Perpetual Virginity of Mary - Scripture

Scripture

Some passages in the New Testament have been used to voice objections to the doctrine of perpetual virginity, while other passages have been used to support it.

One objection concerns the mention of brothers and sisters of Jesus, who include James, Joses (the form in Mark 6:3, but "Joseph" in Matthew 13:55), Simon, and Jude. They have been interpreted as children of Joseph and Mary, a view put forward by Tertullian and perhaps by Hegesippus, but that, when proposed by Helvidius, met with opposition from Jerome, who was apparently voicing the general Christian opinion at the time. Jerome held that the "brethren" in question were children of Mary, the mother of James and Joses, named in Mark 15:40 and 15:47, a sister of Jesus' mother (John 19:25), making them cousins of Jesus.

Another view, expressed by Eusebius and Epiphanius, is that they were children of Joseph by an earlier marriage. A modern view is that they were children of Cleopas, a brother of Joseph according to Hegesippus, and of "Mary, the mother of James and Joses" seen as sister-in-law, not blood sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The 1978 book Mary in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars concluded that "it cannot be said that the New Testament identifies them (the "brothers and sisters" of Jesus) without doubt as blood brothers and sisters and hence as children of Mary".

Matthew 1:25 states that Joseph had no marital relations with Mary "until" (ἕως οὗ ) she had borne Jesus. Writers such as R.V. Tasker and D. Hill argue that this implies that Mary and Joseph had customary marital relations after the birth of Jesus. Others, such as K. Beyer, point out that Greek ἕως οὗ after a negative "often has no implication at all about what happened after the limit of the 'until' was reached", and Raymond E. Brown observes that "the immediate context favors a lack of future implication here, for Matthew is concerned only with stressing Mary's virginity before the child's birth".

On the other hand, Mary's response to the angel, when told that she will conceive, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?", has been interpreted, at least since the time of Gregory of Nyssa, as indicating that Mary had taken a lifelong vow of virginity, even in marriage:

For if Joseph had taken her to be his wife, for the purpose of having children, why would she have wondered at the announcement of maternity, since she herself would have accepted becoming a mother according to the law of nature?

This interpretation, although upheld by many, is rejected by writers such as Howard Marshall. and is considered implausible by Raymond E. Brown.

A passage used to support the doctrine of perpetual virginity is of the sayings of Jesus on the cross, i.e. the pair of commands first to his mother "Woman, behold your son!" and then to his disciple "Behold, thy mother!" in John 19:26-27. The Gospel of John then states that "from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home". Since the time of the Church Fathers this statement has been used to reason that after the death of Jesus there was no one else in the immediate family to look after Mary, and she had to be entrusted to the disciple given that she had no other children. This passage was one of the arguments Pope John Paul II presented in support of perpetual virginity. John Paul II also reasoned that the command "Behold your son!" was not simply the entrustment of Mary to the disciple, but also the entrustment of the disciple to Mary in order to fill the maternal gap left by the death of her only son on the cross.