Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmair, 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.

Now, 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 gonna see that, I think, very clearly from Ryan from needgod.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 have 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 gonna 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 responses 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 on Patreon for tipping me off to Ryan's response to my video.

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All right, 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 seeing an angel or that she was going to be the mother of the Savior, but that she was gonna 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 1:19 explicitly says that he is.

Now, this argument from Joe is really bad.

The text in Matthew 1 does not say that Mary and Joseph were already married.

Instead, it describes them as betrothed.

When it describes Joseph as Mary's husband during that betrothal period, that does not mean they were married.

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 kedushin 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 Diamant talks about the history of this practice in 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 kedushin 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 Mishnah on the kedushin literally opens by explaining that there are three ways a woman enters the kedushin.

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 are many rooms.

If it were not so, would I have 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 the two 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 and 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 kedushin.

Otherwise, it'd be like St. Paul saying that the relationship of Christ and 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 kedushin, 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?

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul speaks about the betrothed 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 and spirit, 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 it 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.

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's a parthenos, a virgin.

It's the same word used in Matthew 1 in describing the virgin birth.

You can see for yourself by comparing 1 Corinthians 7:34 across every major Protestant Bible translation.

The KJV, the NIV, the NASB, the ASV, 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. Martens explains, older versions of the Bible in English, like the KJV, the Jerusalem Bible, translated 1 Corinthians 7 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 wait for the coming of the Lord.

This matches what the Greek says and it matches the broader context of 1 Corinthians.

But if you're reading a modern version, as Ryan is, you're gonna 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 Martens explains, they're anachronistically bringing back onto 1 Corinthians later ideas of what betrothal and marriage look 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 1 Corinthians 7 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 and marriage to look like.

Okay, so, so far, Ryan's arguments are sort of 0 for 2 on scriptural rebuttals.

Neither of the scriptures he points to actually say what he claims they do, but it's gonna get worse.

So, Joe'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.

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 and 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 betrothed 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 betrothed is based on the fact that she's already his li- 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 gonna find in an English dictionary today, or what you imagine betrothal to mean in the 21st century.

And that's why it was a controversial thing, that Mary was found to be pregnant while only being betrothed.

Now, if in betrothal period, you could do all those sort of actions, nothing controversial is going on there.

That's right.

If Mary and Joseph were allowed to have sex, as literally all of the evidence suggests, then 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.

But the fact that it was controversial, Mary's found to be child?

Has she been doing something she shouldn't have because she's not married?

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 Mary as 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 his enemies, 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 about there being a controversy over Mary being an unwed mother, he ends up saying things like this.

That's where the scandal comes in.

That's why she goes to Elizabeth and stays with her for six months.

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, so Mary goes to be with her until the baby is born.

It's literally right there in Luke 1. And second, Ryan's theory makes me wonder if he even understands pregnancy.

If a woman is worried about being found out for being pregnant, she's not gonna 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 1.

Earlier on in Matthew 1, 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, 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.

Again, he's just wrong about what the Bible says.

Coming together is not a sexual euphemism.

It's a reference to the nissuying, 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 gonna keep making embarrassing mistakes.

Look, it's why Matthew 1 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 nissuying, they're still not having sex.

Now, I actually asked Ryan why this is.

He can't possibly claim, right, 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.

God tells us why a person who's engaged or betrothed shouldn't be having sex before marriage 'cause it's called sexual morality.

Joe, do you think it's okay for a person who's engaged to commit that sort of action if they're not married to that person?

So, even after the angel tells Joseph, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, and even after Matthew 1 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 be wrong.

Churches can teach false things.

But God's word is never wrong.

God never lies.

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.

Saint Paul points us to the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the bulwark of truth.

If you wanna know the truth, listen to the church.

But Ryan points us in the opposite direction, away from the church.

Instead, he promotes a 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 twenty-first 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' brothers, Ryan says

What is the most natural and plain reading of this text?

That Jesus had earthly siblings.

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 Joses, but as I showed from Mark 15:40, they also don't have the same mom.

They're clearly not brothers in the way we would use that word in twenty-first century English.

Now, Ryan's response to this is that maybe it's a different James and Joses, since

Remember, James, Joses, these are very common names back in the first century.

Check for yourself.

See how often the name Joses appears in the Bible.

The natural and plain reading is that when Mark mentions James and Joses in Mark 6 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

The reason why Jesus entrusts Mary to John, the disciple of Jesus, is because Jesus' brothers were not believers.

So Jesus, using his infinite wisdom that he has, knows that the person who's gonna best look after Mary is not some unbelievers, but someone who is a follower of him.

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 commandment 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 Saint Paul says that a Christian who doesn't care for their relatives is worse than an unbeliever.

But the most obvious refutation of Ryan's argument is that Saint Paul explicitly refers to James, the Lord's brother, as an apostle in Galatians 1:19.

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 Joses are mentioned in Mark 15:40.

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.

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 a son.

What is a natural, plain reading of that?

After she gives birth to a son, Joseph can know her.

Here again, the plain, natural reading would be absurd.

If you say, The store is open until 8:00, it doesn't mean that it closes sometime after 8:00, like 9:00 or 10:00 .

and implies that it closes at 8:00.

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 Saint 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.

Okay, 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, till He have 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 opened, because the Lord Himself entered by it.

This was a passage that the early Christians quickly recognized as about Mary's perpetual virginity.

But Ryan is confused by this.

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.

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.

Saint Paul covers all of this in First 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 will 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's Jewish listeners err?

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 like the Ark of the Covenant.

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.

Yeah, but how does that make her the Ark of the Covenant?

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?

Huh.

Click here to find out.

For Shameless Potpourri, I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

God bless you.