An argument FOR Perpetual Virginity from Epiphanius of Salamis (1)

I finally had some time to closely work through the argumentation in favor of Mary's perpetual virginity from Epiphanius of Salamis (310/320-403). I'd like to present some of his arguments. With the one below, I'm not going to comment on it, but let it stand as it is. The argument though concludes, "the holy Virgin cannot have had marital relations."

12.1 But if we need to take the matter [Mary's perpetual virginity] up from another point of view, let's examine the findings of the naturalists. They say that a lioness never gives birth but once, for the following reason. A lion is a very fierce, grim of visage, of extremely violent strength, and, as it were, the king of beasts. (2) A lioness conceives by one male, but the implanted seed remains in the womb for a full twenty-six months. Thus the cub comes to maturity inside its mother because of the time, and already has all its teeth before it is born, and its claws fully developed, and, as they call them, its "incisors, eye-teeth and molars," and all the beast's remaining features. (3) Thus while it is in the belly it rakes it with its claws in the course of its upward and forward movements and its other twists, and scrapes the wombs and ovaries that are carrying it. And so, when the mother has come to birth,that very day her belly becomes incapable of labor. (4) For the naturalists say that the ovaries and wombs are expelled with the cub, so that the lioness no longer feels desire unless, perhaps, she is forced. And even if it should happen that she is forced to mate, she can never conceive again because she has no wombs or ovaries.

12.5 Now even this series of events has given me a notion, beneficial rather than harmful, on the subject in question. (6) If Jacob says, "Judah is a lion's whelp," as a symbol of Christ, somewhere in John's Revelation it says, "Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, and the seed of David,hath prevailed"—(when the Lord is compared to a lion it is not because of his nature, but symbolically, and because of the kingliness of the beast, bolder, strongest, and in all other respects the handsomest of the animals.) [If the Lord is a lion], then, I should call the mother who bare him a lioness; (7) how can any lion be born if the mother is not to be called a lioness? But a lioness does not conceive a second tine. Therefore Mary never conceives again; the holy Virgin cannot have had marital relations.

Frank Williams, trans., The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book II and III, pp. 609-610.