Audio only:
Joe responds AGAIN to NeedGod.net’s misreading of Scripture in regards to Mary’s perpetual virginity. We hope this stands as an excellent example of why someone can’t just read the Bible for themselves and expect to interpret it correctly.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I hope that today’s rebuttal will stand as a shining example that the books of the Bible are written for us, but they’re not written to us. And then one of the most common ways people misunderstand the Bible is by assuming that they understand passages that they actually lack the context to understand. We’re going to see that I think very clearly from Ryan from Need god.net. He made a response to my recent video looking at Mary’s perpetual virginity in scripture. Now you can watch that video for yourself in the description below, but to give a very quick recap, I showed in John 19 that Jesus hands his mother over to John, a non-relative, but if Jesus had brothers or sisters, they would’ve been morally obligated to care for Mary. I showed how Mary’s response to Gabriel really makes sense only if she’s taken some kind of oath of virginity because when Gabriel tells her she’s going to bear a son, she’s already married, and yet she seems surprised at the idea that she could have relations with a man or become pregnant, and I looked at the fact that the last chapters of Ezekiel foretell both the incarnation and Mary’s perpetual virginity.
Now, Ryan’s response to these arguments shows why so many Protestants don’t believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, even though all the oldest sects of Christianity, Catholics, Orthodox, Coptics, even many of the Protestant reformers did believe she was a perpetual virgin modern evangelicals like Ryan to put it very bluntly, don’t know how to read the Bible. Now, by the way, I should say at the outset here, special thanks to Jonathan h over in Patreon for tipping me off to Ryan’s response to my video. Now, if you want to join that amazing community, you can find us over@shamelessjoe.com, where for as little as $5 a month, you get access to a community of God-fearing Christians who help each other in the path to sanctity. You get access to q and a live streams and more. It really does mean the world to us and to me personally.
And over the last two months, we’ve been blown away by your response and your support. So to all of our current patrons, huge thank you to all of our future patrons. Welcome. Alright, so let’s get into it. Mary was legally married under Jewish law at the time that the angel Gabriel appeared to her and told her that she was going to bear the Messiah, and yet the thing Mary expressed surprise about wasn’t that she was seen an angel or that she was going to be the mother of the savior, but that she was going to be a mother at all since she knew not man. But Ryan claims that Joseph isn’t really Mary’s husband at the enunciation, even though Matthew one 19 explicitly says that he is.
CLIP:
Now this argument from Joe is really bad. The text in Matthew one does not say that Mary and Joseph were already married. Instead, it describes him as Betroth. When it describes Joseph as Mary’s husband during that betrothal period, that does not mean they were married.
Joe:
Chances are you’ve heard this before, but it’s not true. When scripture says that Joseph is Mary’s husband, it’s because he really is her husband. Now, it’s also true that this married couple is in a stage of marriage that we somewhat confusingly call a betrothal in English. This makes sense if you know more about Jewish wedding practices than Ryan appears to. In the ancient Jewish world, there was no such thing as a bachelor pad, and so marriages consisted of two phases. First, you and your spouse would get married in the eyes of God. This is what’s called the duchen from the Hebrew word for holy. The two of you were being consecrated as husband and wife, but then the bridegroom had anywhere from three months to a year depending on the circumstances to prepare a place for his bride. Anita Diamond talks about the history of this practice and her book on Jewish weddings, and she points out that during this first stage you were legally married and your marriage could only be dissolved by what’s called the get a formal bill of divorce.
So even though the duchen is usually referred to as a betrothal in English, it’s not really like a modern engagement. It’s also unlike a modern engagement in that it was morally permissible to have sex during this time. After all, even though you don’t live together yet you are husband and wife. The Jewish mishna on the Kuchin literally opens by explaining that there are three ways a woman enters the kuchin. She’s given a dowry or a contract or engages in sexual intercourse. And the Talmud talks about how in ancient Judea where Christ was born, a man who had eaten at his father-in-law’s house and had been alone with his betrothed was assumed to have slept with her. And so he couldn’t complain later that she wasn’t a virgin. Now, the New Testament assumes that you know all of this Christ speaks of the first phase of his wedding to the church being during his time on earth, and yet we’re also pointed in the book of Revelation towards the ultimate wedding feast of the Lamb.
Likewise, when Jesus says in my father’s house or many rooms, if it were not so would I’ve told you that I go to prepare a place for you and when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may be also. That’s marital imagery. Jesus is describing his role now as the role of a new husband to go and prepare a home for his new wife so that you can live together forever. So between now and the end of time, the church is as St. Paul says, a virgin betrothed to her husband. And yet even now, St. Paul calls the church the bride of Christ, not the girlfriend of Christ or the fiance of Christ. In other words, Paul speaks of this betrothal creating an actual husband and wife union, and he doesn’t hesitate to describe the relationship of Christ in the church through the imagery of the two becoming one flesh.
Now, of course, that would be wildly inappropriate if the two couldn’t become one flesh during the cadion. Otherwise it’d be like St. Paul saying that the relationship of Christ in the church is like a guy sleeping with his girlfriend. That’s not what’s going on here. So we know both from a wealth of ancient Jewish literature about marriage and from the scriptures themselves that the husband and wife were legally married after the duchen even though they weren’t cohabitating. Now, to deny this is to deny that the church is the bride of Christ. Now, so how does Ryan explain all of this away?
CLIP:
In one Corinthians seven, Paul speaks about the betroth and gives instructions to them. He says, and the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body, but the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband, making a contrast between being betrothed and being married. Paul says, if anyone thinks that he’s not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong and has to be, let him do as he wishes, let them marry. It is no sin. Hold up. If according to Joe, if you’re betrothed, you’re already married and you can do sexual actions, then why would he need to say let them marry So clearly when you’re betrothed, you’re not married.
Joe:
But St. Paul never actually said that in both of those passages, the ESV is literally adding the word betrothed there. It is not in the Greek at all. If you read St. Paul’s actual words, he talks about a woman who is a parnoss, a virgin. It’s the same word used in Matthew one in describing the virgin birth. You can see for yourself like comparing one Corinthians seven verse 34 across every major Protestant Bible translation, the KJV, the NIV, the NASV, the A SV, the ERV and every other major translation has virgin there because that’s what the Greek says with just the exceptions of the ESV and the RSV that inexplicably say betrothed, even though that is not there in the Greek. In fact, the footnotes to the ESV and the RSV admit that the Greek actually says virgin not betrothed. Now, these mistranslations are part of a deeper problem as Dr.
John w Martins explains older versions of the Bible in English like the KJV, the Jerusalem Bible translated first Corinthians seven as having to do with whether fathers ought to let their daughters be married in light of Paul’s teachings on the eschaton. In other words, the question is whether a father should have his daughter get married or whether he’s going to be prepared to care for her indefinitely as they await for the coming of the Lord. This matches what the Greek says and it matches the broader context of one Corinthians. But if you’re reading a modern version as Ryan is, you’re going to find something radically different as they mistranslate Paul’s words as if he’s speaking to the male fiance in an engagement. Now, what’s the problem with the modern translations? Well, as Martins explains, they’re synchronistically Bringing back onto one Corinthians later ideas of what Betrothal and marriage looked like in the days of St.
Paul. Young women didn’t make marriage bonds with fiances of their own accord, nor was the choice for marriage, the prerogative of fiances due to their inability to control their sexual passions. So if the ESV of one Corinthians seven sounds suspiciously modern, that’s because it is modern translations are just ignoring what St. Paul actually wrote to make it match better what they expect betrothal in marriage to look like. Okay? So far Ryan’s arguments are sort of oh, for two on scriptural rebuttals, neither of the scriptures he points to actually say what he claims they do, but it’s going to get worse.
CLIP:
So Jerry’s argument just falls flat on its face to say that someone can have a sexual relationship with someone they’re betrothed to, even though they’re not married would be sexual immorality, and the Bible speaks very greatly against that.
Joe:
Let’s test that claim biblically. Ryan just kind of claims that scripture speaks gravely against betrothed couples speaking together, but where, give me a chapter in verse here. What’s the penalty in the mosaic law for a man sleeping with his betrothed wife? You won’t find one because it does not exist. If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, he’s required to marry her, and if he seduces a betroth virgin, both of them are stoned to death because the man has violated his neighbor’s wife. So not only is there not a penalty for sleeping with your own wife before you live together, your own betrothed, even the prohibition against sleeping against someone else’s betroth is based on the fact that she’s already his wife legally, and thus she’s not free to give herself to you. Jewish betrothal means you are married. It is not the same as you’re going to find in an English dictionary today or what you imagine betrothal to mean in the 21st century.
CLIP:
And that’s why it was a controversial thing that Mary was found to be pregnant while only being betrothed. Now, if in Betroth the period you could do all those sort of actions, nothing controversial is going on there.
Joe:
That’s right. If Mary and Joseph were allowed to have sex as literally all of the evidence suggests that it makes sense that the only person who’d be surprised to see Mary pregnant would be her husband Joseph, who knows that she’s still a virgin and knows that he’s not the father. And if you read the New Testament, the only people who show signs of surprise by the pregnancy are Joseph and Mary and no one else. But in Ryan’s imaginary version of the Bible, there’s a major controversy over Mary being pregnant,
CLIP:
But the fact that it was controversial, Mary’s found to be trialed. Has she been doing something she shouldn’t have because she’s not married
Joe:
Again? What big controversy is Ryan referring to? Where do you find that in the actual pages of scripture? If Ryan is correct in presenting an unwed mother, his claim is that Jesus is a bastard under the mosaic law. A child conceived out of wedlock was not allowed to enter the temple of the Lord, and Jesus enters the temple of the Lord almost immediately after his birth, and he’s in the temple all the time throughout his adult life, and no one, not even in his enemy, stops and says, wait a second. You’re not allowed to be here because your parents weren’t married when you were conceived. But because Ryan has invented a whole biblical narrative in his own head, but there being a controversy over Mary being an unwed mother, he ends up saying things like this.
CLIP:
That’s where the scandal comes in. That’s why she goes to Elizabeth and stays with her for six months.
Joe:
This theory is terrible for two reasons. One, we know from scripture why Mary goes to Elizabeth because the angel Gabriel informs her that Elizabeth is pregnant and so Mary goes to be with her until the baby is born. It’s literally right there in Luke one and second. R’s theory makes me wonder if he even understands pregnancy. If a woman is worried but being found out for being pregnant, she’s not going to go hide from her neighbors in the first and second trimester and then come back where everyone can see her allegedly still unmarried in the third trimester. It is way harder to conceal a pregnancy in the third trimester, Ryan, but the last bad argument involves Ryan’s misreading of Matthew. One
CLIP:
Earlier on in Matthew one, it talks about how before they came together, she was found to be with child before they came together, implies they came together afterwards and it seems to be strange. Hold up. They haven’t come together. She’s with child. So the coming together seems to be a way of saying marital relations together.
Joe:
Again, he’s just wrong about what the Bible says. Coming together is not a sexual euphemism. It’s a reference to the nisu in which the bride would come to live with her husband. It’s the second stage of the two stages of the wedding. Now, this is perfectly clear if you understand the Jewish background to scripture, but if you insist on trying to interpret scripture without the needed tools, you’re going to keep making embarrassing mistakes. Look, it’s why Matthew one says that Joseph took his wife but knew her not knowing is a biblical reference to marital relations. Taking is not, and Matthew is saying that even though Joseph has taken Mary, even though they’ve now come together, even though they’ve had the ene, they’re still not having sex. Now, I actually asked Ryan why this is he can’t possibly claim that Joseph and Mary are still unmarried now that Joseph has taken his wife, right? Well, you can see my question and his response for yourself. He’s not asking the obvious question, why were they not having sex before Christmas? The angel doesn’t tell them that they’re not allowed to.
CLIP:
God tells us why a person who’s engaged or portrayed shouldn’t be having sex before marriage because it’s called sexual morality. Joe, do you think it’s okay for a person who is engaged to commit that sort of action if they’re not married to that person?
Joe:
So even after the angel tells Joseph, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, and even after Matthew, one says that Joseph took his wife, Ryan’s only argument is that they must not be married. They must still be just engaged. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. I don’t know what more scripture could say to convince him that this husband and wife are really husband and wife, but ultimately I think this is systematic of where Ryan and many modern evangelicals go wrong with trying to read the Bible. Ryan prides himself on being free from listening to what the church says or even what the reformers say, arguing that churches can
CLIP:
Be wrong, churches can teach false things, but God’s word is never wrong. God never lies.
Joe:
But the debate here isn’t whether or not God lies or whether scripture is wrong. Remember, I’m the one saying scripture is right when it says Joseph really is Mary’s husband. The question here is how we should understand the Bible and the Bible actually gives us an answer. St. Paul points us to the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar in the bulwark of truth. If you want to know the truth, listen to the church, but Ryan points us in the opposite direction away from the church. Instead, he promotes this sort of shallow literalism where we take everything that we read at a surface level without worrying about, for instance, whether the word betrothed means the same thing in first century Judea and 21st century Australia, he describes this approach as the most natural and plain reading, but the problem is that’s often a very bad way to read scripture. You can see this throughout all the other arguments that he makes against Mary’s perpetual virginity. For instance, when scripture speaks of Jesus’s brothers, Ryan says,
CLIP:
What is the most natural and plain reading of this text that Jesus had earthly siblings?
Joe:
Look, the most natural reading of hearing that someone has brothers and sisters is to assume they have the same mom and dad. The most natural reading isn’t half brothers or stepbrothers, it’s brothers, but both Catholics and Protestants can agree that the natural reading is wrong here since that would involve denying the virgin birth. Now, Jesus doesn’t have the same father as James and Joseph, but as I showed from Mark 1540, they also don’t have the same mom. They’re clearly not brothers the way we would use that word in 21st century English. Now, Ryan’s response to this is that maybe it’s a different James and Joseph since,
CLIP:
Remember James, Joseph, these are very common names back in the first century.
Joe:
Check for yourself, see how often the name Joseph appears in the Bible. The natural and plain reading is that when Mark mentions James and Joseph and Mark six and Mark 15, it’s referring to the same guys, in which case they’re clearly not brothers or half brothers of Jesus. Now, speaking of those supposed brothers, why are none of them taking care of Mary after Jesus dies? Ryan claims
CLIP:
The reason why Jesus entrusts Mary to John the disciple of Jesus is because Jesus’s brothers were not believers. So Jesus using his infinite wisdom that he has knows that the person who’s going to best look after Mary is not some unbelievers, but someone who is a follower of him.
Joe:
Now, this is a bad argument for several reasons. While some of Jesus’ brethren didn’t believe in him, at least early on in his public ministry, it didn’t mean they weren’t Jewish and the commitment to honor your father and mother includes taking care of them in their old age, but also even an unbeliever in the ancient world realized that they had this duty, which is why St. Paul says that a Christian who doesn’t care for their relatives is worse than an unbeliever. But the most obvious re reputation of Ryan’s argument is that St. Paul explicitly refers to James the Lord’s brother as an apostle in Galatians one verse 19. Now there are two apostles by the name James, which also explains why he’s referred to as James the younger when he and his brother Joseph are mentioned in Mark 1540. So are we to believe that Jesus deprived one of his apostles of their mom because he wanted to give her to another apostle instead? That’s just a bizarre misreading of scripture. Similarly, we find the bad use of the plain interpretation when we get to how Ryan misunderstands until
CLIP:
So until clearly implies a change that will happen after this point in time. Same Greek word here. And so what’s the plain natural reading? Joseph knew her not until she had given birth to her son. What is a natural plain reading of that? After she gives birth to his son, Joseph can know her
Joe:
Here. Again, the plain natural reading would be absurd. If you say the story is open until eight, that doesn’t mean that it closes sometime after eight, like nine or 10 o’clock. It implies that it closes at eight. Now notice scripture doesn’t say that he knew her not until after she bore a son. Ryan is smuggling the word after in there to make his exegesis make sense. It says that he knew her not until she bore a son, but as St. Jerome pointed out back in the fourth century, it would be absurd to imagine that on the day Mary gave birth on Christmas day, Joseph decides to try to sleep with her. Not to mention that this was actually not allowed under Jewish law. So just as brothers in the Jewish context often meant people who didn’t share the same mom and dad as you turns out, that until is often used in places where there isn’t a change afterward.
For instance, when the psalmist says that our eyes look to the Lord our God tell he of mercy upon us, that doesn’t mean we stop looking to God once he’s merciful. I pointed out that the temple prophecies of Ezekiel aren’t really about a building, but they’re about the body of Jesus. We see water flowing from the side of Christ on the cross as foretold by Ezekiel, and this temple is surrounded by a gate which shall never be open because the Lord himself entered by it. This is a passage that the early Christians quickly recognized as about Mary’s perpetual virginity, but Ryan is confused by this.
CLIP:
Now notice he just asserted that without providing any evidence that this temple prophesied in Ezekiel must be referring to the physical body of Jesus Christ. Hold up. The New Testament also talks about the temple being just the body of believers, the church,
Joe:
Yeah, Ryan, because the church partakes of the eucharistic body of Christ, we can properly speak of the church as the body of Christ as well. St. Paul covers all of this in one Corinthians 10 to 12, but I’m not just asserting this. We actually read in John chapter two, Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days, I’ll raise it up again. The Jews then said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days? But he spoke of the temple of his body. Okay, so how did Jesus’ Jewish listeners air? They took the plain natural reading of what Jesus said, and thus, completely missed the point as Ryan and many other evangelicals continue to do today, nothing in the Bible tells us we’re meant to read it that way, which then gets us to the very last point that’s worth touching on. Even though Mary carries God in her womb, Ryan can’t understand how this would make her the Ark of the Covenant.
CLIP:
Now, some people try and say that Mary’s the Ark of the New Covenant because if the box kind of represented God’s presence, well, if Jesus is God, well then Mary had God inside of her for nine months. But how does that make her the Ark of the Covenant?
Joe:
Mary is the Ark of the Covenant, and she is depicted that way in the Bible and in the writings of the early Christians. But Joe, you ask, where is that in the Bible? Click here to find out. For Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.