Dear George,


If you look at Mark, chapter 6, verse 3, you will discover that the author says, quoting a member of the crowd speaking of Jesus: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, Simon and Judas, and are not his sisters here with us?" and they took offence at him.

I submit that to call Jesus "the son of Mary" is to assert that he is the son of a woman. That is, incidentally, the only time in the first gospel that the mother of Jesus is called "Mary." It is also in the first-century Jewish world an insult to refer to a grown man as the son of a woman. As a matter of fact there is no hint in Mark that the mother of Jesus was a virgin. Indeed in Mark 3:21 and 31-35, she is portrayed as thinking Jesus is "beside himself" and goes to take him away. The story of the virgin Mary is a ninth-decade addition to the Christian story introduced by Matthew, retold by Luke and then denied by John, who calls Jesus the "son of Joseph" on two occasions.