Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, History (Arts and Sciences)

In the broad stream of ancient Christian thought, one finds varying understandings of Jesus's mother Mary and the meaning of her virginity. Despite little evidence in the Bible itself to support the view, some early Christians came to assert her “perpetual virginity.” This idea came out of legends found in apocryphal texts, whose contents alleged that Mary had retained her virginal status through the entirety of her life, even after Jesus's birth and her apparent marriage to Joseph. By the late fourth century, belief in Mary's perpetual virginity had become the dominant though not universal perspective found among Christian theological authorities. Several passages in Scripture, however, remained a problem for this camp, not least selections from the New Testament suggesting that Jesus had siblings, which implicitly challenged the permanence of Mary's abstinence. In order to surmount this hurdle, the church father, biblical scholar, and polemicist Jerome argued that these “brothers” were in fact cousins, not siblings in a literal sense. While this overcame the Scriptural problem, it also deliberately contradicted the well-established, popular traditions that were based in the apocrypha. This study examines the immediate response to his new theory in the fourth and fifth centuries. By measuring the reaction from Jerome's contemporaries and later readers, it draws conclusions about the nature of late antique theological dialogue and the development of Christian dogma from its ancient origins into the middle ages.

Committee: Jaclyn Maxwell Dr. (Advisor); Kevin Uhalde Dr. (Committee Member); Miriam Shadis Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Ancient Civilizations; Ancient History; Biblical Studies; Classical Studies; History; Medieval History; Religious History; Theology