Holding by that assumption, M. Loisy is forced to violent measures to reconcile the isolated Marcan mention of "the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon" with the repeated mentions in the closing chapters of (1) "Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses and Salome; who when he was in Galilee followed [Jesus] and ministered unto him"; (2) "Mary the mother of Joses"; and (3) "Mary the mother of James and Salome." In these closing chapters this Mary the mother of James and Joses and Salome figures first as simply one who followed and ministered to Jesus, then as the mother of Joses, then as the mother of James and Salome, but never as the mother of Jesus. By what right does M. Loisy extract his certitude from the prior text?
His simple course is to decide that Mary the mother of James and of Joses and of Salome in the closing chapters is not Mary the mother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon in chapter vi. "Certain Fathers," he had noted in his great work on the Synoptics (citing in particular Chrysostom), "desirous of making the synoptics accord with John, identify Mary the mother of James and Joses [in ch. xv] with the mother of Jesus; but it is evident that if the synoptics had thought of the mother of the Saviour they would not have thus designated her." [152] Precisely! And if the Gospel of Mark in its original form had contained the passage in chapter vi, how could it possibly have spoken in chapter xv of a Mary the mother of James and Joses without indicating either that she was or was not the same Mary? Would it have deliberately specified two Maries, each the mother of a James and a Joses, without a word of differentiation?
To the faithful critic there is only one course open. He is bound to conclude that the passage in chapter vi is a late interpolation, the work of an inventor who had perhaps either accepted or anticipated the Johannine record that Mary the mother of Jesus was present at the crucifixion, but who did not--perhaps in his copy of Mark could not--completely carry out his purpose by making the Mary at the crucifixion the mother of the crucified Lord.
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). [153] 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.