Mary

In Luke the angel Gabriel comes to Mary at Nazareth, a virgin betrothed to Joseph, and tells her that she will bear a son by the power of the Holy Spirit; she answers, “let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:26–38). Luke gives her the song that begins “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46–55) and tells of the birth at Bethlehem (Luke 2:1–7). Matthew tells of the conception and birth from Joseph’s side (Matthew 1:18–25); see the Birth of Jesus. During the ministry of Jesus she appears at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11), and once comes with his brothers to look for him (Mark 3:31–35). John places her at the cross, where Jesus entrusts her to the disciple whom he loved (John 19:25–27). She is last seen praying with the apostles in Jerusalem after the ascension (Acts 1:14). The New Testament does not tell of her death.

The Gospels name four brothers of Jesus and mention sisters (Mark 6:3). Early Christians explained them in three ways, and Christians still differ. Helvidius, as Jerome reports him, took them to be children born later to Mary and Joseph; Jerome himself argued that they were cousins (Jerome, Against Helvidius 13–17). A second-century narrative makes Joseph an old man who already had children (Protoevangelium of James 9). The Catholic Church teaches that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life and that the brothers were close relations (Catechism of the Catholic Church 499–500); the Orthodox Confession of Dositheus (1672) likewise calls her “ever-virgin” (Confession of Dositheus decree 6 (pp. 118–119)). Among the Reformers, John Calvin, in his commentary of 1555, recalled the dispute between Helvidius and Jerome and held that Matthew’s words allow no well-grounded inference about what took place after the birth of Jesus (Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists on Matthew 1:25). On the title Theotokos, “God-bearer”, see the Council of Ephesus.