Advocates of the perpetual virginity of Mary sometimes acknowledge that there was opposition to the concept before Helvidius. They'll sometimes acknowledge that Tertullian didn't think Mary was a perpetual virgin, for example. However, some of them claim that Helvidius was the first source we know of who held that view. What I want to do in this post is discuss a line of evidence that can be brought up against that claim, some evidence that they'll likely accept more easily than they'd accept an argument that somebody like Luke or Irenaeus denied Mary's perpetual virginity.
Around the middle of the fourth century, Hilary of Poitiers wrote the following about the closing verses of Matthew 1:
"And yet some very depraved men take from this the basis of their view that there were many brothers of our Lord as a point of tradition. If there had been sons of Mary who were not rather produced from a previous marriage of Joseph's, Mary never would have been transferred to the apostle John as his mother at the time of the Passion, nor would the Lord have said to them both, 'Woman, behold your son,' and to John, 'Behold your mother,' unless perhaps he was leaving his disciple's filial love in order to comfort her who was left behind." (D.H. Williams, trans., St. Hilary Of Poitiers: Commentary On Matthew [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012], section 1:4 in the commentary, pp. 45-46)
Hilary wrote his commentary a few decades before Jerome's response to Helvidius. And Hilary uses the plural "men" to refer to these individuals and refers to how they considered their view a "tradition". People sometimes refer to one individual with the plural, but the more natural way to take Hilary's language is that more than one individual is involved. And "tradition" is typically used to refer to something that's believed to extend back in time before the recipients. You could use "tradition" to refer to starting something that you hope will be maintained over time, but the term seems to be used more often of something that's thought to extend into the past, not something you hope will extend into the future. So, it looks like Hilary is referring to multiple individuals who interpreted Matthew 1 in a way that contradicts Mary's perpetual virginity and considered that view a tradition they had inherited. That's good evidence that opposition to the perpetual virginity of Mary predates Helvidius, and that opposition could easily go back multiple generations before him.
That's enough to make the primary point I want to make in this post, but I also want to address some other issues. Somebody who believes in Mary's perpetual virginity could acknowledge my main point, which I made above, yet raise other objections on the basis of what Hilary said. What about the anonymity of the sources Hilary mentions, the reference to them as "very depraved", and Hilary's counterargument to their position?
We all rely on unnamed sources in many contexts: the scribes who produced Biblical manuscripts, the scribes who produced patristic manuscripts, patristic documents whose author is unknown (e.g., the Didache, the Epistle Of Barnabas), the sources behind archeological artifacts, etc. Advocates of Mary's perpetual virginity often cite the pseudonymous Protevangelium Of James, catacomb inscriptions from unknown sources, unnamed opponents of Tertullian who practiced infant baptism, and so on. Named sources are better than unnamed ones, and more prominent sources are better than less prominent ones, but a source doesn't need to have maximal significance in order to have significance to some degree.
The description of Hilary's opponents as "very depraved" could indicate some relevant fault on their part, but it could easily not involve anything substantial. It was common in the ancient world, as it is today, for people to refer to their opponents with that sort of language for reasons that other people would consider inadequate to justify the language. Hilary gives no indication that these men were morally or otherwise blameworthy in any relevant way. If he had some independent grounds for condemning them, it would have been in his interest to have brought that up. The best explanation for Hilary's language seems to be that he considered opposition to Mary's perpetual virginity enough to make somebody "very depraved". He provides no further explanation, since he thinks their position on Mary's virginity is a sufficient explanation. As I've discussed elsewhere, here and here, other ancient advocates of the perpetual virginity of Mary were less critical of their opponents. Consider some examples of the use of language like Hilary's in other contexts. Think of how Hippolytus (or whoever else you think wrote the document in question) referred to the Roman bishop Zephyrinus as "an uninformed and shamefully corrupt man", being "enticed" into "wicked tenets", etc. (The Refutation Of All Heresies 9:2) He goes on in the same section to refer to how Zephyrinus and the man who would be the next bishop of Rome, Callistus, "confessed their errors for a short period, but after a little, wallow once again in the same mire". He later refers to Callistus as "the impostor" and describes him as being outside the church (9:7). He comments, in the same section, on how Callistus was "conniving with men in regard of their indulgence in sensual pleasures, saying that all had their sins forgiven by himself". Such comments don't prevent Roman Catholics from considering Zephyrinus and Callistus Popes and Saints and others from agreeing with Zephyrinus and Callistus and citing them as sources in various contexts. Or think of the sort of language Jerome applied to his opponents, like Rufinus. Thomas Scheck refers to "the malicious and unjust attacks on his [Rufinus'] character and orthodoxy by St. Jerome....In the heat of the Origenist controversy, St. Jerome vilified Rufinus, St. Ambrose, and St. John Chrysostom, attempting to blacken the reputation of all three men for subsequent generations. Only in the case of Rufinus has the cloud of suspicion lingered till the present day." (Origen: Commentary On The Epistle To The Romans, Books 1-5 [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2001], 10-11) Jerome behaved similarly toward less prominent individuals, including Helvidius. Modern discussions of the perpetual virginity of Mary often involve the same kind of excessive rhetoric, on both sides (people who oppose Mary's perpetual virginity supposedly "hate Mary", people who believe in her perpetual virginity supposedly are "idolaters", etc.). That seems to be the nature of Hilary's comment as well. But even if the men he was responding to were "very depraved" in some relevant way, they'd still provide evidence of people holding the view in question during the timeframe in question.
What about Hilary's appeal to John 19:26-27? The individuals referred to as Jesus' "brothers" and "sisters" seem to be relatives of some type, based on not only the language applied to them, but also some other factors involved, such as how they appear together alongside Mary and are mentioned along with Joseph and Mary in Matthew 13:55-56. So, any view of the perpetual virginity of Mary has to account for why Jesus didn't entrust Mary to those relatives, whatever sort of relatives you think they were. The best explanation is that those relatives were unbelievers at the time. The fact that some or all of them would become believers later, even shortly afterward (Acts 1:14), doesn't have much relevance, since Mary needed to be cared for before then, and becoming a Christian isn't the same as having the sort of maturity as a Christian that somebody like John had. Even if somebody thought the John 19 passage is evidence for Mary's perpetual virginity, the lines of evidence against her perpetual virginity (like the ones discussed here) are more numerous and carry more weight.
My focus here, though, is on the evidence that opposition to Mary's perpetual virginity predates Helvidius. Hilary's comments suggest it does, regardless of what you make of what he said about other issues, like the John 19 passage. As I said earlier, it would be difficult to get most advocates of Mary's perpetual virginity to admit that somebody like Luke or Irenaeus opposed the concept. It's much easier to get them to admit that the "very depraved" men Hilary referred to did so and appealed to an earlier tradition in support of their view in the process. You shouldn't stop there, but it's a good start.
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