Much of the traditional case for this belief, which has no direct justification in scripture, was based on allegorical use of Ezekiel 44.2, which talks about the shutting of a gate which only the Lord could enter. This was then bolstered by the forced Greek and Latin reading of Isaiah’s original Hebrew prophecy that a young woman would conceive a son, Immanuel (Isaiah 7.14; see p. 81). Erasmus could not read these texts as Jerome had done. In response to shocked complaints about his comments, he set out a precise position: ‘We believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, although it is not
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