Where Have All the Critics Gone? Reflections on the Roman Catholic Response to the Phrase Heos Hou in Matthew 1:25

It has been a couple of years since my book Who Is My Mother? was released by Calvary Press—a book which, at least for the first few chapters, demonstrates why the Roman Catholic view of Mary’s perpetual virginity is biblically untenable; not least of which is the proper understanding of the Greek phrase heos hou in Matt 1:25. Even before the book was released, there were grandiose promises of refutations (the word “destroy” was a common buzz word at the time) coming from the usual suspects, including Robert Sungenis and two or three of his spin-off sidekicks. Once the book was released, the “destroy” rhetoric increased, culminating in several Internet articles, at least one magazine article, and a book project that set out to refute my work. I thought it might be instructive, therefore, to review just how my thesis (not to mention my book as a whole) has been received and rejoined by the Roman Catholic apologetic crowd.

One of the first attempts at a refutation was the promise of a CAI (Catholic Apologetics International) book that was to be written by a novice with no training in Greek. The book prospect was heavily promoted by CAI, and was touted as a major refutation of Who Is My Mother?, with all the attendant blustering “destroy” language that so typifies the Roman Catholic side of this issue. When I raised the objection to CAI’s founder and president, Robert Sungenis, that he should be ashamed of himself for allowing someone who doesn’t even know the Greek language to write a full-length book answering my arguments (which, after all, are arguments based on Greek syntax and usage), he assured the watching world that there was no cause for concern since he himself would “help” his young sidekick with the Greek.

We later witnessed, in two glaring examples, the kind of “help with the Greek” Sungenis was providing his sidekick. In the first example, Sungenis, responding to a post from Mike Taylor in a discussion forum, wrote the following:

You can add your shoddy research to your new nickname: Mike "I know enough Greek to get me into trouble" Taylor. Or how about this: "Mike ‘no ginosko greco' Taylor." For all those who don't know Greek, that translates as: "Mike ‘I don't know Greek' Taylor

For the benefit of those who don’t know Greek, only one of the words in Sungenis’ phrase is in fact Greek (ginosko = “I know”). The other words (“no” and “greco”) should have been ou and hellenisti respectively (even then, the syntax and word forms would have been wrong).

The second attempt at a refutation of my thesis also acted as a confirmation of  Sungenis’ incompetence with the Greek language, and therefore his lack of qualification to “help” his sidekick with the Greek of his book. This example came in the form of a “Q & A” article addressing my thesis regarding the phrase heos hou in Matt 1:25 (http://www.catholicintl.com/epologetics/questions/heoshou.html). I responded to this article (http://www.ntrmin.org/sungenis_and_heos_hou.htm), which prompted a subsequent dialogue that culminated in a response from me that has yet to be answered by Sungenis (http://www.ntrmin.org/sungenis_and_heos_hou_2.htm). That dialogue revealed just how inept Sungenis’ knowledge of the Greek language really is, as well as his inability to read Greek grammars with understanding. In any case, Sungenis fell far short of disproving my thesis regarding heos hou. Other attempts have been equally inept, most of them coming from members of the Roman Catholic apologetic community who are even less knowledgeable of the Greek language than Sungenis.

One curious attempt to refute my thesis appeared in an article published by Patrick Madrid’s Envoy Magazine, titled “He's an Only Child: A bogus Greek argument against Mary's perpetual virginity is making the rounds.” The author of the article, Ronald K. Tacelli, S.J., is a priest who teaches at Boston College. I had seen this article a couple of years ago when it was first brought to my attention, and decided after a quick perusal that he had not only misrepresented my thesis but also missed all the relevant points of the Greek language. I have only recently revisited the article to examine it in detail. My new-found interest in it was prompted by a statement from Gerry Matatics during his recent debate with James White in Salt Lake City, in which Mr. Matatics claimed that Tacelli “blasted [my heos hou thesis] to smithereens.”

Such a statement warrants a second look at the article. As many of you know, I debated Matatics on this very issue in February 1999; and those who have listened to that debate know that Gerry didn’t fare well under cross examination on this point. I assumed, based on his poor performance during the debate, that Mr. Matatics would have looked for better arguments than those he posed at my debate with him. Sadly, Matatics repeated the same errors in his debate with James White that were refuted in his debate with me. In addition, he provided a ringing endorsement of Tacelli’s article; and so the question remains, Does Tacelli’s article provide a meaningful refutation of my research? We’ll examine Tacelli’s article below and let the reader decide on its merits.

Although Tacelli does not mention me by name (a rather odd practice of the contributors to Envoy magazine), he spends the first page of his article quoting my words and misrepresenting my thesis. He thinks my argument is that “in the New Testament heos hou always indicates reversal of the preceding clause - or so [he] claim[s].” In fact, I emphatically do not hold this; and if he had given my thesis the thorough reading he should have given it, he would know that in reality my thesis is that in the New Testament heos hou, when it means “until” (it sometimes means “while”) always implies a cessation (not a reversal) of the action of the main clause once the “until” has been reached. Tacelli then spends the lion’s share of his second page providing English examples of where the word “until” does not have to imply a reversal of the action of the main clause after the “until” has been reached. Since, obviously, English and Greek are going to have different rules, that argument stands as its own refutation.

Tacelli assures us that he has provided “several Greek scholars” with printed versions of my thesis, all of whom, we’re told, “laughed, treating them with scornful derision.” Once might well ask, Who are these “Greek scholars”? Tacelli provides no names (a convenient rhetorical device to be sure, but one not very convincing to those looking for proof), and so we’re left wondering (1) whether these “scholars” actually exist, and (2) if they exist, what is the caliber of their expertise in this specific issue? Surely they are not suggesting that examining a specific Greek construction and finding that its usage is different in connotation from the usage of the individual words that make up that construction is somehow a novel pursuit, are they? This is, in fact, what New Testament scholars do on a regular basis—an activity apparently unknown to Tacelli, but one which I know well since I have been rigorously trained in it, both at the masters and at the doctoral level. Will Tacelli’s “Greek scholars” also “laugh and treat with derision” the findings of C.K. Barrett, F.F. Bruce and a host of other New Testament scholars, each of whom has concluded that there is a difference in connotation between the Greek construction achri hou (semantically equivalent to heos hou), and the word achri by itself—an observation, note well, that comes not by appealing to the basic meaning of a word, but only by assiduously examining each and every occurrence of both the construction and the words that make up that construction, and then comparing and contracting the findings? If so, I would summarily dismiss the exegetical abilities of these so-called Greek scholars, and so would the rest of the world of New Testament scholarship.

Tacelli then addresses what he considers to be the “hard evidence,” citing two specific examples of heos hou from the New Testament that he thinks overturn my thesis. Both examples are found in my book, along with full exegetical defenses of why they are not exceptions to the rule. In the first of these, Acts 25:21, Paul is being held in Caesarea until he can be sent to Rome. Festus explains to King Agrippa, “When Paul made his appeal to be held over for the Emperor's decision, I ordered him held until I could send him to Caesar" (NIV). Tacelli comments on this verse accordingly:

Now when St. Paul was to be sent on, he was surely going to remain in custody; for his original request was to be kept in custody until the Emperor's verdict. Hence the use of heos hou in this verse does not imply that Paul ceased to be kept in custody after he had been remanded to Caesar. It implies the very opposite.

Tacelli misses the point of the passage completely. In the first place the Greek does not say that Festus held Paul in custody. The Greek word used here is simply “kept” (tēreō), and the verse simply states that Festus “kept” Paul until he could send him to Caesar. The question becomes, Kept where or in what way? The plain meaning in context is that Festus “kept” Paul in Caesarea as opposed to sending him back to Jerusalem (the request of the Jews) to stand trial (vv. 15-20). The point here is not one of “custody,” but location. Obviously, once Paul had been sent to Caesar (Rome) he was no longer “kept” in Caesarea. Hence, heos hou in this verse functions in its normal way, indicating cessation of the action of the main clause once the “until” has been reached.

The second instance of heos hou that Tacelli raises as a counter example is 2 Pet 1:19: “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” Tacelli concludes from this verse:

Clearly, St. Peter was not insinuating that we should cease being attentive to the truths he was presenting after “the day dawns and the morning star rises in [our] hearts.” Here, as in Matthew 1:25, heos hou does not imply a change.

But, once again, Tacelli misses the point of the passage. Peter is not addressing truth as a category, but specifically “the word of the prophets” that are subsequently inscripturated (vv. 20-21). Scripture then is compared to a “shining light.” The “dark place” is this present age through which the Scriptures give us safe passage. The phrase “day dawns and the morning star rises” is doubtless a reference to the parousia (second coming of Christ), after which it will no longer be necessary to turn to the word of the prophets as a guide which navigates us through a dark place, since Christ himself will supersede any such need. Hence, once the “until” is reached at Christ’s coming, we will no longer “see through a mirror dimly,” or “know in part”; rather we will “see face to face,” and “know fully just as we also have been known” (1 Cor 13:12). Once again, when we read the passage aright, we see that heos hou retains its normal usage.

Tacelli continues in his critique of my thesis:

But suppose all this is wrong. Suppose that, apart from Matthew 1:25, every occurrence of heos hou in the New Testament clearly indicates a reversal of the main clause. That would still not prove that reversal is implied by Matthew 1:25. It would merely prove that Matthew 1:25 may be the only place in the New Testament where reversal is not implied.

This single statement betrays the heart and soul of Roman Catholic exegesis—which is, in reality, eisegesis, and amounts to little more than special pleading. Tacelli’s statement betrays he knows very little about how New Testament exegesis is done. How many arguments for cultic beliefs could be justified on these same grounds? But, Tacelli’s statement also acts as one nail (of two, see below) in the coffin of Tacelli’s thesis. In order for one to posit a single exception to the established grammatical usage of a word or phrase, there must be something in the context of the passage in question that forces us to abandon the normal sense and adopt a different meaning. Yet, there is absolutely nothing in the context that does this, as Tacelli candidly admits in his closing:

But beyond all this, it's the surrounding context, not words considered simply in themselves, that will usually tip the balance of interpretation. If we hear someone say: "I'm not going to eat anything until Thursday," we figure that come Thursday he's going to eat something - because people normally eat. Likewise when we read that a married couple did not have intercourse until a certain time, we figure that they did have intercourse after that time - because this is one of the ways married people normally express their love.

Here Tacelli concedes that the normal reading of Matt 1:25 is that Mary and Joseph did indeed engage in sexual relations after the birth of Christ. Hence, there are neither exegetical nor contextual grounds for reading Matt 1:25 in the Roman Catholic way.

Yet, this “possible exception” argument is all that Roman Catholic apologists are left with. At the end of the day, Roman Catholics base their belief in this doctrine (as they do with all other uniquely Roman Catholic doctrines) on what the text “can mean,” or “doesn’t have to mean,” rather than on what the text in fact does mean based on sound exegetical considerations.

Tacelli continues:

If this is supposed to be a linguistic argument, we need to ask ourselves: Did heos hou really have a range of meaning significantly different from heos all by itself? Is there evidence that between (say) 300 B.C. and 300 A.D., Greek speakers recognized that heos hou, unlike heos by itself, always implied reversal or cessation of what is expressed in the main clause? The answer is no. One Greek text well known to the authors of the New Testament was the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It was in place roughly two hundred years before Christ. And there, lo and behold, we find that heos hou does not always indicate reversal or cessation. In Psalm 111 (112):8 we read: "His heart is steadfast, he shall not be afraid until [heos hou] he looks down upon his foes." Obviously the man who delights in the Lord's commands is going to continue to have a steadfast heart and to be unafraid even after he looks down upon his foes.

Tacelli has engaged in quite a leap here. Cognizant of the fact that there is not even one instance of heos hou in the literature of the New Testament era to support his reading of Matt 1:25, he turns anachronistically to literature that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. No one claims that heos hou never carried the connotation that Tacelli needs for his view of Matt 1:25 to be true—in fact, I freely acknowledge this in my research; and if Tacelli had just read it first, he could have avoided a plethora of exegetical blunders in his article.

Instead, once again, Tacelli betrays a woeful lack of knowledge about Greek studies. Yes, the Septuagint was “in place roughly two hundred years before Christ,” which is one reason it is irrelevant to the discussion. As I mentioned in my responses to Sungenis (for which, see the links above), the approach to Greek grammar that states we should trace a word or phrase throughout the Classical period, the Hellenistic period, and the Modern period, and then roll all the meanings we find into one neat little package called a “semantic range,” has been roundly rejected by modern Greek scholarship. That approach (known as the diachronic approach), practiced by Greek grammarians in the nineteenth century, has been shown time and again to be deficient due to its neglect in taking into account the phenomenon D.A. Carson calls semantic obsolescence, according to which any word or phrase in the Greek language (or any other language, for that matter) is susceptible to etymological changes, many of which occur in very short order even within the same language period (for more information on this phenomenon, see Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies). That is why one cannot simply bypass the established usage of the era in which a word or phrase occurs (as Tacelli has done in his article), reach 250 years into the past—or worse, the same amount of time into the future!—and pronounce a verdict on what a word could have meant in an era in which it demonstrably did not mean that.

It would be one thing if the number of occurrences of this word or phrase were limited in the era under examination. In such a case, we might want to look beyond the era to see how that word or phrase was used in other eras. That is not the case with heos hou. This construction (along with its cognate heos hotou) occurs twenty-two times in the New Testament, and nearly fifty times in the Hellenistic literature outside of the New Testament. That, by any standard, is a sufficient number of occurrences to establish usage; and what we find is that heos hou, in the New Testament era, never carries the meaning Tacelli and other Roman Catholics need it to mean in Matt 1:25 for their position to be true.

But Tacelli is not finished. He continues by instructing us to “skip ahead now to the third century A.D.,” and then commends to us the writings of Clement of Alexandria. We must stop Tacelli in his tracks here. Why, we must ask, are we required to skip ahead two centuries after the writing of Matthew’s gospel to find some “evidence” for Tacelli’s position? If Tacelli’s proposed usage for heos hou in Matt 1:25 is legitimate, shouldn’t we be able to find at least one unambiguous example of this usage in the literature of the New Testament era? The phrase occurs some seventy times in that literature, after all. Yet, Tacelli is unable to unearth even one example that would fit his proposed usage? Incredible! That, I submit, is one of the most telling arguments against Tacelli’s position. Nevertheless, let’s look at this proposed example from Clement that Tacelli thinks offers proof of his position:

Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Thus thirty years were completed until [heos hou] He [Jesus] suffered" (Stromateis, 1.21; Patrologia Graeca, 8.885a). There is no reversal of the main clause here; once again, heos hou is equivalent to "before." So two hundred years before the New Testament and two hundred years after the New Testament, heos hou could be used, like heos all by itself, to mean extent of time up to a point - but with no negation of the idea expressed in the main clause.

Actually, any close reader of this passage must reject Tacelli’s observations. There is, indeed, a cessation (again, not “reversal”) of the action of the main clause after the “until” has been reached. In this passage, Clement is recounting a chronology of the history of the world in order to establish the date of Jesus’ birth, and he does so by establishing benchmarks of time taken from commonly known events. The fuller passage reads: “in fifteen years of Tiberius and fifteen years of Augustus; thirty years were completed until He suffered.” This passage is surrounded by two other events: “From Julius Caesar, therefore, to the death of Commodus, are two hundred and thirty-six years, six months”; and “from the time that He suffered till the destruction of Jerusalem are forty-two years and three months; and from the destruction of Jerusalem to the death of Commodus, a hundred and twenty-eight years, ten months, and three days. From the birth of Christ, therefore, to the death of Commodus are, in all, a hundred and ninety-four years, one month, thirteen days.” Once each time period has been taken into account, Clement expects us to eliminate it from the chronology; that is to say, it no longer “continues,” since it is superceded by its succeeding time period. Hence, the “thirty years” which refer to the Jesus’ mortal life are “completed” upon the event of his death in the recounting of the chronology. The action of counting those thirty years does indeed cease once they have been counted in the chronology. Hence, even this passage does not offer support for Tacelli’s position. Tacelli continues:

Do our Cyberspace Savants really expect anyone to believe that for a brief period in the middle of this consistent usage, heos hou suddenly had to indicate reversal of the main clause? Or maybe they think that the New Testament was written in a special kind of Greek - one raised uniquely above the mundane flow of usage that preceded and followed it. Or maybe they're blowing smoke concerning a language they really don't know very much about. Or maybe these Protestant apologists do know a good deal about Greek, but they are either ignorant of this particular issue (and are trumpeting their ignorance over the Internet), or they do know their argument has no merit on linguistic grounds and are sneakily persisting in using it.

Tacelli’s emotion-laden options aside, we have already shown that the example of Clement offers no proof of Tacelli’s position. Yet, even if Tacelli were to find an example of his proposed usage in the third century, it would be of little value. The very thing at which Tacelli seemingly marvels (“Do our Cyberspace Savants really expect anyone to believe that for a brief period in the middle of this consistent usage, heos hou suddenly had to indicate reversal of the main clause?”) is in fact how New Testament exegesis is done—Tacelli’s obvious ignorance of this discipline notwithstanding. No one in New Testament scholarship reaches to third-century usage of a word or phrase to determine its New Testament meaning when there is an abundance of instances of this word or phrase in the era of the New Testament itself. Such a practice simply betrays a desperate (albeit vain) attempt to find some last bastion of evidence to support an otherwise untenable position. This is not the approach of a scholar, but of a polemicist.

Amazingly enough, Tacelli continues by removing himself even further from the New Testament era and appealing to a writing of Chrysostom, a fourth-century father:

But regardless of how well or poorly these men know Greek, St. John Chrysostom, one of the greatest early Church Fathers, surely knew the Greek language immensely well (he wrote and spoke it fluently) and was sensitive to its every nuance. Let's look at what he had to say on the subject of Mary's perpetual virginity and the meaning of heos hou. In his sermons on St. Matthew's Gospel (cf. Patrologia Graeca, 7.58), St. John Chrysostom quotes Matthew 1:25 and then asks, "But why . . . did [St. Matthew] use the word 'until'?" Note well here: In quoting the verse, Chrysostom had used heos hou; but in asking the question, the word he uses for "until" is heos all by itself - as if he were unaware of a difference in meaning between these two expressions. . . . It's clear that for St. John Chrysostom, heos has exactly the same meaning as heos hou. . . . If an unbridgeable linguistic chasm separated these two expressions, how could it be that the greatest master of the Greek language in all Christendom was unaware of it? The plain answer is that there was no such chasm.

Such an observation will doubtless hold emotional appeal to those who are a priori committed to the authority of Chrysostom; but for purposes of New Testament Greek grammar, Chrysostom’s writings are completely irrelevant. How many grammarians today turn to Chrysostom (or indeed to any fourth-century writing) to establish usage for the New Testament era? Did Chrysostom know about semantic obsolescence? Did he examine every occurrence of this phrase in the literature of the first century and surrounding centuries? Of course not. And to claim, as Tacelli does, that Chrysostom was “sensitive to [the Greek language’s] every nuance” is so outlandish as to be laughable. Was Chrysostom aware of Granville Sharp’s rule regarding the article governing two nouns in regimen? Was he familiar with Colwell’s rule regarding definite predicate nouns? How about McGaughy’s rule regarding einai connecting two substantives? Or how about Goetchius’ qualifications of McGaughy’s rule? What about Porter’s aspectual theory? Or the Moeller/Kramer rule regarding consecutive accusative substantives? Or Reed’s qualifications of Moeller/Kramer? If Chrysostom was familiar with “every nuance” of Greek, where is the evidence of this?

At the end of the day it is a fairly easy task to demonstrate that Tacelli’s appeal to Chrysostom is for purely emotional and sentimental effect. Would Tacelli maintain the “greatness” of Chrysostom’s Greek savvy in his understanding of John 2:4, in which Jesus addresses his mother: “And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come’"? Chrysostom comments on this verse: “And so this was a reason why He rebuked her on that occasion, saying, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?’ instructing her for the future not to do the like” (Homilies on John, 21). Modern Roman Catholic apologists (Tacelli included) reject the notion that Jesus is rebuking his mother in this passage. They deny that the phrase “What to me and to you, Woman?” (ti emoi kai soi, gynai) is a rebuke. And yet Chrysostom, who, according to Tacelli, “surely knew the Greek language immensely well . . . and was sensitive to its every nuance,” interprets this phrase as a rebuke! What will Tacelli do with that? After all, “the greatest master of the Greek language in all Christendom” (again, Tacelli’s own words) seems to be unaware that this phrase should be interpreted in some other way than a rebuke.

Similarly with John 19, which records Jesus’ words to his disciple, "’Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” Modern Roman Catholic apologists read these words in a way that suggests the disciple (representing the church) is being entrusted to the care of Mary (who, we are told, becomes “mother of the church”). Yet, oddly enough, Chrysostom, a man whom Tacelli has touted “the greatest master of the Greek language in all Christendom” who would naturally be “sensitive to every nuance” of the Greek,” reads this passage in the opposite sense (a decidedly Evangelical way of reading it): “When He Himself was now departing, He committed her to the disciple to take care of. For since it was likely that, being His mother, she would grieve, and require protection, He with reason entrusted her to the beloved” (Homily 85.3).

Yet another example of Chrysostom’s Greek prowess is his view of Matt 12:46-50, which reads as follows:

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you." He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

 Chrysostom comments on this passage:

And therefore He answered thus in this place, and again elsewhere, “Who is My mother, and who are My brethren?” (Matt. xii. 48), because they did not yet think rightly of Him; and [Mary], because she had borne Him, claimed, according to the custom of other mothers, to direct Him in all things, when she ought to have reverenced and worshiped Him. This then was the reason why He answered as He did on that occasion. For consider what a thing it was, that when all the people high and low were standing round Him, when the multitude was intent on hearing Him, and His doctrine had begun to be set forth, she should come into the midst and take Him away from the work of exhortation, and converse with Him apart, and not even endure to come within, but draw Him outside merely to herself. This is why He said, “Who is My mother and My brethren?” (Homily on John 21, 2). . . . But today we learn in addition another thing, that even to have borne Christ in the womb, and to have brought forth that marvelous birth, has no profit, if there be not virtue. . . . But He said, ‘who is my mother, and who are my brethren?’ And this He said, not as being ashamed of His mother, nor denying her that bare Him,  . . . but as declaring that she has no advantage from this, unless she do all that is required to be done. For in fact that which she had attempted to do was of superfluous vanity; in that she wanted to show the people that she has power and authority over her Son, imagining not as yet anything great concerning Him; whence also her unseasonable approach (Homily on Matthew, 44).

No Roman Catholic apologist today (Tacelli included) would dare make such statements about the mother of Jesus—yet, this is the exegesis of “the greatest master of the Greek language in all Christendom”! Can we now expect Tacelli to subordinate his views to “One of the greatest early Church Fathers [who] surely knew the Greek language immensely well ([since] he wrote and spoke it fluently), and [who] was sensitive to its every nuance”? Not likely. That, in itself, should be sufficient evidence for anyone wholly to reject Tacelli’s emotional appeal to Chrysostom.

Tacelli offers us one more piece of evidence before his summation:

The whole "heos hou vs. heos" argument is a bunch of hooey. And both Sophocles in his Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods and Stephanus in his Thesaurus Graecae Linguae agree; they state explicitly that heos and heos hou are equivalent in meaning.

What is this “evidence” from Sophocles and Stephanus? Tacelli doesn’t say. Instead he merely asserts that two Classical (not Koine) Greek works (one sixteenth century, the other nineteenth century) somehow provide evidence for his position. Until he clarifies just what he thinks this evidence is, and how it somehow overturns the normal usage of heos hou in the Koine period, his “evidence” can act as nothing of the kind.

Finally, Tacelli sums up the evidence he has adduced for his position:

So in this corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have Sophocles, Stephanus, the Septuagint, St. John Chrysostom, and modern Greek scholars; in that corner, we have the "Pentium Pamphleteers," swashbuckling Internet polemicists who are pretty clumsy in their wielding of this particular "argument" from the Greek. If you were inclined to wager money, I'd ask you: Where would you place your bets?

We have already shown that each and every supposed “proof” in Tacelli’s corner is severely wanting. But what of the “clumsily wielded” evidence in the Evangelical corner? Is it a safe bet? We have already shown that the established usage of the phrase heos hou in the era in which the New Testament writers lived, when it means “until,” without exception indicates cessation of the action of the main clause once the “until” is reached. This is true not only of the New Testament writings themselves, but also of the Hellenistic literature of the New Testament era. Tacelli’s previous chiding criticism of our view (“Or maybe they think that the New Testament was written in a special kind of Greek - one raised uniquely above the mundane flow of usage that preceded and followed it“) is therefore misguided, and is much more accurately aimed at Tacelli’s own position. It is he who must conclude that when Matthew uses heos hou in 1:25 of his gospel, he does so in a way that is completely unattested in the usage of his own day. In such a case, Matthew would indeed have had to write 1:25 using a “special kind of Greek”—one the contradicts not only every other occurrence in the New Testament (including the rest of Matthew!), but also every occurrence in the Hellenistic literature of the day. That would indeed be remarkable.

Moreover, the lexicon of BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt and Gingrich), in its third revision, is coming closer to the distinctions we’re making, placing heos hou in the category of heos that denotes the end of a period of time (there are four additional usages of heos listed in that entry), and citing Matt 1:25 as an example of that category. One can hope that in its fourth revision BDAG will focus a little more closely on the semantic nuances of this phrase depending on its form, rather than on the form of the phrase depending on semantic nuance; and in the process begin listing as separate categories the use of heos when it means “until, but not after,” when it means “until, and continuing,” and when it means “until with no reference to continuation or discontinuation.” Sadly, BDAG simply does not address these categories (one way or the other), even though it is a distinction both sides agree is there, at least so far as the general use of heos is concerned. We shouldn't be surprised at this, however, since this is not atypical, but actually illustrative of the inherent limitations of any lexicon in addressing these kinds of issues.

Finally, my thesis successfully underwent a rigorous examination by a committee of non-evangelical scholars, who were actively looking for faults. Afterwards, it received the commendation of many other scholars who read it and willingly endorsed its exegesis, including scholars who are renowned in their respective fields, such as Prof. Craig Blomberg, Ph.D., whose credentials and work in Matthew and the Synoptic Gospels is unquestioned in New Testament scholarship (for a full list of endorsements, see http://www.ntrmin.org/who_is_my_mother.htm).

And so, contrary to Tacelli’s assertion about just who has what in which “corner,” in reality the Evangelical “corner” is occupied by the biblical, lexical, contextual, and exegetical evidence; while Tacelli’s corner is occupied by misrepresentations of my thesis, arguments from the English language, misinterpretations of two New Testament passages, misinterpretations of the writings of a third century father, example after example of semantic obsolescence, repeated demonstrations of a woeful lack of knowledge regarding how New Testament Greek exegesis is done, emotional and sentimental appeal to a fourth-century father whose views he would never want to bring up in other contexts, and a handful of unnamed “scholars” whom he claims support his view.

Tacelli closes his article with an appeal to those who, after reading his article, still believe Mary must have engaged in normal marital relations with Joseph, and as a result produced other children:

I would close with the following question I'd ask them to ponder before they deny Mary's perpetual virginity: If Joseph was a just man and a faithful Jew, if he believed that the God he worshipped, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who was present in the Holy of Holies, was present also in Mary's womb as Father of her Child - is it really likely that he would have had relations with his wife once the Child had been born?

Here Tacelli resorts to overturning what he admits at the end of the day is the plain reading of the text (see above); and he does so by asking us to ponder what kind of relationship Joseph and Mary should have been engaged in—all of which, of course, tacitly presupposes Tacelli’s Roman Catholic beliefs regarding the status of Mary as the Mother God. Yet, for those of us who view Mary as a normal woman who just happened to be used by God an extraordinary way (much the same way God used other normal biblical characters to advance redemptive history), and who do not a priori assign an exaggerated Roman Catholic status to her, Tacelli’s emotional and sentimental appeal falls to the ground. It is an exegetical fact that in every single instance where there is an encounter between Jesus and Mary in the New Testament, Jesus is at pains to establish distance between them. The New Testament writers knew of it (they are, after all, the ones who recorded it), and Evangelicals today simply hold to the same view of Mary’s status as did these writers. She was a sinful human being (like the rest of us) whom God chose to accomplish his plan of redemption. She sometimes failed in her recognition of Jesus and his mission; and when she did, she stood rebuked by him (John 2:4). In some instances in the gospels, she is portrayed as not understanding Jesus’ mission at all (Luke 2:50); in other instances she is portrayed in opposition to Jesus and His mission, judging him to be “out of His mind” (Mark 3:21, 31); while in still other instances she is among those who “do not honor” Jesus (6:3-4). (I do not have time in this short article to provided a complete exegesis of all the relevant texts; those who are interested may find this information in my book, Who Is My Mother?).

Tacelli closes his article with these words:

And if that question does not give you pause, be assured of my prayers until (heos hou) it does (and afterwards as well).

Ironically, although Tacelli clearly intends by this statement to show how heos hou can be used to indicate “until a certain point and afterwards as well,” his statement actually makes no sense when taken in that way. Tacelli’s promise of prayer is only toward those for whom his question does not give pause. We can reasonably assume, then, that the content of his prayer is that God would change the heart (or at least the thinking) of the individual with the result that they will agree with Tacelli’s view on this. Yet, clearly, once that occurs, there is no longer a need for Tacelli to pray for that particular individual. Are we really to believe that Tacelli will continue to pray that person x’s view on this will change even after his view has changed to match Tacelli’s? Obviously not. In such a case, the action of Tacelli’s main clause ceases once the until is reached. Hence, in an ironic demonstration of poetic justice, what Tacelli intends as a clever rhetorical device instead ends up illustrating the normal usage of heos hou in the New Testament era.

At the beginning of this article I mentioned that it might be instructive to review how my thesis regarding the phrase heos hou in Matt 1:25 has been received and rejoined by the Roman Catholic apologetic crowd. So, how has it been received? As you might expect, Roman Catholic apologists have not taken kindly to it. They have expressed the very scornful contempt over it that one would expect from that circle when confronted with an argument that paints them into a corner. How has it been answered? In short, it hasn’t. To date, there has not been even one substantive response to this thesis since we introduced it several years ago. All of the major Roman Catholic apologists have been answered; and the highly touted "book project" has suddenly faded into nothing. The last we heard of it, the author was begging his website readers to help him find someone who knows Greek so that he could continue the project.

Of course, there have been other articles written against my thesis as well—that goes without saying. Roman Catholic apologists write articles ad infinitum ad nauseum regarding every single issue in debate, which they then call “answers”—from “Catholic Answers” to “Dave’s Got Answers!”; and they do so seemingly under the impression that simply putting words down on paper is somehow an "answer." The end product may very well be an “answer.” That “answer,” however, is not equivalent to a meaningful response; and the present debate regarding heos hou is a glaring illustration of this point.

Eric Svendsen, Ph.D.
Director, NTRMin