Keeping track of the Mary's

[thessalonian]

We are always told that the following passages tell us that Mary had other children.

Matt.13
[55] Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James [b]and Joseph and Simon and Judas? [/b] Matt.27


Mark.6
[3] Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and [b]brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon[/b], and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.

Matt.27
[56] among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and [b]Mary the mother of James and Joseph[/b], and the mother of the sons of Zeb'edee.

The guy I am debating with had an article that said the Mary in Matt 27 was Jesus mother.

I did a little analysis beyond the usual indicating that this James and Joses/Joseph are likely sons of a Mary who is at the cross because an article posted on another board said that this Mary at the cross was Mary the mother of Jesus. Here it is. Hope it helps.

Consider these passages.

Matt.27
[56] among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and [b]Mary the mother of James and Joseph[/b], and the mother of the sons of Zeb'edee.
[61] Mary Mag'dalene and [b]the other Mary[/b] were there, sitting opposite the sepulchre.

Matt.28
[1] Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Mag'dalene and [b]the other Mary [/b] went to see the sepulchre.

Mark.16
[1] And when the sabbath was past, Mary Mag'dalene, and [b]Mary the mother of James[/b], and Salo'me, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
[9] Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.

Mark.15
[40] There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and [b]Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses[/b], and Salo'me,
[47] Mary Mag'dalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

John 19
[25]
So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, [b]Mary the wife of Clopas[/b], and Mary Mag'dalene.
[26] When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!"
[27] Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
[28]

Luke 24
[10] Now it was Mary Mag'dalene and Jo-an'na and [b]Mary the mother of James [/b] and the other women with them who told this to the apostles;


Okay, we have this Mary who is the mother of James in Mark 16 and Luke 24. We have "the other mary" and Mary the mother of Joses in Mark 15 and Matt 27, 28 respectively. Mary the mother of Joses and the other Mary are identified as being with Mary Magadalene when they watch where Jesus is laid. Mary the Mother of James is the Mary, with Mary Magadalen when they tell the apostles (luke 24) they have seen the Lord. Mark 15 has Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James the younger (less) looking on from afar. In Mark 15 there is a Mary, looking on from afar who is Mary, mother of James and Joses. Hmmmm.

Seems almost dead certain that "the other Mary", Mary the mother of Joses, and Mary the Mother of James and Joses, and Mary the mother of James the younger (less) are all the same Mary. Note that not once are any of these Mary's identified as Mary the Mother of Jesus and in John 19 it is clear that we have another Mary (Mary wife of Clopas) with the group who is not the mother of Jesus. Further Mary the mother of Jesus is not mentioned in the passages where the women looked on from afar. Probably because she stayed right with the body. Or perhaps seeing her son to distraught it is not surprizing that she might have been taken away by the others. Perhaps John, who's care she was entrusted to and who was not at the tomb with the other two Mary's.

One more point. In John 19 it indicates that John and Mary are near the cross and likely the other women, who are together, are a bit further off. This is consistent with the separation shown in the other two Gospels and again indicates that Mary, mother of James and Joses and Mary the wife of Clopas are the same woman.

I do hope you follow all that. I think your author blew this one bad. As do many other authors who have to prove Mary had other children. Now I am not claiming to prove otherwise, just showing the bias they display in their "exegesis".


Blessings

Edited May 18, 2006 by thessalonian

[Jaime]

Good job Thess

It should also be pointed out that the Adelphoi (the word in scripture commonly translated as brothers) has a broad range of meaning.

Mary and Joseph lived in a clan society where the raising of the children was done as a clan. Adelphos or adelphoi can refer to members of the same clan that Jesus was raised in. It can also be used to refer to cousins.

[phatcatholic]

peep it
[url="http://www.phatmass.com/directory/index.php/cat_id/100"]http://www.phatmass.com/directory/index.php/cat_id/100[/url]

[Jaime]

Who rocks?

Nick rocks!! :



And Happy belated birthday bud!

[phatcatholic]

haha, thanks bro

[phatcatholic]

The "Four Marys" in the Gospels
[url="http://www.catholic-legate.com/articles/jesusbros.html"]http://www.catholic-legate.com/articles/jesusbros.html[/url]

[thessalonian]

The debate is still going with this guy. All kinds of gymnastics going on. He simply won't address my arguements. I thought we were the zombies who couldn't think for ourselves. He's promising me an answer when he gets back from the dentist, but then he promised me last thursday and all I got was posting of the same verses.

Edited May 22, 2006 by thessalonian

[phatcatholic]

be patient, brother

[Norseman82]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='985171' date='May 19 2006, 10:59 AM']
Good job Thess

It should also be pointed out that the Adelphoi (the word in scripture commonly translated as brothers) has a broad range of meaning.

Mary and Joseph lived in a clan society where the raising of the children was done as a clan. Adelphos or adelphoi can refer to members of the same clan that Jesus was raised in. It can also be used to refer to cousins.
[/quote]

This entire thread is good info and I wish I had seen this earlier. I do have one question that I hope youse guys can help me with, though. When I was in a, how shall I put it, a "conversation" with some non-Catholics, I brought up the [u]Protoevangelium of James[/u] explanation that the brothers and sisters may have been from a previous marriage that Joseph had, but one of them told me that [i]adelphos[/i] means "from the same womb" (Strong's concordance does seem to show that [i]adelphos[/i] does have the word "womb" as the root). Have any of youse run into this argument previously? Any light you can shed on this would be helpful.

[thessalonian]

From www.catholic.com

[url="http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1990/9001fea2.asp"]http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1990/9001fea2.asp[/url]

Kilmon:
The Greek adelphos is not like the Hebrew ach, meaning "blood relation." Adelphos, as used to describe Jesus' brothers, is very precise Greek and means "from the same womb."

Mateo:
As he begins to consider the Greek word adelphos, Kilmon commits the "etymological fallacy." This fallacy lies in supposing that the etymology of a word will unfailingly and adequately yield its actual meaning. Etymologically, adelphos is one of a family of words generated by the compound root adelph-, wherein a = "same" and delph = "womb." Kilmon supposes that adelphoi and adelphai, used to describe Jesus' "brothers" and "sisters," are "very precise Greek" and mean "from the same womb." This is a half-truth and a serious blunder, fatal to his further argumentation.

David Hill (University of Sheffield) writes:

"Etymology is no sure guide to the semantic value of words in their current usage...such value has to be determined from the current usage itself and not from derivation. The etymology of a word...is not a statement about its meaning, but about its history, and the historical past of a word is not a reliable guide to its present meaning." (Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, p. 3). See also James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).)

Now we shall look at some examples of the actual usages of words of the adelph- family in classical and Hellenistic Greek. (Here I omit for brevity the many extant examples of their use to describe uterine brother/sisterhood and the non-familial usages of these words.)

Plato (Critias 109c) says that Hephaestus and Athena were brother and sister by birth (physin adelphen). Mythology buffs will remember that they were both children of one father, Zeus, but by different mothers: Hephaestus's mother was Hera; Athena's mother (albeit under strange circumstances) was Metis. Again, Plato (Laws XI, 924e) speaks of "that brother [adelphos] who is born of the same father or of the same mother ...." (Plato is very precise here because he is laying down the laws of inheritance in a model state.) I omit citations from the very numerous passages in which Plato uses adelph- words as adjectives meaning "kindred, akin, cognate."

Menander, an Attic comic poet of the late fourth and early third centuries B.C., in an extant fragment of his play The Farmer, line 12, shows us a young man complaining because his father is forcing him to marry his adelphe. She is his half-sister, born of the same father as he, but of a different mother.

In the Oxyrynchian Papyri (P. Oxy. IV, 744), we read a letter from a certain Hilarion to his adelphei, Alis. The names are Greek and the language is Greek, although these papyri were found in Egypt. The letter dates to the late first century B.C. Its editors say that Alis was probably Hilarion's wife. She is pregnant, and Hilarion tells her to expose the baby, when born, if it is a girl. Egyptians of that time sometimes married their uterine sisters, but it is not known that Greeks did so. It was not a Greek custom.

In the collection Royal Correspondence of the Hellenistic Period,Text 36, pp. 156-163 (C. Bradford Welles, Yale University Press, 1934), there is a letter of the Syrian Seleucid king Antiochus III to the governor of Caria in Asia Minor in which he calls his wife and queen, Laodice, his sister (adelphes). Actually, she is known to have been his cousin and the daughter of King Mithridates of Pontus. The letter proclaims Laodice a goddess and decrees temples and priests in her honor.

These examples from sources outside the Bible are sufficient to disprove Kilmon's simplistic statement: "Adelphos. . . is very precise Greek and means 'from the same womb.'"