Matthew 1:25

καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν … υἱόν : absolute habitual (note the imperfect) abstinence from marital intercourse, the sole purpose of the hastened marriage being to legitimise the child. ἕως : not till then, and afterwards? Here comes in a quæstio vexata of theology. Patristic and catholic authors say: not till then and never at all, guarding the sacredness of the virgin's womb. ἕως does not settle the question. It is easy to cite instances of its use as fixing a limit up to which a specified event did not occur, when as a matter of fact it did not occur at all. E.g., Genesis 8:7; the raven returned not till the waters were dried up; in fact, never returned (Schanz). But the presumption is all the other way in the case before us. Subsequent intercourse was the natural, if not the necessary, course of things. If the evangelist had felt as the Catholics do, he would have taken pains to prevent misunderstanding. υἱόν : the extended reading (T. R.) is imported from Luke 2:7, where there are no variants. πρωτότοκον is not a stumbling-block to the champions of the perpetual virginity, because the first may be the only. Euthymius quotes in proof Isaiah 44:6 : “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God.” καὶ ἐκάλεσεν, he (not she) called the child Jesus, the statement referring back to the command of the angel to Joseph. Wünsche says that before the Exile the mother, after the Exile the father, gave the name to the child at circumcision (Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der Evangelien, p. 11).