Note 15 — Chapter XV · THE METHOD OF M. LOISY

We are not here concerned with the exegesis of those Fathers who desired to save the perpetual virginity of Mary; our business is simply with the texts. And we can but say that if, with M. Loisy, we make the Mary of chapter xv another Mary than her of chapter vi, we are bound on the same principle to find a third and a fourth Mary in “the mother of Joses” (xv, 47) and the “mother of James and Salome” (xvi, 1).15 It will really not do. The mythological theory, which traces the mourning Maries to an ancient liturgy of a God-sacrifice and finds the mother-Mary of chapter vi an alien element, may seem to M. Loisy superficial, but it meets a problem which he simply evades.