Who was the real Mary of Nazareth and how did Christians come to believe she was a virgin?

Irish Times

24-05-2025

Attempting to extricate the historical, human personality of Mary of Nazareth from the iconic persona built around her from the early
Church
down to the 21st century is a daunting challenge.
Some contemporary artists, such as Irish writer
Colm Tóibín
and Portuguese artist Paula Rego, have taken up this challenge. In The Testament of Mary, Tóibín, in novel and drama form, portrayed the humanity of Mary. Rego painted Mary within a human context on eight canvasses.
However, the humanity of Mary was not a priority for early Christians.
The earliest New Testament mention of Jesus's mother was in Paul's letter to the Galatians (4.47)‚ written around 10 years after Jesus's death, when he wrote: 'When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.'
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This 'woman' remains anonymous, with no mention of her virginity.
The obsession with Mary's virginity began much later when, in his gospel, Matthew, quoted Isaiah 7:14: 'Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.' According to Matthew, this prophecy was fulfilled in Mary.
Luke's gospel follows Matthew when in chapter 2.27 he names Mary as a virgin.
However, controversy surrounds the translation of this phrase from the original Hebrew Bible into the Greek Septuagint. The word used by Isaiah was 'almah' which referred to a young girl. When it was translated into Greek, Christian authors used the word 'parthenon', meaning a virgin.
It was accepted by the early church that the Genesis account of the original sin of Adam and Eve in Eden was a historical fact and its consequences were transmitted by sexual intercourse to all ensuing generations. But, according to theologians, Jesus as Son of God could not be tainted by sin, whether actual or original.
It was considered anathema by them that, in his incarnation, Jesus would inherit the sin of Adam and Eve brought about by his mother conceiving him by sexual intercourse with her husband. According to this reasoning, Jesus had to be miraculously conceived by a woman who bypassed the normal human process of procreation.
So it became Christian belief that Mary had to be a virgin when she conceived Jesus and remained a virgin not alone during his birth, but remained physically a virgin, hymen intact, for perpetuity.
The common prayer addressed to Mary expresses this belief – 'Blessed Mary, ever virgin'. This theological dehumanisation of Mary continued unabated even into this century, where she has become an iconic abstraction rather than a female human being.
She even became exempt from the pain at childbirth, a punishment decreed by God for every woman due to Eve's disobedience of God. So Mary gave birth to Jesus without any discomfort or pain – a miraculous non-vaginal C section.
This quasi-divinisation of Mary continued.
In 1854, she was declared by papal decree, without biblical evidence, to be the only woman in history to be conceived without original sin and she became personified for Catholics as the 'Immaculate Conception'.
The gospel of James went further by stating that Mary's mother, Anna, was also immaculately conceived. Joseph, Jesus's foster father, should also – according to this theology – have been immaculately conceived, but Joseph's enigmatic existence still remains in the realms of mystery.
Then, just under 100 years later in 1950 – again by papal decree and again without biblical evidence – the 'Assumption of Our Lady' became another Catholic dogma. This is the teaching that Mary's body after death, unlike every other human being, did not corrupt in the grave but was assumed to Heaven.
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962 to 1965), while declaring that Jesus's birth 'enhanced Mary's virginity', put a brake on this growing Marian dogmatic movement.
In preparation for the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Curia had prepared a document on Mary which was rejected by the majority of the bishops.
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The outcome was that Mary was included only within the framework of the document of the church. The document Lumen Gentium declared that Mary was not above nor beyond the church, but an integral part of the people of God.
The challenge today is to try to extricate the historical, fully human Mary from the theological baggage heaped upon her over the centuries which has made her a dehumanised icon, separating her from the normal experiences of women.
As Christians, we need to reclaim both Jesus and Mary away from the possession of morbid theologians. Over the centuries, such morbid theologians have preached that normal human life was too sinful for the likes of Jesus and Mary to be born into and so, they re-created them as beings apart from normal humanity.
Jesus and Mary wore their humanity on their sleeves and in today's world they remain examples of how human beings, women and men, ought to live.
Brendan Butler is a theologian and author of My Story, by Jesus of Nazareth.