Lisaf

“but also note that “Immaculate Conception” doctrine does NOT mean Mary and Joseph never engaged in intercourse, even prior to said conception. ”

1. First of all, Immaculate Conception doctrine has NOTHING to do with either virgin birth or Christ. This is frequently confused by non-Catholics. What it concerns is Catholic dogma that Mary herself was born *free from the stain of original sin*. It means that because she was destined to be Christ’s mother, she was given the unique (well ditto for Christ as well) privilige of not having the original sin carried down from Adam & Eve’s disobeyance of God (this is what people have washed away at Baptism). Mary’s parents conceived her “the old fashioned way”, by the way — nothing unusual there.

2. Actually, yes, Catholics do believe that Mary was “ever virgin” and that she and Joseph never engaged in intercourse, before or after Christ’s birth. The Canon of the Mass includes phrases to this effect.

I’m not stating any of this to advance or debate Catholic theology or say “my beliefs are better than your beliefs” or whatever… just wanted to clear up misconceptions about exactly what Catholics do believe.

Not exactly. As a better-informed person noted above, the brothers mentioned in the Bible may have been step-brothers (or not) - but also note that “Immaculate Conception” doctrine does NOT mean Mary and Joseph never engaged in intercourse, even prior to said conception.

Doctrine can be odd like that. For example, you’ve undoubtedly heard that suicide is such a sin as to preclude burial in consecrated ground. The priest of your local parish has probably been taught this himself - or at least never been taught otherwise. But doctrinally, it is not - it is the “despair” leading to the suicide that is sinful, and going further, despair is defined as “having given up hope of being forgiven by God.”

Please give us Chapter, Verse and what translation (King James, Douay-Rheims, whatever).

I think you will find a couple “brother of the Lord” references, but again, what is translated into English as “brother” comes from the original Greek “adelphoi”, which has a pretty broad meaning. It sounds like you found something MUCH less ambiguous. Please share it with us, b/c I don’t think Bible scholars in any camp have come up with something so definitive to exclude all the other possibilities I touched upon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9kVPW_5RAU

Sligtly irreverent but funny nonetheless.

Enjoy!

We can all see how that worked out.

You have to be pretty ignorant to be absolutely certain that 1 (of several) modern definitions of the English “brother” is what the writers intended when they wrote “adelphoi” in Ancient Greek.

Catholic theology teaches that the “brothers” mentioned are not fellow offspring of Mary. They are either cousins of the Lord OR they are children of St. Joseph from an earlier marriage and are thus step-brothers of Christ — the precise nature of the relationship is uncertain other than they are not children of Mary. Catholic tradition (note this is tradition, not formal theology) holds that Joseph was considerably older than Mary and a widower, probably having children from the earlier marriage.

The “Gospel of Thomas” while interesting from an historical point of view of studying early Christian beliefs, was never a part of the New Testament Canon and was probably written quite a while after the 4 accepted gospels.

Thomas (Tau’ma) means twin in Syriac, a form of the Aramaic which was the language of Jesus and his followers. And Didymus, a name by which the apostle is also called in the gospel of John, means twin in Greek.
Thomas Didymus means ‘Twin Twin’ (!)

So, Jesus has a brother called Judas, he also has a follower who is called Judas the Twin.

The gospel of Thomas was found in the Nag Hamaddi and also at Oxyrhynchus
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas.html

a very interesting manuscript.