Moonwood
New Member
Mary was obedient unto GOD = God rewards obedience unto His Word
A Jewish women's greatest Blessing is to have children in holy matrimony = God Says: Be fruitful and multiply.
God blessed Mary to have children.
Straightforward and easy to understand: Michal had no children because of her sin = up to her death.
Once your dead your DEAD.
FYI = The Dead cannot "be fruitful and multiply"
"Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?"
Once again, EASILY understood and received.
What you NEED to find out is why Joseph is not mentioned here in Mark 6:3
You’re offering theological generalities (“God rewards obedience,” “Jewish women are blessed with children”), but none of those claims identify any children of Mary. The question is not whether children are a blessing — the question is who the Gospels identify as the mother of the men named in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3.
Your argument assumes that “God rewards obedience with children,” but Scripture contradicts that assumption. Righteous, obedient women — Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth — all experienced periods of infertility despite marital intercourse. So obedience does not guarantee conception, and intercourse does not guarantee children. You are treating intercourse as if it automatically produces children, but Scripture itself shows that this is not how conception works. You cannot use a theological generality to override what Scripture actually says about who the mother of James and Joseph was.
Scripture explicitly identifies Mary of Clopas/Cleophas as the mother of James and Joseph (Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25). These are the same names listed among Jesus’s adelphoi. Early Christian writers for centuries preserve the same identification. So unless you can show a verse that says Mary the Mother of Jesus bore these men, the Gospels themselves tell us whose mother they actually had.
Your reply about Michal does not address the linguistic point: if “until” always implies a later reversal, then 2 Samuel 6:23 would imply Michal had children after death. Since that is impossible, your rule cannot be universal, and Matthew 1:25 cannot be used to prove later sexual relations.
And Joseph’s absence in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 is irrelevant — Joseph is absent from every scene of Jesus’s adult ministry, which is why the townspeople refer to Jesus as “the carpenter’s Son.”
So I’ll ask again:
Do you have a verse that actually says Joseph and Mary had children together and identifies them?
Because Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 list names — and the Gospels identify another woman as their mother.