http://www.logon.org/english/s/p232.html
The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ (No. 232)
(Edition 1.0 19971220-19971220)
Contrary to popular belief, the mother of Jesus Christ was not named Mary. She did not remain a virgin and bore her husband many other children who came to play a significant part in the development of the early Church. Christ also had other blood relatives who, with his brothers and nephews, came to play a significant part in the early Church. What happened to them is a surprising condemnation of the Christian religion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian Churches of God
PO Box 369, WODEN ACT 2606, AUSTRALIA
Email:
secretary@ccg.org
(Copyright ã 1997 Wade Cox)
This paper may be freely copied and distributed provided it is copied in total with no alterations or deletions. The publisher’s name and address and the copyright notice must be included. No charge may be levied on recipients of distributed copies. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles and reviews without breaching copyright.
This paper is available from the World Wide Web page:
http://www.logon.org and
http://www.ccg.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ
The virgin Mariam
The Bible is quite clear the Messiah was born of a virgin (Mat. 1:23; Lk. 1:27). This fulfilled prophecy (Isa. 7:13-15). If Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin, he could not have been the Messiah, as Scripture would have to be broken. This virgin’s name was Mariam. Her lineage is given in Luke 3 and is explained in the paper Genealogy of the Messiah (No. 119). The Jerusalem Talmud acknowledges this to be the case.
There is no doubt, according to the Bible, that Mariam was a virgin. There is also no doubt, according to the Bible, that she did not remain a virgin and had at least four other sons and a number of daughters. They are referred to in many Bible texts (Mat. 12:46; 13:56; Mk. 6:3). It would have been unthinkable for her to have remained in marriage and withheld herself from her husband contrary to Bible teaching. This perpetual virginity idea comes from the Mystery cults of the ancient Near East and the religion of ancient Rome.
The names of Messiah and his family
The name of the Messiah was Yahoshua. The variations in this are Hosea, Hoshea, Jehoshua, Jeshua, Jeshuah, Jesus, Osea, Oshea, and Joshua.
SHD 3091 is a combination of SHD 3068 Yahovah and SHD 3467 and means Yahovah-saved or Yahovah saves. The short form of the name Yahovah is Yaho. It is rendered as Yah or Jah in the KJV (Ps. 68:4), but the Elephantine texts show us that the actual form was, and is, Yaho (see James Pritchard The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, Vol. 1, Princeton, 1958, pp. 278-279). We also see from the Dead Sea Scrolls from the fragmentary Greek papyrus in Cave 4 (4QLXXLevb) that the text from Leviticus using Greek was written with Greek vowels alone not using the vowels for Adonai or as in the LXX but approximating Yaho (using also ima and Alpha and Omega) (Carsten Thiede Eyewitness to Jesus, p. 142). The Alpha and Omega sequence may also have had significance from this usage. Thus, we see that the short name of God was Yaho and not Jah, confirming the Elephantine texts written three centuries previously. Thus, the full correct name is Yahoshua which is shortened to Yashua.
In this sense also, Hoshea means deliverer (being derived from SHD 3467), as does Oshea and Hosea (cf. SHD 1954).
The standard translation into the Greek for Joshua or Yahoshua was 'Iesous. It is 'Ie for Yah or Yaho, and sous (pr. shou or shous or zhou/s) for shua. This occurs in the Old Testament LXX and the New Testament not only for Christ but for all Joshua usage. Yeshua is a shortening of the original word. The variations on this theme occur throughout the Bible. The Greek language has to write the letter Y as 'I. The grammatical rules in the Greek for endings differ with the case but the sense of the original Hebrew is retained for the Hebrews who were then using Aramaic.
Yudah the name of Messiah’s brother is rendered Jude from 'Ioudas in the Greek. Joses, the root name of both his brother and his cousin, is 'Iosetos in the Greek for the cousin and ‘Ioseph for the brother (Mat. 13:55 cf. Marshall’s Interlinear Greek-English NT) who is obviously named after his father Yoseph, Mariam’s husband. These names are disguised in the KJV and all English versions by Trinitarian theology and by Mariolators. Yames or James is actually 'Iakobos from Yacob or Jacob, but is also 'Iakobou according to case and so on. The rendering of Simon his brother and Symeon and Simeon, his cousin and nephew and their descendants, is likewise varied over time and at the same time.
Messiah’s mother was Mariam. It was his aunt (Mariam’s sister) the wife of Cleophas (Jn. 19:25) that was named Maria. Another variation of the name was Miriam. Maria, wife of Cleopas or Clopas, named her sons 'Iakobos called little Yacob[os] or little James, and Yosetos (Mk. 15:40). These names of Messiah’s cousins differed from the names of the brothers of Christ which were 'Iakobos or Jacob[os] (rendered James), 'Ioseph or Joseph, Simon, and 'Ioudas (Judas) or Jude (from Yudah or Judah) (Mat. 13:55). Messiah’s sisters are not named. This was the practice of genealogy of the time. We can, however, be fairly sure that one would have carried the name of Mariam and, probably, Elizabeth and, perhaps also, Maria.
The general practice was to name the grandchildren after their grandparents as there was no standard practice of surnames as is the case today. Thus, the names of the wife of Heli and Joseph’s mother would also be included. The names of Messiah’s brothers and sisters and cousins are deliberately obscured in the English versions to promote the illusion of the perpetual virginity of Mariam, wrongly called Mary, in idolatry. This myth is carried on today even by Catholic historians who know better – such as Malachi Martin (cf. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, pp. 42-44).
The names of the apostles in the English vary even from the Greek. The conventional usage is often necessary to have a comprehensible conversation with the rest of the world. If the actual names of the people in the New Testament were used correctly, virtually all comprehensible biblical conversation with the unconverted world would be difficult – if not impossible.
Marriage
This brings us to the other myth – namely, celibacy of the apostolic church. Most of the apostles were married. It was understood by Clement, and also by Eusebius, that Paul was married and this is attributed to 1Corinthians 9:5 by the NPNF which holds that 1Corinthians 7:8 seems to imply the opposite. The answer might be in the structure of the texts. Certainly, from 1Corinthians 9:5, we know that Peter and the brothers of the Lord were all married and Paul demands the right that they be able to be accompanied by their wives as these and the other apostles also do.
It is thus thought for several centuries that all of the apostles including Paul were married. Also, Judas the brother of Christ was married and had sons.
Christ’s brothers are Yudas, Yakobos (rendered James), Yoseph and Simon (Mat. 13:55 Marshall’s Interlinear; there is also no J in Hebrew). Christ’s uncle Clopas was also married to Maria, mother of James the Less and Joses. He was also held to be father of Symeon, second bishop of Jerusalem. It is this similarity of names which gives rise to the Catholic claim that Christ’s brothers were really his cousins. However, the brother of Christ was distinguished as Yakob (James the Just), not Little Yakobos (James the Lesser is the translation) as his cousin was called. The biblical Greek texts makes the distinctions in the names clear.
Eusebius, himself a Unitarian Subordinationist, alleges that Hegesippus records that Clopas was the brother of Joseph (Eusebius, NPNF second series, Vol. 1, Ch. XI, p. 146; cf. Bk. IV, Ch. 22). John 19:25 states clearly that Mary (Maria) the wife of Clopas was the sister of Mary (Mariam) mother of Messiah. Thus, we have either two brothers marrying two sisters or the record by Hegesippus is misconstrued to show that Clopas was the brother of Joseph.
James the Just (Christ’s brother) and Symeon (Christ’s cousin) were martyred (see also Eusebius, ibid., Bk. IV, XXII, p. 199). At this time the sons of Judas brother of Messiah took the lead of every Church as witnesses and blood relatives of Jesus Christ through the reign of Domitian until at least the reign of Trajan when Symeon was martyred before Atticus governor of the time (see Eusebius, ibid., p. 164). Eusebius also confirms that Ignatius was bishop of Antioch and second in succession to Peter (following Enodius) (see NPNF, ibid., p. 166 and n. 4).
These blood relatives of Jesus Christ were called the desposyni meaning literally in Greek Belonging to the Lord. This name was reserved exclusively for his blood relatives and for the first century and a half was highly respected and esteemed. The entire ancient Jewish Christian Church had always been ruled by their own desposynos and each one carried the names traditional in Jesus’ family: Zachary, Yoseph (Joseph), Yohannes (John), Yakob (James), Yoses (rendered Joses), Simeon, Matthias and so on but no one was ever called Jesus or Yehoshua, i.e. Joshua. There were three well known and authentic lines of legitimate blood descendants from Jesus’ own family.
The Roman Catholic historian Malachi Martin attempts to confine these lines of desposyni as follows. These were:
one from Joachim and Anna, Jesus’ maternal grand parents. One from Elizabeth, first cousin of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and Elizabeth’s husband Zachary. And one from Cleophas and his wife who was also a first cousin of Mary (M Martin Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, Secker and Warburg, London, 1981, p. 42).
He acknowledges that there were numerous blood descendants of Joseph (p. 43) but, as all Roman Catholics, he seems to attempt to deny their direct lineage from Mariam or Mary, even though he acknowledges they had clung to the Church throughout the early years. Maria is removed to first cousin and not sister as the Bible says.
Martin records that the descendants, as leaders of the Church, held a meeting with Sylvester bishop of Rome about the whole nature of the Church in the year 318 CE (ibid.). The emperor provided sea transport as far as Ostia for eight of them and then they rode on donkeys to Rome and the Lateran where Sylvester now lived in splendour. They wore rough woollen clothes, with leather boots and hats. The conversation was in Greek as they spoke Aramaic and had no Latin, and Sylvester spoke no Aramaic. Martin considers it probable that Joses the oldest of the Christian Jews spoke on their behalf.
Martin claims that the first split in 49 CE was over the circumcision issue where Peter and Paul had broken with them insisting that they were bound by the Torah. This, of course, is a false assertion based on later theological grounds but it demonstrates the problem that we see developing through these Gnostic intrusions and finally by 318 CE had resulted in the glaring discrepancy between the way the Church was governed by the original Jewish descendants of Christ’s blood relatives and the so-called orthodox Catholic Church.
Since Hadrian’s conquest of Jerusalem in 135 CE, all Jews, and seemingly Jewish Christians, had been forbidden to enter Jerusalem. Thus, the doctrinal position of the original system was excluded from Jerusalem which was seen as central to the faith. The Jewish Christians had comprised the only Christian church in Jerusalem until 135 CE. They had left it only once, before the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE, where they fled to Pella under Symeon according to Martin (ibid.). In 72 CE they returned to Jerusalem. They set up Christian churches all over Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia but they came into conflict with the Greek Christian churches because of the problems with the observance of the law or Torah. This is thought by modern Catholicism to be because Peter and Paul had set up a separate system with the Greek, but that was not the case. It is also worth mentioning that the title "pope" was carried by bishops in major sees such as Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch in earlier years but never by the apostles.
Their system of government based on that of the congregation was also in issue. In 318 CE, the desposyni asked Sylvester, who now had Roman patronage, to revoke his confirmation of the authority of the Greek Christian bishops at Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Ephesus, and in Alexandria, and to name desposynos bishops in their stead. In addition, they asked that the practice of sending cash to Jerusalem as the mother church be resumed. This practice is easily recognisable as the tithe of the tithe system which had been in force in the Church until emperor Hadrian’s ban in 135 CE.
Sylvester dismissed their claims and said that, from now on, the mother church was in Rome and he insisted they accept the Greek bishops to lead them.
This was the last known dialogue with the Sabbath-keeping church in the east led by the disciples who were descended from blood relatives of Messiah. In Martin’s words:
By his adaptation, Sylvester, backed by Constantine, had decided that the message of Jesus was to be couched in Western terms by Western minds on an imperial model (ibid., p. 44).
Martin records that from this time they had no place in such a church structure. They managed to survive until the first decades of the fifth century but, one by one, they disappeared.
Some reconciled themselves with the Roman church but only as individuals. Some passed into the anonymity of the Eastern rites. The rest were hunted as outlaws. But most of them died by the sword hunted by Roman garrisons as outlaws or by starvation when they were deprived of their small farms and were forced into the cities to be controlled and to be reduced to zero birthrate.
Their fate is an utter condemnation of the religion that claimed to represent Jesus Christ. They hunted down and killed his blood relatives because they stood in condemnation of the system that purported to represent him. It was totally opposed to all that he taught and practiced. The myth of the Virgin Mary, which was not her name in any case, was partly enforced to cover up this horrendous massacre of her descendants, and her relative’s descendants, who kept God’s laws and followed her firstborn son Yahoshua, the Son of God.
q
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian Churches of God
PO Box 369 Woden, ACT 2606 Australia
PO Box 45 Rockton Ontario LOR 1XO Canada
E-mail: CCG Secretary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright: The papers on this site may be freely copied and distributed provided they are copied in total with no alterations or deletions. The publisher's name and address and the copyright notice must be included. No charge may be levied on recipients of distributed copies. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles and reviews without breaching copyright.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Search | Alphabetic Index | Long Catalogue | Home Page | Webmaster | Additional |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------