Response to Jerome's Response to Helvidius - Part 14

Jerome wrote a response to Helvidius regarding the virginity of Mary.  This post is the fourteenth in a series of responses to what Jerome wrote.

Jerome wrote:

My reason for repeating the same thing again and again is to prevent him from raising a false issue and crying out that I have withheld such passages as make for him, and that his view has been torn to shreds not by evidence of Scripture, but by evasive arguments. Observe, he says, James and Joses are sons of Mary, and the same persons who were called brethren by the Jews. Observe, Mary is the mother of James the less and of Joses. And James is called the less to distinguish him from James the greater, who was the son of Zebedee, as Mark elsewhere states, “And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid. And when the sabbath was past, they bought spices, that they might come and anoint him.” And, as might be expected, he says: “What a poor and impious view we take of Mary, if we hold that when other women were concerned about the burial of Jesus, she His mother was absent; or if we invent some kind of a second Mary; and all the more because the Gospel of S. John testifies that she was there present, when the Lord upon the cross commended her, as His mother and now a widow, to the care of John. Or must we suppose that the Evangelists were so far mistaken and so far mislead us as to call Mary the mother of those who were known to the Jews as brethren of Jesus?”

This particular branch of Helvidius' argument I find less persuasive.  While it is certainly an interesting problem for Mariologists  (i.e. her absence at certain points), it is easy to see how someone could try to argue that this is some different Mary who happens to have sons also by the same name as Jesus' brethren. The name, Mary, derived from Aaron's sister, and was a very common name, even in first century before the mother of Jesus was famous.  So, while Helvidius may be right, I think that this is less strong than the other passages that explicitly name Jesus' brethren as Jesus' brethren.

Moreover, we will see some more problems highlighted by Jerome in his responses in the next section ... 

  

-TurretinFan