Temple Virgins?

[phatcatholic]

recently, i was debating the virginity of Mary and I suggested that one reason why Mary was puzzled by the angel's message that she would bear a son was because she was a "temple virgin" who had already devoted herself to the Lord. my opponent replied by claiming that there was no such thing as Jewish temple virgins. he said that there were examples of virgins after Christ, but not before Him. examples from the Protoevangelium of James and the Nativity of Mary don't prove my case b/c they are apocryphal works which are known to be filled w/ embellishments, and he sees the role of Mary as a temple virgin to be such an embellishment.

if i could prove, from some document or preferrably from the OT that there was such a thing as temple virgins who consecrated themselves to the Lord, then this would lend more creedance to the claim that Mary was such a person. but, i can't seem to find the proof to make such a claim.

thank you in advance for your help

pax christi,
phatcatholic

Edited January 14, 2005 by phatcatholic

[Adeodatus]

phatcatholic,

You don't need to show Mary was a temple-virgin, but just that she may have chosen a life consecrated as a virgin. If she were a temple-virgin, what was she doing in Nazareth getting married to Joseph? Going AWOL while on week-end leave?

While temple-virgins may have existed as a departure from the norm (say because some Jews thought the "weeks" of Daniel's prophecy were coming to fulfilment, and may have gathered virgins of David's tribe in the Temple) we have no evidence for such a practice. Sadly the only examples from surrounding cultures are of temple prostitutes.

There are examples of the single life being embarked on for religious reasons in 1st century BC and 1st century AD Judaism. And abstaining from sexual relations for holy purposes is well-known in the Judaism of the time. And of course you have Nazirites who are consecrated in a sense.

I would go back to Mary's words to Gabriel, which simply make no sense if Mary intended to marry Joseph and live a normal married life.

But above all, I would not fall for this Protestant mentality that our faith needs proof-texts from the Bible, because then we'd be here all day, today, tomorrow, the day after, etc. We must insist that they show us why everything must be explicit in Scripture, and how they could justify such a belief. The minute we read a text we are already interpreting it, and I mean any text, not just the Bible. There can be no private interpretation of the Bible, and the Scriptures may only be interpreted by the Church, in the light of the Spirit, according to the [i]traditio[/i] that comes to us from the Apostles.

Mary was a virgin, and we know this because that is what the whole Church has always believed until some people got a crazy little idea recently (500 years ago) that the Word of God was up for grabs for every little whim going.