Growing up as a Baptist, I always assumed that Mary the mother of Jesus ceased to be a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus. This was because there were several references in the Bible to “Jesus’ brothers,” most notably James, the early church leader and author of the book of James. There’s also that passage where it says that Joseph “knew her not until she gave birth to a son,” which I always assumed to imply that, afterwards, he did “know” her. But to be honest, all of this was just assumption because, to my recollection, the idea that Mary could have or should have been perpetually a virgin never entered my mind as a distinct thought, nor was it ever brought up as a topic for direct discussion. Nevertheless, I always found it somehow weird to think about Jesus having half-brothers. Imagine my surprise to discover that the early church commonly held the view that Mary remained a virgin, and even refuted suggestions to the contrary (Jerome v. Helvidius, for example). Indeed, even the Protestant Reformers, including Calvin and Luther, believed that Mary remained a virgin!

Thanks to Matt Fradd at Pints with Aquinas for bringing this topic up, and presenting most of the points I summarize in this post. He shares in particular St. Thomas Aquinas’ statement on the matter, which, he points out, is quite strong given Aquinas’ precise and non-emotional style.

Without any hesitation we must abhor the error of Helvidius, who dared to assert that Christ’s Mother, after His Birth, was carnally known by Joseph, and bore other children. For, in the first place, this is derogatory to Christ’s perfection: for as He is in His Godhead the Only-Begotten of the Father, being thus His Son in every respect perfect, so it was becoming that He should be the Only-begotten son of His Mother, as being her perfect offspring.

Secondly, this error is an insult to the Holy Ghost, whose “shrine” was the virginal womb [“Sacrarium Spiritus Sancti” (Office of B. M. V., Ant. ad Benedictus, T. P.), wherein He had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man.

Thirdly, this is derogatory to the dignity and holiness of God’s Mother: for thus she would seem to be most ungrateful, were she not content with such a Son; and were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity which had been miraculously preserved in her.

Fourthly, it would be tantamount to an imputation of extreme presumption in Joseph, to assume that he attempted to violate her whom by the angel’s revelation he knew to have conceived by the Holy Ghost.

We must therefore simply assert that the Mother of God, as she was a virgin in conceiving Him and a virgin in giving Him birth, did she remain a virgin ever afterwards.

ST III Q. 28, A. 3.

Very well, then, it seems that the historical church opinion on the matter is clear, and it simply never made it into the partitioned historical context of my Evangelical world. But what of the references to Jesus’ brothers?

It is important to point out first that the term “brother” was used at that time in a more general sense, and could easily have included cousins or other relations, a fact that makes sense to me after witnessing the strong extended-family bonds of Arab culture while living in Saudi Arabia.

A commonly held view is that those brothers were not Jesus’s half-brothers, but his step-brothers, the sons of Joseph and his late wife (it is known even in evangelical scholarship that Joseph was probably much older than Mary). This is born out by the observation that, at the Cross, Jesus bequeaths care of Mary to John, something that would have been both unnecessary and inappropriate if Mary had other sons. Another connection from Arab culture: the protective duty of sons for their mother is so strong that it was not uncommon for me to hear about a youngest son being discouraged or delayed from leaving home so that the mother will not be without a caretaker and comforter. (I don’t know why the husband is insufficient, but nevertheless it underscores the cultural sentiment.)

An apocryphal but nevertheless important book from the early 2nd century, the Protoevangelium of James, narrates in detail that Mary was a consecrated virgin at the temple, and Joseph was an old widower who agreed to marry her in order to be her guardian, to house her during her monthly uncleanness. Even without digging into the validity of the book in the early church, (which I have not), it presents an interesting, scholastically viable, and Biblically compatible alternative.

As for the assumption that, because Mary was a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus, she must not have remained so afterwards, even Calvin decries the assumption as unsubstantiated, and indeed, it does not bear out from the use of the word “until” in the Greek.

So it is not obvious from the Bible that Jesus had uterine brothers, nor that Joseph knew her; and the church has long resisted and abhorred the idea. Why then would we try to argue the contrary?