E. W. Bullinger

Philologos Religious Online Books
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September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index

Things to Come

The two Archbishops of the world-wide Church of England, having in their official letter to the Russian Greek Church, gone out of their way to give the title of "the ever Virgin Mary," to the mother of our Lord; it seems as well to restate the evidence shewing that this is an entirely unscriptural title.

It might be noticed, when dealing with such an important, official document as this, from one great Church to another, that even the name is erroneous.

Accurately speaking there is no such person as "Mary" in the New Testament. The name given to Joseph's wife by the Evangelist is "Mariam." But as she was of pure Hebrew descent, there is no doubt that her real name was the same as that of Moses' sister—Miriam. And being in the lowly position of the humble wife of a village carpenter, she was no doubt ignorant of Greek, and so would not spell her name Mariam. And the term of "Virgin Mary" is never applied to her in Scripture, though mother often is. It appears from the Gospels, that Miriam was the mother of four sons, and of at least two daughters (Matthew 13:55,56).

The names of the sons were James, Joses, Simon, and Judas; those of the sisters are not given. After the birth therefore of her first-born Son (Luke 2:7), she became the honoured mother of at least six children, making in all, a family of seven, whom when young, she doubtless endeavoured to bring up in the fear of the Lord.

Under the influence of paganized popery, various attempts have been made to overcome the direct and plain statements of the written Word; but all have been exposed.

The most usual is to affirm that they were the children of an imaginary sister of Miriam, who bore the imaginary name of Mary. Passing by the untenable idea that two sisters should be named exactly alike; it seems that if these were cousins of our Lord, then at least three of them were apostles. But this contradicts John 7:5. So they cannot be cousins.

Others, seeing this insuperable difficulty, have fallen into another, in order to escape the manifest declarations of Holy Writ. They have affirmed (but with no more proof than the others) that these were the children of a former wife of Joseph's. This is impossible also, because if so, then the Son of Miriam was not the legal heir to the throne of David.

The fact that they are always found with Miriam, instead of with their imaginary mother, and always being called "brothers," instead of any title equivalent to cousin or relation, confirms their actual relationship.

This unscriptural theory so prominently put forth in the Lambeth Letter, is also equally unhistorical. It does not seem to have been held prior to Jerome (AD 370) the ascetic Monk of Bethlehem, and even he seems to have abandoned it, after leaving Palestine, as untenable.

Of course the true prototype of the Archbishops' "ever Virgin Mary," is the "ever Virgin" Mylitta of Babylon, who was reproduced in Egypt as Isis the virgin mother, and in Athens as Athene the virgin goddess of the Parthenon. And in the stone virgin over the restored Westminster Abbey doorway, and the marble virgin in St. Paul's reredos, we see the actual re-establishment of the commencement of the return to the ancient Mariolatry of pagan Babylon, and papal Rome, in the professed Protestant Church of England.

September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index  

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