In just recompense for my many sins, the platform formerly known as “Twitter” has recently been bombarding me with hot takes about Mary, her virginity, and what good Protestants are obligated to believe about it all.
Like the Bernie Sanders meme, I am here again asking the people to please go deeper than theological florilegia and read some primary sources.
And so once more, that brings me back to Eusebius on this subject. I have previously discussed how Eusebius’ understanding of Mary’s relationship to Joseph explicitly contradicts aspects of the apocryphal narrative underwriting the idea of her perpetual virginity, and that he had no use for such apocryphal narratives as a rule. I have also argued that the information he preserves from Hegesippus should be read as indicating a physical relationship between Jesus and James and Jude. I have also noted his ambivalence toward asceticism compared to later authors who were much more enthusiastic.
But the closest Eusebius comes to telling us what he really thinks about the precise nature of Jesus’ siblings occurs in a different work, his commentary on the Psalms, from the third of the work believed to preserve his own words most thoroughly.[1] In discussion of Psalm 69:8 (68:9 LXX), wherein the psalmist is “alienated from his brothers, a stranger to the sons of my mother,” Eusebius looks for a typological meaning: the speaker in question must be Christ, but what about these brothers who are “sons of the same mother”?
And not only to those being his brothers has he become a stranger, but the gospel recalls his brothers and mother, when he came to his hometown and taught in the synagogue, (the Nazarenes) were astounded and said, “Whence this wisdom unto this man? Is this not the son of the carpenter? Are not his mother and brothers and sisters all among us? Whence all these things unto him?” If, then, we take those called the “sons of his mother” for these ones, it is necessary that the holy virgin appear to have been the mother of these other brothers.
In Eusebius’ reckoning, however, this interpretation is contradicted by some important facts. Namely, Jesus’ siblings were devoted to their brother and to the larger movement:
But James appears to have been known as his brother without having been estranged from him, nor alienated with respect to faith in him, but rather he was one of his most deeply genuine disciples, as he even received the throne of the church in Jerusalem first. And as for his other brothers, if even they mostly were not believing in him from the beginning, yet afterwards they clearly were believers. And, therefore, the gospel records how his mother and brothers stood outside wanting to speak with him. And in the Acts of the Apostles, it has been told how all the apostles together were persisting in prayer along with Mary his mother and his brothers. . . . For he was not a stranger to these, and rather quite honored, such that no longer are his aforementioned brothers thought to be the sons of Mary, but it would be others besides these who are called “sons of his mother” in the psalm, to whom he was a stranger.[2]
Ultimately, Eusebius settles on the allegorical interpretation that Jesus’ “brothers” here are the Jews, with the shared mother being the Synagogue, but his words here require caution, as we find that his real opinion is once again evasive.
Those who would have Eusebius as a bog-standard fourth-century believer in the perpetual virginity could stress how the author walks right up to the line—“then it would be necessary that the holy virgin appear to have been the mother of these other brothers”—only to swerve with the following conjunction, ἀλλά, “but.”
Others, however, might try to press his later remark most literally, that we need not take Mary’s sons as the persons intended by the psalmist, but “some other people besides these” (ὡς μηκέτι τοὺς προλεχθέντας αὐτοῦ ἀδελφοὺς υἱοὺς εἶναι τῆς Μαρίας ἡγεῖσθαι, ἕτεροι δ’ ἂν εἶεν παρὰ τούτους). After all, “besides these” might suggest that the “these” (i.e., Mary’s sons) in question were a real category of person
Doctrinal partisans can make a literalist case in either direction. More informative, however, is Eusebius’ overall aim in this passage: nowhere is he especially concerned with preserving Mary’s virginity per se. In his estimation, the psalmist’s siblings cannot be equated with Mary’s own children, not because it profanes Mary, contravenes tradition, or undermines ascetic values but because it effectively slanders Jesus’ siblings. In other words, the concern here is entirely with the historical siblings of Jesus, not Mary’s virginity. By contrast, when pro-perpetual-virginity exegetes such as Origen (whom Eusebius had definitely read on this subject), Epiphanius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, encountered problematic verses about Jesus’ siblings, the pressing concern was with Mary’s integrity itself, while the siblings were usually of interest only insofar as they were to be explained away. In these pro-perpetual virginity exegetes, this is almost a reflexive move.
By contrast, to my knowledge, Eusebius never says directly what he thinks about the Mary’s lifelong virginity or the exact nature of the siblinghood. Compared to other early Christian commentators, however, his coyness is striking. Paired with an earlier witness like Hegesippus, my suspicion is that Eusebius may have kept his real opinion to himself, perhaps letting his historical narrative speak for itself.
Another, perhaps even more inflammatory reading: perhaps Eusebius wasn’t particularly sure or didn’t really care. Unsettling thought it can sometimes be , it is simply the case that intelligent ancient Christians did not assign the same stakes to all the controversies that most occupy us today.
For an introduction to the text, see Michael J. Hollerich, “Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms and Its Place in the Origins of Christian Biblical Scholarship,” in Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations, ed. Jeremy Schott and Aaron Johnson, Hellenic Studies 60 (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013), 151–67. ↑
Commentarii in Psalmos, PG 23:737–40. My translation. ↑