About the Ever-Virginity of Blessed Mary

The treatise “On the Ever-Virginity of Blessed Mary” was written by Bl. Jerome of Stridon in Rome in 383 at the request of friends and directed against the Roman layman Helvidius, who misinterpreted some passages from the Holy Scriptures. He tried to prove that the Virgin Mary, after the birth of Jesus Christ, had several children from her husband Joseph, who in the Gospel are called the brothers of the Lord. As proof, he referred to the words of the Gospel of Matthew: “before they were united” (Matthew 1:18) and: “I did not know her until she gave birth to a Son” (Matthew 1:25), and also pointed to the naming of Christ as the firstborn. Thus, Helvidius denied the Ever-Virginity of the Mother of God and questioned monasticism and the superiority of virginity over marriage. Refuting the theses of Helvidius, Blessed. Jerome says that the expression “before” does not always indicate that the intended action was then completed, and the expression “until” does not always indicate the subsequent cessation of the action that had begun. The word “firstborn” in Scripture simply means “he who opens the womb.” The Lord's "brothers" are His cousins ​​or relatives in general. Blzh. Jerome, with the help of biblical evidence, proves the absolute superiority of virginity over marriage. In his opinion, marriage, with its worries about the well-being of the family, does not leave time for prayer and serving the Lord. *The title of the work in Latin is Adversus Helvidium de Mariae virginitate perpetua. When recently the brethren asked me to respond to a book by some Elvidius, I declined to fulfill this request, not because it would be difficult to defeat an ignorant and barely literate person by revealing the truth, but so that by answering I would not honor the one whom you want to defeat. This was also prompted by the fact that an absurd man and alone in the whole world, both a layman and a priest (who, as this (husband) says 2, considers talkativeness eloquence and considers scolding everyone a sign of a good conscience), he, having seized the opportunity to argue, would become more blasphemous and, as if from an elevated place, rant to the whole world and insult me with curses for the impossibility of hurting the truth. But since all these very respectable reasons for my silence, due to the temptation of the brethren, who were indignant at his madness, gave way to a more respectful goal, then it is already necessary to lay the ax to the roots of the barren tree of the Gospel and it is necessary to consign it to the flame with its barren foliage - so that he who has never been able to speak will finally come to his senses and be silent. So I must call upon the Holy Spirit to help me, so that with His mind and through my lips He will protect the virginity of blessed Mary; we must call on the Lord Jesus, so that from any suspicion of carnal copulation He will protect the host of the sacred womb, in which He dwelt for nine months; and we must pray to God the Father himself, that He may show that the mother of His Son, who became matter before marriage, remained a virgin after birth. We do not desire the field of oratory; we do not seek the sophisms of dialecticians, nor the subtleties of Aristotle; the very words of the Scriptures must be presented: he (Elvidius) must be refuted by the same evidence that he used against us, so that he can see both that he could read what was written and that he could not understand what was affirmed by piety. His first objection was: “Matthew says: The Nativity of Christ is here: more than his former mother, Mary Joseph, was betrothed, never even dreamed of before, and was found in the womb of the Holy Spirit. Joseph is her righteous husband: and even if he did not reprove her, he wanted to let her go. Having thought this to him, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to receive Miriam your wife: for that which is born in her of the Spirit is Holy (Matthew 1:18 et seq.). Here, he says, you have an engaged woman, not an entrusted one, and of course, an engaged woman for no other reason than because she was about to be married. The evangelist would not say about those who did not have to marry: before they even dreamed of him, since no one says about the one who will not dine: before he dined. Then the angel called her wife and wife. Let us also listen to what else the Scripture says: Joseph arose, it says, from sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and received his wife, and without knowing her, until he gave birth to his son (Matthew 1:24-25). Let us run through each of these thoughts, and, pursuing the wicked opinion in the same tracks in which it entered, we will show that he expressed mutual contradictions. He recognizes her as engaged, and immediately wants to make the one whom he recognized as his bride his wife. Further, the one whom he calls wife is called betrothed only because she was later to get married. And to top it all off, he says: “You have a betrothed woman, not an entrusted one”: i.e. not yet a wife, not united in marriage. And regarding what he says: “about those who did not have to marry, the evangelist would not say: before even dreaming about him, since about those who do not have dinner, no one says: before he has dined” - I don’t know whether to cry or laugh, whether to prove ignorance, or to accuse him of insolence. As if someone were to say: before having lunch at the pier, I sailed to Africa, then with these words he would be asserting that he would never need to have lunch at the pier. Or if we wanted to say: the Apostle Paul, before he went to Spain, was imprisoned in Rome in Rome, or: Elvidius, before he repented, was preceded by death: then does it really follow that either Paul after the bonds went to Spain, or Elvidius repented after death, when the Scripture says: in hell, who will confess to you? (Ps. 6:6). One should know nothing more than that the particle before, although often indicates the consequence, sometimes shows only what was previously assumed; and it does not follow from this that what was expected will necessarily come true, since something may happen that prevents its fulfillment. So, when the evangelist says: I had never even dreamed of her before, he shows the time closest to the marriage and says that already at that time it turned out that the former bride had become a wife. He seemed to say this: before they connected lips and embraces, before they entered into marriage, she was found with child. Found by none other than Joseph, who, almost as a husband, noticed with attentive eyes the expanding belly of his betrothed. However, it does not follow, as we have proven by previous evidence, that he was united with Mary after birth, the desire for which combination was removed by conception in the womb. And what was said in a dream to Joseph: Do not be afraid to receive Mariam your wife and further: Joseph arose from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and received his wife, should not lead anyone to think that from the fact that she is called a wife, it follows that she has ceased to be a betrothed, since it is known that St. The Scriptures usually call brides wives. So in the following places of Deuteronomy it is defined: if a man finds a virgin betrothed in the field and rapes her, he shall die, because he has insulted his neighbor’s wife (Deut. 22:25) and in another place: if a virgin betrothed to her husband and a man finds her in the city, he will be with her, take them both out before the gates of their city and stone them and let them die: the damsel did not cry in the city, and the man, who did not offend his neighbor's wife: and take away the evil from yourselves (Deut. 22:23-24), and also in another place: and whoever betrothed his wife did not understand it; let him go and return to his house, so that he does not die in the army and another person understands it (Deut. 20:7). And if anyone doubts why a betrothed virgin conceived, and not without a betrothed or (as Scripture calls it) a husband, then let him know that there was a threefold reason for this. Firstly, in order to show the origin of Mary through the genealogy of Joseph, to whom Mary was a relative; secondly, so that she would not be stoned by the people as an adulteress, according to the law of Moses; thirdly, so that during her flight to Egypt, she would have a protector in a guide rather than in a husband. For who at that time would have believed the Virgin that she conceived from the Holy Spirit, that the angel Gabriel appeared, announced the advice of God - and would not have condemned her rather by the general opinion as an adulteress, following the example of Susanna, when even now, when the whole world already believes, the Jews are striving to prove that in the words of Isaiah: behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son (Is. 7:14) in Hebrew standing is a young woman, not a virgin, i.e. aalma, not bethula? We will argue against them in more detail elsewhere. Finally, with the exception of Joseph, Elizabeth and Mary herself and the very few who could hear from them, everyone considered Jesus the son of Joseph, so that even the evangelists, expressing popular opinion, which serves as the true law for history, called him the father of the Savior, as for example: and he came in spirit into the church (no doubt Simeon), and when he brought in the parent of the boy Jesus, he did according to the lawful custom concerning him (Lk. 2:27); and in another place: and his father 3 and his mother wondered at what was said about him (ibid., v. 33) and further: and his father went every summer to Jerusalem on the feast of Passover (v. 41) and then: and to those who passed away and returned to them, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem and “his parents did not know” 4. And Mary herself, who said in response to Gabriel: how will this be, even if I have no husband (Luke 1:34), listen to what he says about Joseph: child, what have you done? Behold your father, and I have sorely sought you (Luke 2:48). Here is not the voice of the Jews, as many people think, not the voice of mockers. The evangelists call Joseph the father, and Mary recognizes him as the father. Not because (as I showed above) that Joseph was really the father of the Savior, but in order to preserve the good name of Mary, everyone should have considered the father the one who, before the admonition from the angel: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to accept Mariam your wife, for what was born in her of the Spirit is Holy (Matthew 1:20), thought to secretly let her go. So he was sure that the one conceived was not his. But we have already discussed enough, more for instruction than for an answer, about why Joseph is called the father of the Lord, and Mary the wife: this also contains a brief answer to why some are called His brethren. But since we assign our place to this question and speech hurries to the rest, we must now consider the sense in which Scripture says: Joseph arose from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and received his wife, and without knowing her begot a son, and called his name Jesus (Matthew 1:24-25). Here our adversary first exhausts himself with the excessive labor of proving that the word knowledge should refer to copulation rather than to knowledge, as if anyone were to deny this and as if any intelligent person could ever suspect the absurdities that he refutes. Then he wants to prove that the adverb donec (donec) or before (usque) denotes a certain time, after the fulfillment of which something should happen that did not happen before the appointed time, as in the present place: and without knowing it, before you gave birth to a son. Obviously, he says that she was known after birth, which knowledge was only postponed for a time by the birth of her son. And to prove this, he collects a lot of examples from the Scriptures, in the likeness of the andabats, waving a sword in the darkness 5 and shaking the sound of the larynx to defeat the members of his body only. To this we briefly answer that the expressions: knowing and dondezhe in St. The Scriptures are used in a double sense. He himself proved that what was written knowingly should refer to copulation, although no one doubts that often it also refers to knowledge, as in this place: “the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem and his parents did not know (non cognoverunt)” 6 . Now it is necessary to clarify the last expression, so that he follows the use of St. Scripture, and in the end was refuted by the authority of the same Scripture. It often (as he himself proved) denotes with this particle a known time in his conclusion, but often an indefinite one, such as. the one about which God speaks in the prophet to someone: “I am, I am, and until you are old, I am” (Is. 43; Jer. 7) 7. Will God really cease to exist after they grow old? And the Savior in the Gospel says to the apostles: Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). So, at the end of the age, the Lord will depart from his disciples and when they judge the twelve tribes of Israel on twelve thrones (Matt. 19:28), they will not have the promised fellowship with the Lord? And the Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: Christ is the firstfruits, then he who believed in Christ at His coming. The same death, when he gives up the kingdom to God and the Father: when he abolishes all authority and all authority and power. It is fitting for Him to reign until He puts all enemies under His feet. Subdue everything under His nose (1 Cor. 15:23–26). Whether this is said about a person, we do not deny; but in relation to the One who suffered the cross, who is then appointed to sit at the right hand, what does it mean that it is fitting for Him to reign until He puts all enemies under His feet? Does the Lord really have to reign only so long until His enemies are under His feet? And David in the fourth psalm of degrees says: like the eyes of a servant are in the hand of her mistress: so are our eyes towards the Lord our God, until he will spare us (Ps. 122:2). So the prophet will have his eyes to the Lord until he asks for mercy, and having asked for mercy, he will turn to earth? And he says in another place: my eyes disappear for your salvation and for the word of your righteousness (Ps. 119:123). I could collect countless examples of this and cover with a cloud of evidence all the insolence of the enemy; but I’ll just add a little so that the reader can find evidence similar to this for himself. The Word of God says in the book of Genesis: And strange gods were given to Jacob, which were in their hands, and they destroyed what was in their ears: and I hid Jacob under Terebinth, which was in Shikimech: and I destroyed them until this day (Gen. 35:4 et seq.). Also at the end of Deuteronomy: “And Moses the servant of the Lord was buried in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord, and they buried him in Gath near the house of Peor, and no one knows his grave even to this day” (Deut. 34:6 according to LXX). Of course, today should be considered the day of the time in which history itself was written. Whether you want to call Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra, the restorer of this work, I do not contradict. The question now is whether what has been said can be attributed even to this day to the time when the books were published or written. He must prove that after the day when the books had already lived for so many years until our time, and the idols hidden under the terebinth were found and the tomb of Moses was found, since he argues with all his might that after until and before, what did not happen until the period specified before and until was fulfilled. Let him better notice the peculiarity of the priest. Scripture also admits with us, where he hesitated, that what there might have been doubt about if it had not been written is determined in Scripture, and the rest is left to our understanding. For if even in ancient times, during the life of those who saw Moses, his grave could have been unknown, then even more so after so many centuries. In relation to this, what was said about Joseph is explained in such a way that the evangelist pointed out what could have caused the temptation - that she was not known by her husband before birth, indicated that we should all the more recognize that she was not known after birth, from which knowledge Joseph abstained even when he could still doubt the vision. Finally, I ask why Joseph abstained until his birthday? He, of course, will answer that because he heard the words of the angel: what was born in her of the Spirit is Holy. To this we add that I heard these words correctly: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to accept Miriam your wife (Matthew 1:20). He was forbidden to let go and consider his wife an adulteress. And did he really separate himself from cohabitation with his wife, when this is precisely what he received instruction in particular, so as not to separate? Did a righteous husband, he says, dare, knowing that the Son of God was in the womb, to think about copulation with his wife? Fine. So the one who believed only the revelation in a dream, so as not to dare to touch his wife, could he touch her after he learned from the shepherds that an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and said to them: Do not be afraid, for behold the great joy that is brought to you is good news, which will be for all people, because today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, has been born to you in the city of David (Lk. 2:10ff.); and that with him (the angel) the heavenly army praised: glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men; the one who saw the righteous Simeon preaching, holding a baby in his arms: now you are releasing your servant, O Master, according to your word in peace, because my eyes have seen your salvation (ibid., 27); the one who saw Anna the prophetess, the Magi, the star, Herod, angels; he, I say, who knew so many miracles, really dared to touch the church of God, the throne of the Holy Spirit, the mother of his Lord? And of course, Mary kept all these verbs, putting them in her heart (ibid., 51). And do not shamelessly dispute that Joseph did not know this: “and there were, says Luke, his father and mother,” wondering about what was said about him (v. 33). Although you argue with amazing shamelessness that this is distorted in the Greek codes, not only did almost all Greek publishers leave this in their books, but also some of the Latins accepted it as it is read in the Greek. And there is no need now to discuss the difference in copies, when the entire Old and New Testament of Scripture has been translated into Latin from there, and it must be assumed that purer water flows in the source than in the water pipe. “This, you say, is my nonsense: the arguments are unnecessary and the reasoning is more inquisitive than true. Couldn't Scripture have said: “And he took his wife and did not add knowledge to it (Gen. 38:26), as it was said about Tamar and Judah? Or did Matthew lack words with which he could express what he wanted to make clear? Without knowing her, he said, until you give birth to a son (Matthew 1:25). So after birth I came to know her, the knowledge of which I delayed until birth.” If you are so stubborn, then now you will be refuted by your own thoughts. I don't want you to leave me any time between birth and copulation. I do not want you to say: if a woman conceives and gives birth to a male, she will be unclean for seven days: after the day of separation her uncleanness will remain. And on the eighth day he will circumcise his final flesh. And he will sit for thirty and three days in the blood of his unclean things: let him not touch any holy thing (Lev. 12:2-3) and so on. Let Joseph immediately pounce on her, let him immediately hear through Jeremiah: horses of misogyny have been created, every one of them neighing at his sincere wife (Jer. 5:9). Otherwise, how can it stand: without knowing her until now, give birth to a son, if he waits for the time after purification, if the satisfaction of lust, which was delayed for so long, is again delayed for forty days? Let the mother in labor be blackened with blood, let the midwives nurse the crying baby, let the husband hold the emaciated wife. So let them lead a married life, so that the evangelist does not turn out to be a liar. But let it not be that one can think this about the mother of the Savior and a righteous husband. No midwife is busy there, no women are fussing. She herself swaddles the baby, she herself was both a mother and a midwife. And put him, he says, in a manger, because there is no place for them in the monastery (Luke 2:7). This idea refutes the nonsense of the apocrypha 8, since Mary herself swaddles the baby, and does not allow Elvidius to be fulfilled with lust, since there was no room for marriage in the inn. But since we have already answered quite and at length to what he objected about not even dreaming about her before and about not knowing her before giving birth to a son: then we need to move on to the third question, so that the order of his debate follows the order of our answers. He claims that Mary gave birth to other sons and from what is written: Joseph went up to the city of David to be married with Mary as his wife, who was not idle. When she was there, the days were fulfilled to give birth to her and gave birth to her first-born son (Luke 2:4 et seq.), he strives to prove that only one who has other brothers can be called the first-born, while the only son of the parents is called the only begotten. And we define it this way: every only-begotten is a first-born, but not every first-born is a only-begotten. The firstborn is not only the one after whom there were others, but also the one before whom there was no one. Everything, says the Lord to Aaron, that opens the lie of all flesh, shall be offered to the Lord, from man to beast, let it be given to you: but only by redemption shall the firstborn of mankind be redeemed, and the firstborn of unclean cattle shall be redeemed (Numbers 18:15; Exodus 34:19–20). The Word of God has defined what the firstborn is: everything, he says, that opens is false. Otherwise, if the firstborn is only the one who is followed by other brothers, then the firstborn should not be given to the priests until others have been produced, so that if no birth follows, the firstborn will not be the only begotten, and not the firstborn. His redemption, he says, shall be from one month, five shekels, according to the holy shekel: there are twenty coppers. Moreover, let not the firstborn of bulls, and the firstborn of sheep, and the firstborn of goats be redeemed: they are holy (Num. 18:16–17). The Word of God demands from me that I dedicate everything that opens a lie, if it is from clean animals, to God; if it is from unclean animals, I should redeem it, giving the priest its value. I can answer and say: why are you constraining me for a period of one month? Why do you call him the firstborn, after whom there will be brothers, I don’t know? Wait until the second one is born. I am not obliged to give anything to the priest until he is born, through whom the one born first will become the firstborn. Will the highest authorities themselves accuse me of stupidity, and will they say that the one who opens the womb is called the firstborn, and not the one who has brothers? Finally, about John, who, as we know, was the only begotten, I ask: was he also the firstborn? Was he, who himself lived according to the law, subject to that law (about the firstborn)? There can be no doubt. Even about the Savior the Scripture says this: when the days of purification were fulfilled by her, according to the law of Moses, he was taken up to Jerusalem to present him before the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: For every child of manhood, having opened his lieu, shall be called holy to the Lord: and he shall give a sacrifice according to that which is spoken in the law of the Lord, two turtle doves. or two dove chicks (Luke 2:22ff.). If this law applies only to the firstborn, and those who follow him make the firstborn, then he should not have been bound by the law regarding the firstborn who did not know about the following sons. But since the law on the first-born also obliges the one after whom no other brothers are born, this makes it clear that the first-born is the one who opens the womb, and not the one who is followed by a brother who is born after. Moses writes in Exodus: It came to pass at midnight, and the Lord struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the captive who was in the ditch, and to the firstborn of every beast (Ex. 12:29). Answer me: were those taken from destruction the firstborn or the only begotten? If only those who have brothers are called firstborn, then the only begotten were freed from destruction. And if the only begotten were also struck, then this turns out to be against his thought, and the only begotten should be counted among the firstborn. You will either free the only-begotten from execution and turn out to be ridiculous, or if you admit that they were exterminated, then in spite of you we will win that the first-born are also called the only-begotten. His last objection (although he wanted to prove this very thing when discussing the firstborn) was that in the Gospels the brothers of the Lord are indicated, as, for example, in this place: “Behold, His Mother and the brothers stood outside, wanting to speak with Him” (Luke 8:20); and in another place: therefore He and His Mother, and His brethren and His disciples went down to Capernaum (John 2:12), and in this: His brethren decided therefore to him: depart from here and go to Judea, so that Your disciples may see Your works as You do. No one does anything in secret, and seeks to be in reality: if you do this, show yourself to the world (John 7:3-4), to which John adds: neither his brethren believed in him (v. 5). Also Mark and Matthew: and when he came into his own country, he taught them to marvel at them and say: whence comes this wisdom and power; Is this not the Son of Tekton; neither is His Mother called Miriam, and His brothers Jacob and Joses, and Simon and Judah; and are not His sisters all of us (Matthew 13:54–56; Mark 6:2–3). And Luke in the Acts of the Apostles says this: and these all endured with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with His brethren (Acts 1:14), and the Apostle Paul with the same testimony confirms the truth of this legend: he came by revelation and saw no one except Peter and James the brother of the Lord (Gal. 1:18-19) and again in another place: food is not the imams of the power to eat and drink; food is not the imams of power to lead his sister to his wife, like the other apostles and brothers of the Lord and Cephas (1 Cor. 9:3–4)? And lest anyone deny the testimony of the Jews who indicated the names of the brothers, claiming that regarding the brothers they were infected with the same error that they fell into in judging their father; for this he made a witty warning, saying that these same names are called by the evangelists in another place and that the brothers of the Lord and the sons of Mary are the same persons. Matthew says: I saw that woman (no doubt at the cross of the Lord) and many women from afar, even as they walked after Jesus from Galilee, serving him. In them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and the mother of Josiah, and the mother of the son of Zebedee (Matt. 27:55–56). Also Mark: he saw the women from afar, and in them were Mary Magdalene and Mary of James, the mother of Josiah, and Salome (Mark 15:40), and there a little later: and many others who went up with him to Jerusalem. Also Luke: Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary James, and the rest with them (Luke 24:10). We set out all this so that he would not slander and shout that we hid what was said in his favor, and his opinion was refuted not by the authority of the Scriptures, but by shaky reasoning. “Behold,” he says, “Jacob and Joseph are the sons of Mary, the same ones whom the Jews called brothers (of the Lord). Here is Mary the mother of the younger James and Josiah, and the younger one, in contrast to the eldest, who was the son of Zebedee, as Mark says in another place: Mary Magdalene and Mary of James and Josiah know where he is buried. And last Saturday I bought aromas and came to the coffin. At the same time, he rightly says: “how reckless and wicked it would be to think about Mary to say that while other women took care of the burial of Jesus, His Mother was not there, and to imagine that it was another Mary, I don’t know which one, especially when the Evangelist John testifies that she was present there, when the Lord entrusts her, already a widow, to John from the cross as a mother. Or are the evangelists deceived and deceiving when they call Mary the mother of those whom the Jews called the brothers of Jesus?” Oh, blind madness and a mind raging towards its own destruction! You say that His Mother was present at the cross of the Lord, you say that due to widowhood and loneliness she was entrusted to the disciple John, as if in your opinion she did not have four sons and countless daughters with whom she could live? And you call her a widow, which Scripture does not say. And while you present all the testimonies of the evangelists, you do not like the words of John alone. You say in passing that His Mother was at the cross of the Lord, so that it does not seem that you are deliberately bypassing (the testimony of John), and yet you are silent about what women were with her. I would forgive your ignorance if I did not see the deliberate reticence. So listen to what John says: And standing at the cross of Jesus was His mother and His mother’s sister, Mary of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene (John 19:25). No one doubts that there were two apostles named after James - James Zebedee and James Alphaeus. That one, I don’t know which one, James the Less, whom Scripture mentions as the son of Mary, but not the mother of the Lord, was an apostle, in your opinion, or not? If he is an apostle, then he will be the son of Alphaeus and a believer in Jesus, and will not be one of those brothers about whom it is written: neither His brethren will believe in Him. If he is not an apostle, and the third I don’t know what kind of Jacob, then how can he be considered the brother of the Lord and how can he, the third, be called lesser, in contrast to the elder, when the elder and the younger usually give the idea of ​​the difference in age not between three, but between two, and when the brother of the Lord should be an apostle, according to Paul: then after three years he went up to Jerusalem to spy on Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. The apostle did not see anyone else except James, the brother of the Lord (Gal. 1:18-19) and in the same epistle: Having known the grace given to me, James and Cephas and John became pillars (Gal. 2:9). And that this cannot be considered James the son of Zebedee, read the Acts of the Apostles. He was also killed by Herod. It remains to conclude that that Mary, who appears in Scripture as the mother of the lesser James, was the wife of Alpheus and the sister of Mary, the mother of the Lord, and it is her who the Evangelist John calls Mary of Cleopas, appending this name to her either by her father or by her family name or for some other reason. And if in these places you see two Marys, since there it says Mary of James Malago Mother, and here Mary of Cleopas, then find out that this is the custom of Scripture, that one and the same person is called by different names. Raguel, Moses' father-in-law, is also called Jephron; Gideon, without first indicating the reasons for the change of name, is suddenly called Jerubbaal; Hoshea, king of the Jews, is alternately called Azariah; Mount Tabor is called Itabirium; also Hermon is called Sanior by the Phoenicians, and Sanir by the Ammorites. The same side of the sky is called by three names: Nageb, Teman, Darom, read Ezekiel. Peter is called both Simon and Cephas. Judas the Zealot in another Gospel is called Thaddeus, and the reader can gather for himself from all the Scriptures many other things that serve as proof of this. Now we want to show how the sons of his aunt Mary, who at first did not believe, later believed, are called brothers of the Lord. It could very well be that while one soon believed, others remained unbelievers for a long time, and also that this Mary was the mother of James and Josiah, that is, Mary of Cleopovna, the wife of Alpheus, and that this same Mary was called the mother of James the less. If she were the mother of the Lord, then the evangelist would rather call her the matter of the Lord than, by calling the matter of others, would mean in her the mother of another. But on this side, I do not stretch the controversial rope, whether Maria Kleopovna was one, and the Mary of James and Josiah was different, when it is known that Mary of James and Josiah was not the same - and the mother of the Lord. How then, you say, are those called brothers of the Lord who were not brothers? Now I will teach you that in the Divine Scriptures brothers are called in four ways: by nature, by nation, by kinship and by love. By nature - Esau and Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Andrew and Peter, James and John. According to their nationality, as a result of which all the Jews are called brothers among themselves, as in Deuteronomy: if your brother sells himself to you, a Jew or a Hebrew woman, let him serve you for six years, and on the seventh day let him go free from you (Deut. 15:12) and in the same book: when you have appointed, you will set over you a prince, whom the Lord your God will choose from your brethren let thou set up a prince over thyself; thou shalt not set up over thyself a prince who is a stranger, for he is not thy brother (Deut. 17:15) and again: having seen thy brother’s bullock, or his sheep going astray on the way, let me not despise it, but bring it back to thy brother. If your brother is not near you, hang him below, gather him inside your house, and let them be from you until your brother seeks them and give them to him (Deut. 22:1-2). And the Apostle Paul says: I prayed for I myself was excommunicated from Christ according to my brethren, my relatives in the flesh, who are Israelites (Rom. 9:3-4). Further, brothers are called by kinship persons descended from the same surname, that is, a clan, which the Latins call paternitates, when a large generation spreads from one root. So in the book of Genesis: Abraham spoke to Lot: Let there be no strife between me and you, and between your shepherds and between my shepherds, for we are brethren of men (Gen. 13:8), although Lot was not the brother of Abraham, but the son of his brother Aram, because Terah begat Abraham and Nahor and Aram, and Aram begat Lot, as in another place it is said: Abraham was born. seventy-five, when he left the land of Haran. And Abraham gave water to his wife Sarah and his brother's son Lot (Gen. 12:4). If you still doubt that a brother’s son is called a brother, here is new proof for you: when Abram heard that his brother Lot had been taken captive, he numbered his household three hundred and eighteen (Gen. 14:14), and, having described the defeat during the night attack, he added: and return all the cavalry of Sodom and return his brother Lot (v. 16) 9 . This is enough to prove what we said. But so that you do not joke and dodge like a slippery snake, you need to be tied with bonds of evidence, so that you do not whistle pitifully and say that you were defeated by more cunningly woven reasoning than by the truth of Scripture. When Jacob the son of Isaac and Rebekah, fearing his brother’s enmity, retired to Mesopotamia, he came and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother (Gen. 28 and 29). And Rachel kissed Jacob and cried out with her voice and wept. And Rachel was told that she was the brother of her father, and that she was the son of Rebekah (Gen. 29:11–12). Here too, according to the same law as above, a sister’s son is called a brother. And again: Laban said to Jacob: Because you are my brother, do not work for me (v. 15); tell me what your reward should be. After twenty years, when, without the knowledge of his father-in-law, accompanied by his wives and children, Jacob was returning to his homeland, Laban overtook him on Mount Gilead. And when he did not find in the chests the idols he was looking for, which Rachel hid, Jacob answered Laban’s speech: what is my unrighteousness and what is my sin, as if you drove after me and as if all my vessels were searched; what have you gained from all the vessels of your house? put it here before your brethren and my brethren, and let them judge between us (Gen. 31:36–37). Tell me, who are these brothers of Jacob and Laban who were present then? Esau, Jacob's brother, of course, was not there, and Laban the son of Bethuel, except for his sister Rebekah, had no brothers. There are countless examples of this kind scattered throughout the divine books. But, in order not to prolong it, I turn to the last part of the division, that is, that they are also called brothers by love, which is divided into two kinds - spiritual and general. On the spiritual, since all of us Christians are called brothers, as in this place: behold, whatever is good, or whatever is good, but the brethren must live together (Ps. 133:1), and in another psalm the Savior says: I will tell your name to my brethren (Ps. 21:23) and in another place: go to my brethren and tell them (John 20:17). Further, we are called brothers out of common love, since all born of the same father are united with each other by the same brotherhood. Shout, he says, brethren, to those who hate you (Isaiah 66:5), and the Apostle to the Corinthians: if a certain brother be called a fornicator, or a covetous person, or an idolater, or a troublemaker, or a drunkard, or a predator, with such a person is below food (1 Cor. 3:11) and other similar things. Now I ask, in what sense, in your opinion, are the Lord’s brothers called in the Gospel? By nature? But Scripture does not speak about this, calling them neither the sons of Mary nor Joseph. By nationality? But it is unreasonable to think that few of the Jews are called brothers, when according to this law all the Jews who were there could be called brothers. For human and spiritual love? But if so, who are more brothers than the apostles, whom He taught in private and whom He called mothers and brothers? Or, if all brothers are like people, then it was unreasonable to call them brothers in the proper sense: your mother and your brothers are looking for you (Mark 3:32), when on this basis all people in general are brothers. So, based on the above, it remains to accept that they are called brothers by kinship, and not by love, not by the privilege of the people, not by nature - in the sense in which Lot is called the brother of Abraham, Jacob of Laban, in which the daughters of Salphaad receive a lot among their brothers, in which Abraham himself had Sarah, his sister, as his wife, as he says: Truly I am a sister through my father, and not through my mother (Gen. 20:11), that is, the daughter of a brother, and not a sister: otherwise, what would it be like for Abraham, a righteous man, to take his father’s daughter in marriage, when Scripture, due to the holiness of the ears of the first people, does not directly speak about this, wanting it to be better implied than stated, and when subsequently God by law sanctifies and threatens: “Whoever takes his sister from his father or from his mother and sees her shame, and she will see her shame it is a reproach: and they shall be cut off from before the children of their people. He has revealed his sister’s shame; he will bear his sin” (Lev. 17:9). The most ignorant of people, you did not read this, and, leaving a whole sea of ​​Scriptures, you turned all your madness to reproach the Virgin, following the example of the one about whom fables tell that, being unknown in society and unable to do anything good, you decided to commit a crime in order to become famous through it, and burned the church of Diana; and when no one spoke about his crime, they say, he himself appeared among the people, shouting that it was he who committed the arson, and when the Ephesian authorities interrogated why he decided to do this, he answered: so that, if it was impossible to become famous for good, he would gain universal fame. So says Greek history. And you set fire to the church of the Lord’s body, you desecrated the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, from which sanctuary you are leading a quartet of brothers and a crowd of sisters. Finally, adding your voice to the Jews, you say: Isn’t this the son of Tekton: isn’t Mariam his mother, and his brothers Jacob and Josiah, and Simon and Judah, and his sisters, aren’t they all in us (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3)? “All” is spoken of only as a multitude. Tell me, please, who knew this blasphemy before, who hung the two-pound weight? You achieved what you wanted - you became famous for your crime. I myself, who am writing against you, living in the same city as you, do not know, as they say, whether you are white or black. I’m not talking about the errors in language that abound throughout your book; I’m not talking about the funny preface. O times! oh morals! I am not looking for eloquence, which you, not having yourself, sought from brother Crateius. I do not demand, I say, purity of language; I demand purity of soul: for Christians have great solecism and error - either to say or do anything wicked. I will proceed to the conclusion and lock you in with horned questions and will conduct business with you as if I had done nothing above. They are called the Lord's brothers in the same sense in which Joseph is called his father: I, he says, and your father painfully sought you (Luke 2:48). This is what the mother says, not the Jews. And the evangelist himself says: and his father and mother were wondering about what was said about him (Luke 2:33) and similar things that we have already listed, where they are called parents. And so that you do not refer to the difference in copies, since you hold the stupidest belief that the Greek codes are distorted, I turn to the Gospel of John, in which it is written in the clearest way: Phillip found Nathanael and the verb to him: his writing was Moses in the law, and the prophets found Jesus, the son of Joseph, who was of Nazareth (John 1:45). It is true that this is also in your code. Tell me, how is it that Jesus is the son of Joseph, when it is known that He was born of the Holy Spirit? Was Joseph really His father? No matter how stupid you are, you won’t dare say it. Wasn't he considered only a father? In the same way they should be considered brothers, just as he was considered a father. But since our speech has already emerged from underwater rocks and dangerous places, we need to let go of the sails and rush to his epilogues, in which, imagining himself as an expert, he calls Tertullian as a witness and cites the words of Victorinus, Bishop of Petavia. I say nothing more about Tertullian except that he was not a man of the church. And about Victorinus I affirm the same thing as about the evangelists - that they spoke about the brothers of the Lord, and not about the sons of Mary, and about brothers in the sense that we presented above, brothers by kinship, and not by nature. But we talk about trifles, and, leaving the source of truth, we chase streams of opinions. Can I not put forward to you a whole series of ancient writers: Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and many other apostolic and learned men who, against Ebion and Theodotus, Byzantium, Valentinus, reasoning about this in the same way, wrote works full of wisdom? If you ever read them, you would be smarter. But I think it’s better to answer everything briefly separately, rather than pausing too long and dragging out the essay. Now I am attacking the place in which you, comparing virginity and marriage, wanted to show your eloquence. We laughed, attaching a proverb to you: we saw a camel dancing. You say: “Are virgins really better than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who lived in marriage? Is it not by the hands of God that children are created every day in the wombs, so that we should rightly be ashamed that Mary married a husband after birth? If this seems shameful to them, then they are left not to believe that God was born through the womb of a virgin. Because from their point of view, it is more shameful that God was born through the falsehood of a virgin than that a virgin married her husband after birth.” Add, if you like, other natural troubles - a womb that swells for nine months, nausea, childbirth, blood, diapers. Imagine the baby itself, wrapped in an ordinary membrane of membranes. Add the hard manger, the crying of the baby, the circumcision on the eighth day, the time of cleansing to show Him to be unclean. We don’t blush, we don’t remain silent. How much more humiliating than this is what He endured for me, how much more am I indebted to Him. And having exposed everything, you cannot imagine anything more shameful than the cross; and we confess him, we believe in him, and in him we triumph over our enemies. But just as we do not reject what is written, so we reject what is not written. That God was born of a Virgin, this we believe because we read; that Mary after birth was a wife - we do not believe this, because we do not read. And we say this not because we condemn marriage—and virginity itself is the fruit of marriage—but because we cannot arbitrarily assert anything about holy men. For according to this assumption of the possible, we can affirm that Joseph also had many wives, just as Abraham had many, Jacob had many, and that from these wives were the brothers of the Lord, as many invent not so much with pious, but with daring courage. You say that Mary did not remain a virgin: I consider it safer for myself to think that Joseph himself became a virgin through Mary, so that a virgin son would be born from the union of virgins. For if the holy husband cannot be accused of fornication and it is not written that he had another wife, and for Mary, whose husband he was considered, he was more of a protector than a husband, then it remains to be thought that he, who was honored to be called the father of the Lord, remained a virgin along with Mary. Since I want to say something regarding the comparison of virginity with marriage, I ask that future readers do not think that, while praising virginity, I demeaned marriage and made some distinction between the saints of the Old Testament and the new, i.e. between those who lived in a marriage union and these who completely shied away from the embrace of women - but that, according to temporary conditions, those at that time were subject to one law, and we, in whom the limits of times were fulfilled, are subject to another. While this law was in force: grow and multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 1:28) and “cursed is the barren woman who does not bear seed in Israel” (Is. 66) 10 - everyone married and gave in marriage and, leaving their parents, became one flesh. And when this word thundered: time has ceased, there are other things, so that those who have have wives will be like those who have not (1 Cor. 7:29): then, clinging to the Lord, we become one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). And why? because he who is not married cares for the things of the Lord, so as to please the Lord, but he who is married cares for the things of the world, so as to please his wife. The wife and maiden were separated. She who does not encroach cares about the things of the Lord, so as to please the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit, but she who encroaches cares about the things of the world, so as to please her husband (1 Cor. 7:32 et seq.). Why do you scold, why don’t you agree? The chosen vessel says this. The wife and the virgin have separated, he says. Look how the one who has lost even the name of her gender is pleased. The virgin is no longer called a woman. The intruder cares for the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A virgin is defined by the fact that she is holy in body and spirit, because there is no benefit to having a virgin body for someone who has violated the mind. And the one who encroaches is concerned about worldly things, how to please her husband. Don't you admit that this means the same thing: she spends days and nights without prayer, spends without fasting, and by the time her husband arrives, her face becomes glossy, her gait breaks, she seeks affection? She does this in order to appear uglier and distort natural beauty with ugliness. She paints herself in front of the mirror and, to the disgrace of the Artist, tries to be more beautiful than she was born. The little ones are noisy there, the servants are bustling about, the children are fussing about affection and food, settling scores, thinking about expenses. There the cooks' clenched hands beat the meat, there a crowd of weavers is noisy; Meanwhile, they let you know that the husband and his comrades have arrived. Like a swallow, she flies around all the corners of the house, whether the bed is made, the floors are swept, the dishes are cleaned, whether dinner is ready. Tell me, please, among all this, where can the thought of God be? And these are happy homes? Where the tympanums thunder, the flute howls, the lyre strums, the cymbal cracks - what fear of God is there? The jester labors in shamelessness, open victims of debauchery enter and, by the thinness of the clothing to shameless eyes, appear naked. The unhappy wife either rejoices at them and dies, or is offended and annoys her husband. Hence, quarrels are breeding grounds for divorce. Or, if there is any home in which this does not happen - this is a rare bird! - then nevertheless, housekeeping, raising children, responsibilities towards her husband, troubles with servants - what woman is not distracted from thinking about God? Prestasha, says Scripture, Sarah was a woman (Gen. 18:11), after which it is said to Abraham: whatever Sarah speaks to you, listen to her voice (Gen. 21:12). Freed from the worries and sorrows of birth, having ceased to be a woman after the cessation of monthly cleansing, she becomes free from the curse of God, and there is no turning to her husband, but, on the contrary, the husband submits to her and is commanded to him by the word of the Lord: “Everything that Sarah speaks to you, listen to her voice.” In this way, one begins to live without prayer, because while the duties of marriage are being fulfilled, the need for prayer is forgotten. We do not deny that there are widows, we do not deny that there are married women who are saints; but - those who have ceased to be wives, who in the very obligation of marriage imitate the purity of virgins. This is also what the apostle briefly testified on behalf of Christ speaking in him: the one who does not encroach is concerned about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the one who encroaches is concerned about the things of the world, how to please her husband (1 Cor. 7:34), providing us with a field of understanding regarding these words. And yet he does not impose a necessity or a noose on anyone, but exhorts that honestly, wanting everyone to be like himself. And although he does not have the commandment of the Lord about virginity, because this is above people, and in some way it would be unreasonable to force nature and say: I want you to be like angels, - why a virgin deserves a greater reward when she rejects what, if she had done, she would not have sinned - nevertheless, however, he adds to those who are combined: I give advice, because he has received mercy from the Lord to be faithful. I consider this good to be for the present need, as it is good for man to be like this (1 Cor. 7:25-26). What need is this? Woe to those who are idle and to those who milk in thy days (Matthew 24:19). The forest grows in order to be cut down later; the field is sown in order to be reaped. The world is already full, the earth does not accept us. We are constantly mowed down by wars, destroyed by diseases, consumed by shipwrecks, and yet we argue about borders. Of this number are those who follow the Lamb (Apoc. 14:4), who did not defile their clothes, for they remained virgins. Pay attention to what desecrated means. I'm afraid to explain so that Elvidy won't swear. And what do you say that there are some girls and merchants, then I will tell you more that among them there are also adulteresses, and, to your even greater surprise, there are also clerics, innkeepers and unchaste monks. But who will not immediately understand that neither a merchant can be a virgin, nor an adulterer a monk, nor a tavern cleric? Is virginity to blame if the one who bears the name of virginity is vicious? I, of course, speak with Virgo in mind, leaving aside other persons; and the one who practices trading, I don’t know in body, but I know that in spirit she does not remain a virgin. We pontificated and had a little fun in the manner of public speakers. You, Elvidius, forced us to this, you, who want that even in the light of the Gospel, virgins and married women should have the same glory. So, since I think that, defeated by the truth, you begin to slander my life and curse (because low women do this, cursing their powerful masters from behind the corner), then I warn that your curses will be glory for me, since you slander me with the same lips with which you reviled Mary, and the servant of God, as well as the Mother of God, experiences dog-like eloquence. Elvidius, misinterpreting some passages of St. Scripture, in one of his works, he tried to prove that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ from the Holy Spirit, had from her husband Joseph several children, who in the Gospel are called the brothers of the Lord, and thus denied the ever-virginity of the Mother of God. Elvidius, according to Jerome, was a completely uneducated and unremarkable person, and according to the testimony of Gennady, he was also infected with Arianism. Jerome, who at first did not pay attention to the false teaching of this ignoramus, at the request of the pious brethren, finally wrote this book against Elvidius with the aim of refuting his wicked teaching about the Mother of God. This work was written in 383. Those. Tertullian, from which further expressions are borrowed. In Slavic, instead of “parents,” Joseph and his mother. Andabats were gladiators who fought blindfolded. There is no such place in the given chapters on our translations. An allusion to the apocrypha called: the book of St. Mary and the midwife, which is mentioned in the First Gospel of James (chapter 19) and in the decree of Gelasius. According to the Slavic translation, in the first of the above texts Lot is called a brother, and in the last the son of a brother. Our Bible, as well as the Vulgate, does not contain this place. You might be interested in: