The doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary became the official teaching of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. In the liturgies of these churches, Mary is referred to as ‘aeiparthenos’ “the ever-virgin” or “the perpetual virgin”; that is, she was a virgin before and after the birth of Jesus Christ.
But is this view in keeping with Matthew 1:25a:
“But he (Joseph) had no sexual relations with her (Mary) until she had given birth to a son”?
Does the word “until” imply that sexual relations began after birth?
After establishing the Davidic ancestry of Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, by tracing the genealogy of Jesus (Matt 1:1–17), Matthew proceeds in 1:18–25 to describe the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. Verse 25a states the one qualification (introduced by “But”) to the statement “he took Mary home as his wife” (v. 24b): “But he did not know her.” “Know” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. There was an unbroken period of sexual abstinence.
The prepositional phrase heōs hou (“until”) is a shortened form of “until the time when.” When it is preceded by a negated action (“did not know”), there is sometimes an implication that the negated action continued after the point of time indicated.
For example, when we read in Genesis 28:15 (in the LXX)
“I will certainly not leave you until I have done everything I have promised you”
We may assume that God did not desert Jacob after the fulfilment of his promises. But far more often we may assume that the opposite of the negated action occurs. In Genesis 8:7 (again in the LXX) we read,
“The raven went out and did not return until the water had dried up from the earth.”
Like the dove subsequently (Gen 8:8–11), the raven apparently did return to the ark.
- Similarly, in John 13:38, “The rooster will not crow until (heōs hou) you have disowned me three times”;
- Matthew 17:9, “Tell no one what you have seen until (heōs hou) the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” In such cases, the negated activity ends at the point of time indicated by the “until” clause, and the implication is that the opposite then occurs.
If Matthew believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, he would be unlikely to express himself in a way that linguistically leaves open the possibility that Joseph began to have sexual intimacy with Mary after Jesus was born.
If he had wished explicitly to assert Mary’s permanent virginity, he could have simply added “or from that time on” (ē apo tote) after “she had given birth to a son.”
Five renderings of the verse, while paraphrastic, highlight its clear implication:
“while yet refraining from being on terms of intimacy with her until after she had given birth to her son” (Cassirer)
“but did not know her intimately until she gave birth to a son” (HCSB; similarly CSB)
“But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born” (NLT)
“But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son” (NIV)
Author: Harris, M. J.
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Dr Pastor Paul Allen 