How Early Activities, Not Just Early Language, Contradict Mary's Perpetual Virginity

Some of the evidence against Mary's perpetual virginity is linguistic, but not all of it is. I want to provide an overview of that fact, an overview that will respond to the concept of perpetual virginity in general. The applicability of each point I'll make will depend on which view of perpetual virginity somebody holds. I'm not suggesting that each point is equally applicable to every view of Mary's perpetual virginity.

The marriage between Joseph and Mary is evidence against her being a perpetual virgin, and the marriage involves activity rather than just being linguistic evidence. Marriage wouldn't have to involve sexual activity, but encourages it, typically involves it, and typically does so as a significantly prominent part of the relationship. Keep in mind that Joseph and Mary were engaged prior to finding out about the conception of Jesus, so you can't appeal to a desire on their part to provide a mother/father context for raising a child resulting from a virginal conception. And the idea that Luke 1:34 is alluding to a vow of perpetual virginity is highly unlikely. See here for a discussion of that subject. If there was a desire for a mother/father setting for the raising of Jesus, a desire on God's part or on the part of Joseph and Mary, why not think there was also a desire for the usual human experience of having siblings, most often siblings from the same parents (as with so many Old Testament figures, including ones Jesus is often paralleled to)? If there was a desire to avoid what's involved in having other children, in order to focus on Jesus, then why did Mary have a husband with several children from a previous marriage? As the New Testament passages about those other children illustrate, Jesus' siblings were often involved in Joseph and Mary's lives, including in opposition to Jesus. The most straightforward way to take the marriage between Joseph and Mary is that it involved the usual sexual relationship in whatever ways aren't excluded by the relevant sources. The earliest Christians explicitly and repeatedly excluded sexual activity up to the time of Jesus' birth. They show no concern for excluding it afterward, but instead suggest, in a large variety of ways, that the usual marital relationship followed the birth of Jesus.

Think of how Jesus' brothers are sometimes referred to as being with Mary and are mentioned just after her (Matthew 12:46, John 2:12, Acts 1:14). Cousins or older children from a previous marriage of Joseph could be with Mary and keep getting mentioned just after her, but younger siblings offer the most efficient explanation. Not only would later children born of Mary best explain the "brothers" language, but they'd also be the best candidates for individuals mentioned just after Mary and referred to as being with Mary (younger siblings of Jesus being better candidates for being with Mary because of their younger age, their closer relationship with Mary, and the efficiency of explaining their group activities by their living in the same house rather than different ones). Similarly, when the people of Nazareth mention Jesus' brothers and sisters (Matthew 13:55-56), later children of Mary offer the best explanation for why they'd bring up those brothers and sisters. The surrounding context is focused on Jesus' immediate family (the mentioning of Joseph, the mentioning of Mary), so brothers and sisters from his immediate family would make the most sense in that context.

They also make the most sense of the absence of any reference to other more distant relatives. If the "brothers" and "sisters" were cousins of Jesus, why not also mention uncles, aunts, etc.?

And notice the cumulative effect. It's very unlikely that more distant relatives of Jesus (not younger siblings born of Mary) would happen to keep appearing in contexts that would more naturally involve younger siblings born of Mary. Are we to believe that Mary kept appearing, in multiple contexts, with the same more distant relatives and that the people of Nazareth chose to mention the same type of relatives outside Jesus' immediate family ("brothers", "sisters") just after mentioning members of his immediate family, all the while leaving out other relatives outside his immediate family?

The presence of younger siblings of Jesus in Luke 2:41-52 (among the "relatives" of verse 44) helps explain why the absence of Jesus would have been unnoticed for a while. The failure to notice his absence is harder to explain if Jesus was the only child his parents had to care for and the only child of Joseph and Mary other relatives had to account for.

The fact that multiple brothers of Jesus were still traveling and had a living wife, who was in good enough shape to also travel, as late as the time when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (9:5) makes more sense if the brothers weren't children of Joseph from a previous marriage. James' still being alive (as suggested by Acts) and so active and considered such a threat to the Jewish authorities as late as the 60s (as stated by Josephus and other sources who commented on James' death) likewise makes more sense if he was a younger sibling of Jesus rather than an older one. And these points about how old the brothers were are more significant the older you think Joseph was at the time of his marriage to Mary. If he was as old as has often been suggested at the time of his marriage to Mary, then a significantly older age for James is implied. If it's going to be claimed that the brothers and sisters were children of Joseph from a former marriage, but were only a little older than Jesus, see here for a discussion of some problems that view runs into in the New Testament accounts of Jesus' childhood. Furthermore, even under the proposal that they were only a little older than Jesus, the view that they were younger brothers instead still makes more sense. It doesn't have to make maximally more sense in order to be the better explanation.

There's no justification for thinking Joseph was involved in a previous marriage and had children in that marriage. Jesus' having cousins is a given, but a previous marriage of Joseph involving children isn't. The view that Jesus' brothers and sisters are cousins has some advantages over the view that they're children of Joseph from a former marriage, but the view that they're children from a former marriage has the advantage in other contexts. Both views make less sense of the evidence than the view that Mary gave birth to other children after Jesus.

Another factor that isn't just linguistic is how belief in Mary's perpetual virginity developed over time. Nobody mentions it early on. Once it appears in the historical record, it takes on significantly different forms in different sources while being accompanied by opposition to the concept. Some sources thought the brothers and sisters of Jesus were children from a previous marriage of Joseph, ranging from the partial expression of that view with a lot of accompanying inaccuracies and other problems in the Protevangelium Of James to more credible treatments of the view in other sources. Others thought the brothers and sisters were cousins. Some patristic sources rejected virginity in partu while accepting other aspects of her perpetual virginity. And there was disagreement over how important the doctrine is. See here for more about some of these issues. The doctrine's history looks like a concept that was originally absent and contradicted, but arose later and gradually developed in significantly different ways among different sources, not an apostolic tradition always held by the church.