be a biological brother of Jesus. First appearance: 2nd century The virgin birth of Jesus is found in the Gospel of Matthew and possibly in Luke, but it seems to have little theological importance before the middle of the 2nd century. The 2nd century Church fathers Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, though mentioning the virgin birth, nowhere affirmed the view that Mary was a perpetual virgin. The idea is first raised in an apocryphal text called the Protoevangelium of James, composed in the second half of the 2nd century: here Mary remains a life-long virgin, Joseph is an old man who marries her without physical desire, and the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the canonical gospels are explained as Joseph's sons by an earlier marriage. The Protoevangelium seems to have been used to create the stories of Mary which are found in the Quran, but while Muslims agree with Christians that Mary was a virgin at the moment of the conception of Jesus, the idea of her perpetual virginity thereafter is contrary to the Islamic ideal of women as wives and mothers. The Ebionites denied Mary's perpetual virginity and Hegesippus possibly disputed the perpetual virginity of Mary. Early uncertainty: 3rd century In the 3rd century, Hippolytus of Rome held that Mary was "ever-virgin", while Clement of Alexandria, writing soon after the Protoevangelium appeared, appealed to its incident of a midwife who examined Mary immediately after the birth ("after giving birth, she was examined by a midwife, who found her to be a virgin") and asserted that this was to be found in the Gospels ("These things are attested to by the Scriptures of the Lord"), though he was referring to an apocryphal Gospel as a fact. The 3rd century scholar Origen used the Protoevangelium's explanation of the brothers to uphold the perpetual virginity of Mary ("There is no child of Mary except Jesus, according to those who think correctly about her"). Origen also mentioned that the gospel of Peter affirmed the perpetual virginity of Mary, saying that the "brothers" of Jesus were from a previous marriage of Joseph. Tertullian, who came between Clement and Origen, denied Mary's virginity in partu to refute the docetist idea that the Son of God could not have assumed a human body ("although she was a virgin when she conceived, she was a wife when she brought forth her son"). Helvidius also argued that Victorinus believed