Was Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Indeed a Virgin?

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But how do you know that those siblings werent Joseph's by a previous marriage?

The blzarre message I get from all this talk of female virginity and the need for gods to be born of virgins (a common tale throughout mythology) is that a woman who indulges in sexual reproduction is stained and unworthy. This meme has woven itself into the fabric of most societies. A male who engages in premarital, heterosexual, sexual intercourse is a stud, is sowing his wild oats, is doing what comes naturally, is to be admired as an Alpha Male. A woman who behaves in this manner is a wanton harlot, a slut, a tramp, the town bike. Even if she wants to enjoy marital sex this is somehow sinful and only the preserve of the male, to whom she must not refuse to lie on her back and do her marital duty.

To answer the OP this has probably already been said but the concept of a virgin birth is a construct of Mathew because he misread Isaiah who stated the the messiah would be born of a young woman, and he thought he needed to have a virgin birth to satisfy the prophecy.

There is no basis to say that Joseph was previously married or had children before marrying Mary. This can be affirmed in that the birth of Jesus they had to go to their home town to be counted, and it was just Mary and Joseph...not the siblings. Also, the terms used for Jesus' siblings do not indicate half-brothers or half-sisters or step-brothers/step-sisters.

In general people should mind, that the used translation from hebrew into old greek, the used term "young woman" was in general used to describe a woman, that has still a very girlish silhouette, so one that mostly had not given birth yet. But the word had not an automatical meaning, when it came to virginity. ^^ Sure the "virgins" were more appreciated, its nothing else today, when you mostly will find 18-25 girls on an calendar, and hardly any woman that already had some pregnancies. ^^ But only because of them looking that way, it does not make that calendar girls "virgins" in the anatomical way. ^^

But the virgin birth is also in Luke. So another explanation could be that the virgin birth element was already part of the oral stories of Jesus by the time Matthew and Luke were being written that what both authors (or groups of authors) did was come up with a story, each his/their own way (at the time, they were very likely unaware of each other's writings), incorporating the virgin birth element and Bethlehem and other features into the Nativity story.

In case of Matthew, the Isaiah verse's meaning was twisted to suit the purpose of the Gospel.

Not quite true, see parthenogenesis. It hasn't been recorded in humans, but it has occurred in other species. It's incredibly unlikely, but there is a chance that a woman can create a zygote without sperm. However, there is a catch to that: it would be a clone of her, aside from the slight chance of mutations. Clones of female humans are never male, like Jesus. The chance that an x chromosome could just mutate into a y chromosome is probably significantly less likely than you spontaneously turning into goo. However, that's just looking within the realm of the natural, with the supernatural anything could potentially happen. They don't call Jesus's birth a miracle for nothing.

According to the Bible, Mary was a virgin when conceived with Jesus. Although, she didn't remain a virgin forever.

read Matthew 1;25

It says Joseph didn't "know" her until she had had her firstborn child. The catholic version leaves out "firstborn", " 25 but knew her not until she had borne a son;[l" even without the word firstborn, it certainly implies Joseph "knew" her after she had the baby.

Ask Tennis-star Boris Becker, he can easily explain that to you.

In about 300BC, the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek. It was call the Septuagint. In that translation the word for young woman in Hebrew was translated to virgin in Greek. The Septuagint was popular with Jewish people throughout Rome and Alexandria. So when the early Christian church decided they needed to write documents to show all the prophecy fulfillments, they read the Septuagint and said, 'Oh, OK, he was born of a virgin'. So it's really a forced prophecy fulfillment based upon a bad translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. Had they used the actual Hebrew scriptures, they would have seen this wasn't necessary. If your going to make something up, at least use the right source.

That's assuming that parthenos always meant "virgin". Other verses and passages in the Septuagint copies suggest that parthenos could have also meant "young maiden", which is the equivalent of alma.

The catholic church lies about Mary being a virgin, Scripture is very clear that Jesus indeed had half brothers which means Mary did not remain a virgin

Jospeh: "MARY, I've been away for 8 months with the travelling carpenters fair how can you be pregnant? We are supposed to be getting married next month and you said only use the back door till then"

Mary: "Yeh, well, you see, you remember, bob... "

Joseph: "BOB?, MY BEST FRIEND BOB"

Mary: "did you hear Bob? oh sweetie I said God... yeh, God said he likes your tables so much that he is going to give us a son even though you were away and er.. he will be bril i e n er the saviour of humanity, so yeh, Im still a virgin"

Joseph: "hmmmmmm........ you also smell of frankincense, and what is all this sticky stuff in here?"

Mary: "errrrrr, Ectoplas... er yeh, thats it, Angel Jelly, no Joe don't taste it! You see God's mate the Arch Angel Gabriel gave him a lift, well I say lift, I mean he used his you know.. but we didn't kiss so it doesn't count. Oh yeh, made the locals news, there is going to be someone round from the Bethlehem times later he wants to write a book about it, what harm can it do?"

My cousin's challenged me on this for quite some time, saying that no Hebrew word translates directly to "virgin" in English. I was stumped for quite a while, until I read that Mary was largely written about in Greek, and they used the word "parthenos" as a reference to her purity.

Even without that though, I completely overlooked Mary's own words to Gabriel: "How can this be, since I know not a man?" The word "know" in this context carries a sexual meaning, which is later repeated regarding Joseph: "...but he knew her not until the baby was born".

They reckon she was, but I'm thinking they must have got their facts wrong.

I find the very thought of a women just randomly becoming pregnant when she has yet to have her body forever tinted with semen creepy and disgusting.