The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ (No. 232)

The virgin Mariam

The Bible is quite clear the Messiah was born of a virgin (Mat. 1:23; Lk. 1:27). This fulfilled prophecy (Isa. 7:13-15). If Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin, he could not have been the Messiah, as Scripture would have to be broken. This virgin’s name was Mariam. Her lineage is given in Luke 3 and is explained in the paper Genealogy of the Messiah (No. 119). The Jerusalem Talmud acknowledges this to be the case.

There is no doubt, according to the Bible, that Mariam was a virgin. There is also no doubt, according to the Bible, that she did not remain a virgin and had at least four other sons and a number of daughters. They are referred to in many Bible texts (Mat. 12:46; 13:56; Mk. 6:3). It would have been unthinkable for her to have remained in marriage and withheld herself from her husband contrary to Bible teaching. This perpetual virginity idea comes from the Mystery cults of the ancient Near East and the religion of ancient Rome.

The names of Messiah and his family

The name of the Messiah was Yahoshua. The variations in this are Hosea, Hoshea, Jehoshua, Jeshua, Jeshuah, Jesus, Osea, Oshea, and Joshua.

SHD 3091 is a combination of SHD 3068 Yahovah and SHD 3467 and means Yahovah-saved or Yahovah saves. The short form of the name Yahovah is Yaho. It is rendered as Yah or Jah in the KJV (Ps. 68:4), but the Elephantine texts show us that the actual form was, and is, Yaho (see James Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, Vol. 1, Princeton, 1958, pp. 278-279). We also see from the Dead Sea Scrolls from the fragmentary Greek papyrus in Cave 4 (4QLXXLevb) that the text from Leviticus using Greek was written with Greek vowels alone not using the vowels for Adonai or as in the LXX but approximating Yaho (using also ima and Alpha and Omega) (Carsten Thiede, Eyewitness to Jesus, p. 142). The Alpha and Omega sequence may also have had significance from this usage. Thus, we see that the short name of God was Yaho and not Jah, confirming the Elephantine texts written three centuries previously. Thus the full correct name is Yahoshua which is shortened to Yashua.

In this sense also, Hoshea means deliverer (being derived from SHD 3467), as does Oshea and Hosea (cf. SHD 1954).

The standard translation into the Greek for Joshua or Yahoshua was 'Iesous. It is 'Ie for Yah or Yaho, and sous (pr. shou or shous or zhou/s) for shua. This occurs in the Old Testament LXX and the New Testament not only for Christ but for all Joshua usage. Yeshua is a shortening of the original word. The variations on this theme occur throughout the Bible. The Greek language has to write the letter Y as 'I. The grammatical rules in the Greek for endings differ with the case but the sense of the original Hebrew is retained for the Hebrews who were then using Aramaic.

Yudah the name of Messiah’s brother is rendered Jude from 'Ioudas in the Greek. Joses, the root name of both his brother and his cousin, is 'Iosetos in the Greek for the cousin and ‘Ioseph for the brother (Mat. 13:55 cf. Marshall’s Interlinear Greek-English NT) who is obviously named after his father Yoseph, Mariam’s husband. These names are disguised in the KJV and all English versions by Trinitarian theology and by Mariolators. Yames or James is actually 'Iakobos from Yacob or Jacob, but is also 'Iakobou according to case and so on. The rendering of Simon his brother and Symeon and Simeon, his cousin and nephew and their descendants, is likewise varied over time and at the same time.

Messiah’s mother was Mariam. It was his aunt (Mariam’s sister) the wife of Cleophas (Jn. 19:25) that was named Maria. Another variation of the name was Miriam. Maria, wife of Cleopas or Clopas, named her sons 'Iakobos called little Yacob[os] or little James, and Yosetos (Mk. 15:40). These names of Messiah’s cousins differed from the names of the brothers of Christ which were 'Iakobos or Jacob[os] (rendered James), 'Ioseph or Joseph, Simon, and 'Ioudas (Judas) or Jude (from Yudah or Judah) (Mat. 13:55). Messiah’s sisters are not named. This was the practice of genealogy of the time. We can, however, be fairly sure that one would have carried the name of Mariam and, probably, Elizabeth and, perhaps also, Maria.

The general practice was to name the grandchildren after their grandparents as there was no standard practice of surnames as is the case today. Thus, the names of the wife of Heli and Joseph’s mother would also be included. The names of Messiah’s brothers and sisters and cousins are deliberately obscured in the English versions to promote the illusion of the perpetual virginity of Mariam, wrongly called Mary, in idolatry. This myth is carried on today even by Catholic historians who know better – such as Malachi Martin (cf. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, pp. 42-44).

The names of the apostles in the English vary even from the Greek. The conventional usage is often necessary to have a comprehensible conversation with the rest of the world. If the actual names of the people in the New Testament were used correctly, virtually all comprehensible biblical conversation with the unconverted world would be difficult – if not impossible.

Marriage

This brings us to the other myth – namely, celibacy of the apostolic church. Most of the apostles were married. It was understood by Clement, and also by Eusebius, that Paul was married and this is attributed to 1Corinthians 9:5 by the NPNF which holds that 1Corinthians 7:8 seems to imply the opposite. The answer might be in the structure of the texts. Certainly, from 1Corinthians 9:5, we know that Peter and the brothers of the Lord were all married and Paul demands the right that they be able to be accompanied by their wives as these and the other apostles also do.

It is thus thought for several centuries that all of the apostles including Paul were married. Also, Judas the brother of Christ was married and had sons.

Christ’s brothers are Yudas, Yakobos (rendered James), Yoseph and Simon (Mat. 13:55 Marshall’s Interlinear; there is also no J in Hebrew). Christ’s uncle Clopas was also married to Maria, mother of James the Less and Joses. He was also held to be father of Symeon, second bishop of Jerusalem. It is this similarity of names which gives rise to the Catholic claim that Christ’s brothers were really his cousins. However, the brother of Christ was distinguished as Yakob (James the Just), not Little Yakobos (James the Lesser is the translation) as his cousin was called. The biblical Greek texts makes the distinctions in the names clear.

Eusebius, himself a Unitarian Subordinationist, alleges that Hegesippus records that Clopas was the brother of Joseph (Eusebius, NPNF second series, Vol. 1, Ch. XI, p. 146; cf. Bk. IV, Ch. 22). John 19:25 states clearly that Mary (Maria) the wife of Clopas was the sister of Mary (Mariam) mother of Messiah. Thus, we have either two brothers marrying two sisters or the record by Hegesippus is misconstrued to show that Clopas was the brother of Joseph.

James the Just (Christ’s brother) and Symeon (Christ’s cousin) were martyred (see also Eusebius, ibid., Bk. IV, XXII, p. 199). At this time the sons of Judas brother of Messiah took the lead of every Church as witnesses and blood relatives of Jesus Christ through the reign of Domitian until at least the reign of Trajan when Symeon was martyred before Atticus governor of the time (see Eusebius, ibid., p. 164). Eusebius also confirms that Ignatius was bishop of Antioch and second in succession to Peter (following Enodius) (see NPNF, ibid., p. 166 and n. 4).

These blood relatives of Jesus Christ were called the desposyni meaning literally in Greek Belonging to the Lord. This name was reserved exclusively for his blood relatives and for the first century and a half was highly respected and esteemed. The entire ancient Jewish Christian Church had always been ruled by their own desposynos and each one carried the names traditional in Jesus’ family: Zachary, Yoseph (Joseph), Yohannes (John), Yakob (James), Yoses (rendered Joses), Simeon, Matthias and so on but no one was ever called Jesus or Yehoshua, i.e. Joshua. There were three well known and authentic lines of legitimate blood descendants from Jesus’ own family.

The Roman Catholic historian Malachi Martin attempts to confine these lines of desposyni as follows. These were:

one from Joachim and Anna, Jesus’ maternal grand parents. One from Elizabeth, first cousin of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and Elizabeth’s husband Zachary. And one from Cleophas and his wife who was also a first cousin of Mary (M Martin Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, Secker and Warburg, London, 1981, p. 42).

He acknowledges that there were numerous blood descendants of Joseph (p. 43) but, as all Roman Catholics, he seems to attempt to deny their direct lineage from Mariam or Mary, even though he acknowledges they had clung to the Church throughout the early years. Maria is removed to first cousin and not sister as the Bible says.

Martin records that the descendants, as leaders of the Church, held a meeting with Sylvester bishop of Rome about the whole nature of the Church in the year 318 CE (ibid.). The emperor provided sea transport as far as Ostia for eight of them and then they rode on donkeys to Rome and the Lateran where Sylvester now lived in splendour. They wore rough woollen clothes, with leather boots and hats. The conversation was in Greek as they spoke Aramaic and had no Latin, and Sylvester spoke no Aramaic. Martin considers it probable that Joses the oldest of the Christian Jews spoke on their behalf.

Martin claims that the first split in 49 CE was over the circumcision issue where Peter and Paul had broken with them insisting that they were bound by the Torah. This, of course, is a false assertion based on later theological grounds but it demonstrates the problem that we see developing through these Gnostic intrusions and finally by 318 CE had resulted in the glaring discrepancy between the way the Church was governed by the original Jewish descendants of Christ’s blood relatives and the so-called orthodox Catholic Church.

Since Hadrian’s conquest of Jerusalem in 135 CE, all Jews, and seemingly Jewish Christians, had been forbidden to enter Jerusalem. Thus, the doctrinal position of the original system was excluded from Jerusalem which was seen as central to the faith. The Jewish Christians had comprised the only Christian church in Jerusalem until 135 CE. They had left it only once, before the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE, where they fled to Pella under Symeon according to Martin (ibid.). In 72 CE they returned to Jerusalem. They set up Christian churches all over Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia but they came into conflict with the Greek Christian churches because of the problems with the observance of the law or Torah. This is thought by modern Catholicism to be because Peter and Paul had set up a separate system with the Greek, but that was not the case. It is also worth mentioning that the title “pope” was carried by bishops in major sees such as Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch in earlier years but never by the apostles.

Their system of government based on that of the congregation was also in issue. In 318 CE, the desposyni asked Sylvester, who now had Roman patronage, to revoke his confirmation of the authority of the Greek Christian bishops at Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Ephesus, and in Alexandria, and to name desposynos bishops in their stead. In addition, they asked that the practice of sending cash to Jerusalem as the mother church be resumed. This practice is easily recognisable as the tithe of the tithe system which had been in force in the Church until emperor Hadrian’s ban in 135 CE.

Sylvester dismissed their claims and said that, from now on, the mother church was in Rome and he insisted they accept the Greek bishops to lead them.

This was the last known dialogue with the Sabbath-keeping church in the east led by the disciples who were descended from blood relatives of Messiah. In Martin’s words:

By his adaptation, Sylvester, backed by Constantine, had decided that the message of Jesus was to be couched in Western terms by Western minds on an imperial model (ibid., p. 44).

Martin records that from this time they had no place in such a church structure. They managed to survive until the first decades of the fifth century but, one by one, they disappeared.

Some reconciled themselves with the Roman church but only as individuals. Some passed into the anonymity of the Eastern rites. The rest were hunted as outlaws. But most of them died by the sword hunted by Roman garrisons as outlaws or by starvation when they were deprived of their small farms and were forced into the cities to be controlled and to be reduced to zero birthrate.

Their fate is an utter condemnation of the religion that claimed to represent Jesus Christ. They hunted down and killed his blood relatives because they stood in condemnation of the system that purported to represent him. It was totally opposed to all that he taught and practiced. The myth of the Virgin Mary, which was not her name in any case, was partly enforced to cover up this horrendous massacre of her descendants, and her relative’s descendants, who kept God’s laws and followed her firstborn son Yahoshua, the Son of God.

The question has been raised as to: How old was Joseph when he married Mary? (i.e. the Mother of Christ, Mariam)

In the paper Catholicism Frequently Asked Questions (No. 008) we have a similar question:

"What ever happened to Joseph, Mary's husband? After the birth of Christ he is not mentioned other than when Christ was in the Temple." [The fact is that he was present when Christ was 12 years in the temple but that is the last recorded instance of him].

The answer appears to be that he was dead by the time of Christ's ministry. Christ's mother was given into the care of John at the crucifixion and it appears that his brothers and sisters joined them from that time. Jacob, called James, the brother of Christ was chairman at the Jerusalem conference of the apostles in Acts and Jude also went on to write his book. His entire family became leaders of the Church for three centuries. The only conclusion we have is that Joseph died prior to the baptism of Christ in 27/28 CE and sometime after Christ's discussions in the Temple at about twelve years of age in 7 CE. The fact that he had four brothers and a number of sisters indicates Joseph lived for a good many years and well after the events of 7 CE. There is a work called the History of Joseph the Carpenter and the complete text is preserved in the Boharic and Arabic. A Latin version was made from the Arabic in the fourteenth century. The text is allegedly a story given by Christ on the Mt. of Olives but the text is a post fifth century text which was affected by Mariolatry and the doctrine of the assumption which emerged in that century and is spurious. The story of Christ's Family is discussed in the text above.

These spurious works also referred to by Islam are often referred to in dealing with the family of Christ. Our questioners ask: I was reading on a website called "answering islam" and according to that website, it says Joseph was 99 years old and Mary was 12 years old when they got married. I was just wondering if this was true or not.

What is the minimum age for marriage in the Holy Quran?

The canonical Gospels do not specify the age at which Joseph married Mariam (Mary).

The reason I was reading about this is because I was reading that the prophet Muhammad married a six year old girl when he was 50 years old. So I started doing some investigating to see if any of it was true. When I started reading, one website said the same thing about the Bible.

Aisha was nine when he allegedly consummated the marriage but we are not at all sure of this as his children came from his first wife. The assertion relies on a Hadithic comment for its authority.

The apocryphal texts can be read but have no doctrinal authority and are not part of Scripture.

How old was Mary? The Bible is silent on the matter but the apocryphal work on Joseph the carpenter says she was 12 and consummate at 14. Fourteen was the normal age for marriage at the time and often at 12. Betrothal assumes marriage and is the same thing or a quasi marriage.

The questioners said that another [Islamic] website they were reading said that Moses allowed the raping of 3 year old babies.

These statements by these people are not in the Scriptures and there is no evidence historically that such an offence could have been committed in ancient Israel. The records from the Tractate Talmud have some scandalous comments that are not supported by Scripture.

It is our opinion from the historical works that the assertion regarding Joseph being 99 is a lie aimed at making him unable to father more children or indeed any children. He had at least seven or eight children by Mariam and maybe even more.

In regard to the assertion re 99 we ask: Does the Bible say Joseph was 99? No it does not at all. The assertions against Moses and Qasim are lies. As for Moses permitting the rape of three year olds, your own common sense should guide you in that defamation. Moses’ personal life argues totally against such a view.

The questioner’s point is that “if the Quran and the Bible are about the same God, then why do they have such a strong opposition in terms of its followers, on both sides? If they are testament of the same creator, why do the people who follow it oppose each other so fiercely?

Don't mainstreamers and the rest of us have the same problem? The same God, yet opposing views on just about everything else.

I think [it’s] because there are many people who hate Israel, [because of] the Bible concept of a chosen nation of God among the nations.”

This also begs the questions: Why do the Sunni hate the Shia so much that they kill them? Why are the Kurds so opposed by the Sunni? Why did the Jews try to kill the Christians using the Arabs in the Seventh century?

Why did the Arab pagans bust up the church and turn it into the Islamic farce we see now? The answer is that it is still Satan's planet as god of this world and he will not allow the truth until his time is over or cut short.

The questioner asked: “But a true follower of the real truth wouldn't or cannot hate Israel. If they do, they are not true followers. Right? Or wrong?”

The fact is that Christ sent them all into captivity on orders from God at 70 CE. The religion of Judaism is not based solely on the Bible, is not Jewish, and nor is the nation of Israel Israelite or Jewish. It is probable that only 10% of all Jews are actually Jewish (see the paper Descendants of Abraham Part V: Judah (No. 212E)).

It is not a matter of hatred but a matter of obedience and condonation of offence. God will deal with them all soon. It is not a matter of hatred but of correction.

The apocryphal writings as summarised in the Catholic Encyclopaedia have Joseph married at 40 to Melcha and she died when he was 89. He then married "Mary" (actually Mariam) when he was allegedly 90. The brothers of Christ were allegedly the children of Joseph and his first wife.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08504a.htm

The apocryphal work, “The History of Joseph the Carpenter” records him to be betrothed at 90 and living with her at 92 and dying at 111. Most of these works are developed to maintain the perpetual virginity of Mariam. It indicates he had pursued normal relations at 92. There is no authentic original record asserting that Christ's bothers were not his actual brothers from Mariam and that his sisters were not with them also when they were referred to by the elders as being amongst them in the gospel texts.

The text in Mark 6:3 shows that the traditions of the apocryphal works cannot be correct as the brothers and sisters were all with Christ when the people of Galilee spoke of him and the apostles. They were all there in the village and the girls were not married indicating they were probably below 12-14 which was the eligible age for marriage at the time. Christ was well over 31. Had his sisters been born between the time when Joseph was 40-50 they would have been over 70 years of age which is nonsense.

Do not be led astray by apocryphal works designed to contradict scripture of the canon.

James the brother of Christ was martyred in 63/4 CE 36 years after this event. Had he been the firstborn of Joseph (and this supposed Melcha) then James would have been approximately 118 years of age which he was not. He was younger than the Christ, and one of the apostles, and approximately 29 in 28 CE and 63 when he was killed.

The propaganda re James shows that according to the apocryphal 5^th century Mariolatrist writings, James was born when Joseph was 40 and thus he had to be 50 when Christ was born and thus 110-119 years old when he was killed which he was not. The accounts differ by at least ten years and more. The very advanced age of Joseph, marrying Mary, was accepted as true by most early Church Fathers. Reverend Jeremiah Jones writes about 2 to 3 pages long that Infancy Protevangelion of James was accepted by Early Church Fathers as a truthful account of Mary and Joseph’s marriage. If one reads the Infancy Gospel of James (Protevangelion of James), in Chapter 8 it says that Mary was married to Joseph when she was 12 years old.

“…His eldest son was James, surnamed Oblias—that he begat him when he was about forty years old: after him he had another son named Jose, then Simeon and Judas, and then his two daughters Mary and Salome: after his wife’s death he continued many years a widower, and about fourscore years old married Mary. Besides Epiphanius, several other of the Greek fathers have given into this same opinion, viz. Hilary, Chrysostome, Cyrill, Euthyymius, Theophylact, Cecumenius, and generally, as bishop Peaterson says: ‘all Latin fathers till Ambrose, and the Greeks afterward; from which it is very evident that the account of Joseph’s age and family, which is in the Gospel of the Birth, Mary, and the Protevangelion of James, met with very general credit among ancient Christians.” [10]

This Fifth century Mariolatry should be dismissed on the very grounds of its absurdity.

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