived from a comparison of the two.

672. Cathlicism says Mary is omnipotent in power and infinite in mercy.

It does not say that Mary is omnipotent in power and infinite in mercy. It says that her prayer and intercession have a special efficacy in winning for usthe protection of the Omnipotent power of God and His infinite mercy.

predominant color of the earth - color of the sky and the sea

It also symbolizes purity.

The above answers are often quoted but many believe them to be an urban myth. There is really quite a practical reason why Mary's mantle is always depicted as blue in art. Obviously no one knows what colour Mary's clothes were in actual life, but we are certain there were NOT blue or purple as this colour dye was particularly expensive in those days and rederved for royalty. This is confirmed at Christ's crucifixion where the soldiers placed a purple robe on Jesus and mocked him calling him 'king' of the Jews. Also, in Acts, the church leader Lydia, a wealthy merchant, dealt in purple cloth - only mentioned as it was a very unusual profession - especially for a woman.

In art, therefore, Mary had to stand out from the crowd, ordinary people that wore normal colours of brown, yellow or red, as she was seen as someone special by the church because she was the mother of Jesus himself. In the middle ages, paint pigments were obtained from either different coloured clays (like yellow and brown) or ground up minerals (like cinnabar for red or lead oxide for white). However, the only blue pigment possible in those days was a ground up precious stone called ultramarine, which cab still be found in expensive jewellery today. Nowadays the pigment ultramarine is synthetically made and is cheap, but then it was extremely expensive. In fact it was several times more expensive than gold. Therefore it was THIS pigment that was reserved for Mary's robe alone and nothing else in medieval religious art. Jesus was often depicted in gold leaf but Mary in blue ultramarine to show her importance.

In Wales where I come from there is an outdoor museum where buildings have been re-erected there to show life in the country over the centuries. One building is a medieval church that boasts a huge restored frieze around the walls of the church. The entire frieze depicts pictures from the Bible and is painted using pigments only found in medieval times. Most of the frieze is surrounded in pure gold leaf and the characters are painted in natural colours. However, there is one tiny picture of Mary in the frieze, whose robe is painted in ultramarine. The curator said that that one tiny patch of pure ultramarine paint cost more than the whole frieze full of gold leaf.

Therefore, Mary is depicted in art wearing blue as she is deemed by the early church as being very special indeed.

The answer to this question comes down to Jewish family genealogies and their accuracy. In his "Daily Bible Illustrations" Dr Kitto writes:"The fact that the descent of Jesus from David could be established by registers , and the presence of two such minute pedigrees as those of Matthew and Luke, evince that the Jews were, up to this time, still careful in the registration of family descents....The rabbins [sic] assure us that [after the captivity] they became still more careful in registering their genealogies; with immediate reference, doubtless, to the expectation of the Messiah; but with the ulterior object ...of preserving means for establishing the exact fulfillment of the predictions respecting his parentage. That such existed to even a later date is shown by Josephus, who declares that he traced his own descent in the trie of Levi by public registers; and he expressly informs us that, however dispersed and dispossessed his nation were, they never failed to have exact genealogical tables prepared from the authentic documents which were kept at Jerusalem; and that in all their sufferings they were particularly careful to preserve these tables, which were renewed from time to time."

(From page 76 of "Daily Bible Illustrations - The Life and Death of Our Lord " section "29th Week, Third Day" by Dr Kitto, exact date unknown but possibly 1871.)

The Bible tells us David's wife Bathsheba had 4 sons, 2 of whom were Nathan and Solomon:-

1Ch 3:5 ...[David's]wife Bathsheba, daughter of Ammiel, bore him four sons: Shimea, Shobab,Nathan, and Solomon.

Solomon became king, and among his descendants was Joseph, (the husband of Mary the mother of Jesus, and Jesus' stepfather); his genealogy is given in Matthew chapter 1:-

Mat 1:7 [Good News Bible] From David to the time when the people of Israel were taken into exile in Babylon, the following ancestors are listed: David, Solomon (his mother was the woman who had been Uriah's wife [ie Bathsheba]), Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, and Jehoiachin and his brothers.Mat 1:12 From the time after the exile in Babylon to the birth of Jesus, the following ancestors are listed: Jehoiachin, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim, Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob, and Joseph, who married Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was called the Messiah.

However, his wife Mary traced her lineage back to Solomon's brother Nathan:-

Luk 3:23-31 CEV When Jesus began to preach, he was about thirty years old. Everyone thought he was the son of Joseph. But his family went back through Heli, [v. 24] Matthat, Levi, Melchi, Jannai, Joseph, [v. 25] Mattathias, Amos, Nahum, Esli, Naggai, [v. 26] Maath, Mattathias, Semein, Josech, Joda; [v. 27] Joanan, Rhesa, Zerubbabel, Shealtiel, Neri, [v. 28] Melchi, Addi, Cosam, Elmadam, Er, [v. 29] Joshua, Eliezer, Jorim, Matthat, Levi; [v. 30] Simeon, Judah, Joseph, Jonam, Eliakim, [v. 31] Melea, Menna, Mattatha, Nathan, David,

Regarding these genealogies in Matthew and Luke, Dr William Smith says in 'Smith's Bible Dictionary' (1884) in the article 'Genealogy of Jesus Christ', that:-.1. They are both the genealogies of Joseph, that is, of Jesus Christas the reputed and legal son of Joseph and Mary.2. The genealogy of St. Matthew is Joseph's genealogy as legal successor to the throne of David. St. Luke's is Joseph's private Genealogy, exhibiting his real birth as David's son, and thus, showing why he was heir to Solomon's crown. The simple principle that one evangelist exhibits that genealogy which contained the successive heir to David's and Solomon's throne, while the other exhibits the paternal stem of him who was the heir, explains all the anomalies of the two pedigrees, their agreements as well as their discrepancies, and the circumstance of there being two at all.3. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was in all probability the daughter of Jacob, and first cousin to Joseph, her husband. ...(Godet, Lange and many others take the ground that St. Luke gives the genealogy of Mary, rendering Luk_3:23thus: Jesus"being (as was suppposed), the son of Joseph, (but, in reality), the son of Heli." In this case, Mary, as declared in the Targums, was the daughter of Heli, and Heli was the grandfather of Jesus.Mary's name was omitted because "ancient sentiment did not comport with the mention of the mother as the genealogical link." So we often find in the Old Testament, the grandson called the son. This ... shows that Jesuswas not merely the legal but the actual descendant of David; and it would be very strange that in the gospel accounts, where so much is made of Jesusbeing the son and heir of David and of his kingdom [that] his real descent from David should not be given. )

In his "Daily Bible Illustrations" Dr Kitto says:-"... But the two genealoogies are materially different. They coincide until David, when Matthew takes the ruling line [ie of Solomon]; whereas Luke takes the ...line by David's son Nathan....Matthew makes Joseph the son of Jacob,whereas Luke represents him as Heli, or Eli. He could not naturally have been the son of both these persons [thus] Jacob and Heli are different names for the same person. They are obviously two different genealogies from the common ancestor David.....[T]he genealogy in Matthew is that of Joseph, and the one in Luke that of Mary - the former being the legal, and the latter the real genealogy of Jesus.....

Furthermore, Mary is always called by the Jews 'the daughter of Heli' and by the early Christian writers 'the daughter of Joakim and Anna'. Now, Joakim and Eliakim (as different names in Hebrew for God) are sometimes interchanged; so that Heli or Eli is an abridged form of Eliakim interchanged for Joakim."

(From page 77 of "Daily Bible Illustrations - The Life and Death of Our Lord " section "29th Week, Third Day" by Dr Kitto, exact date unknown but possibly 1871.)

The Bible says in Luke 3:23 that Mary's father was Heli, and he was the "father of Mary and father-in-law of Joseph in the line Jesus Christ's royal ancestry " (From

It is known from other sources that her father was also called Joachim, and her mother was Anna:-Little is known of Mary's personal history from the New Testament. Her parents are not named in the canonical texts, but in apocryphal sources, widely accepted by later tradition, were Joachim and Anne. She was a relative of Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zechariah of the priestly division of Abijah, who herself was of the lineage of Aaron and so of the tribe of Levi. In spite of this, some speculate that Mary, like Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, was of the House of David and so of the tribe of Judah, and that the genealogy presented in Luke was hers, while Joseph's is given in Matthew."

Saint Joachim ... was the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and therefore is ascribed the title of "forebearer of God", in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions. The canonical Gospel accounts in the New Testament do not explicitly name either of Mary's parents, but some argue that the genealogy in Luke 3 is that of Mary rather than Joseph, thereby naming her father as Eli. ... The story of Sts Joachim and Anne appears in the apocryphal Gospel of James.

To summarize, the Bible tells us Mary's father was Heli (aka Eli, Eliakim, Joakim, Joachim) and both an apocryphal gospel and Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican church tradition tell us her parents were Joachim and Anne.