Face of Mary. The question of Our Lady's virginity is one of the most controversial in Christianity
That of the virginity of Mary has always been one of the most controversial issues in Christianity, probably the one that has raised the greatest questions and the most heated debates between scholars and ordinary people for centuries.
I wrote a post about it for the news.it site, which on the occasion of Christmas I propose now on Pills of History .
The "Annunciation" by Fra Angelico
The question of the virginity of Mary , explicitly stated in the Gospels , has always represented a thorny problem, since the first centuries of Christianity , sparking heated discussions among theologians.
The second council of Constantinople , held during the VI century , tried to put an end to the controversies that arose on the human or divine nature of Jesus, also sanctioning the so-called "perpetual virginity" of the Madonna , a concept according to which she remained a virgin before, during and after the birth of the Messiah (assumed not accepted by Protestants).
But what do the stories of the Evangelists expressly say about it?
Maria, who married the carpenter Giuseppe at sixteen, would become pregnant thanks to the intervention of the Holy Spirit.
Matteo writes: "Joseph took her wife with him, who, without his knowing her, gave birth to a son, whom he named Jesus".
Luca also reports the conversation between the archangel Gabriele and the young woman, to whom the messenger of God said: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow him. “.
Yet, in the Gospels themselves, the presence of Jesus' brothers and sisters is affirmed with certainty, how can we explain it?
According to theologians, the expression would attest to a deeply friendly bond, but not a blood relationship.
However, many (not all) historians give a different explanation; the virginity of the mother of Jesus would have been a detail added on purpose to confirm the prophecy written in the Old Testament , according to which the Messiah would have been brought into the world by an inviolate woman, but even this point is controversial, since in the original text (in Hebrew), a "young woman" is mentioned, an expression translated into Greek with the term “Parthenos”, word that has among its various meanings also that of virgin, but not only.
From a translation problem, therefore, the age-old misunderstanding would have arisen, from which the tradition that we all know would consequently have arisen.
There were also those who went further, such as the anti-Christian polemicist Celsus who, in the second century, came to claim that Mary was pregnant by a Roman soldier, of whom she even gave her name and surname, a certain Tiberio Panthera .
In general, it can be said that almost all ancient religions had in common the so to speak "unnatural" birth of a divine being (Article taken from:Notizie.it).