Did Jesus have Brothers and Sisters?
I
One of the most wide-spread beliefs among the Roman Catholics is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, not only gave birth to him by a virginal conception but also remained a virgin throughout her life. In other words, she had no marital relations with her husband Joseph and, in consequence, Jesus had neither brothers nor sisters.
However, as even the Roman Catholic priest-scholar Raymond E. Brown1 points out, direct scriptural authority is solely for Mary having been a virgin in conceiving Jesus. With equal broadmindedness and honesty Brown2 writes apropos of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the only two books out of the twenty-seven in the New Testament that have infancy narratives mentioning Jesus' virgin birth:
".. .the infancy narratives do not make the slightest connection between the virginal conception and the special value of the state of virginity (a theme that does appear elsewhere in the N[ew] T[estament], e.g., 1 Cor[inthians] 7:8). Mary is depicted as having chosen the married state, and the virginal conception is presented as God's intervention, not as Mary's personal choice... Few today interpret the 'I do not know man' of Luke 1:34 as a vow or resolve of virginity, pace G. Graystone, Virgin of all Virgins (Rome: pio x, 1968). In the long run, as Graystone admits on pp. 147-51, the interpretation depends on whether Mary is to be considered a pious Jewish girl of her times (a situation that militates against a vow or resolve of virginity) or whether, by a special impulse of grace and in view of her future vocation, she broke out of the limitations of her surroundings and resolved to remain a virgin." Then Brown adds: "...most take the former alternative and think that Mary entered matrimony with the same intention as any other girl..."
At another place, Brown,3 facing the same phrase from Luke (1:34) which has often been interpreted in the past (from
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the 4th century onwards) to mean that "Mary remained a virgin all her life, even after the birth of Jesus", notes that a vow of perpetual virginity by Mary "is totally implausible in the context supposed by Luke". Brown4 assures us: "In our knowledge of Palestinian Judaism, there is nothing that would explain why a twelve-year-old girl would have entered marriage with the intention to preserve virginity and thus not to have children. Luke (1:25,48) uses the words 'disgrace' and 'low estate' to express what the Jewish mentality towards such childlessness would be."
Thus, according to impartial Biblical scholarship, perpetual virginity is not to be expected of Mary. This means that brothers and sisters for Jesus are quite on the cards.
In fact, direct scriptural authority can be cited on their behalf. The very Gospel of Matthew, which is the first of the two New-Testament books to narrate Jesus' virginal conception, contains these verses (13:54-57) about Jesus among his own suspicious countrymen:
"And when... he taught in their synagogues, in so much that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
"And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
"And they were offended in him____"5
The natural comment on these verses is surely along the lines of D. E. Nineham's quotation from A. E. J. Rawlinson (Westminster Commentary, p. 75) in relation to the same incident as reported in an earlier Gospel, that of Mark (6:3): "The theory of the perpetual virginity of our Lord's mother had not yet arisen when this Gospel was written. Later ecclesiastical tradition argued that the Lord's 'brothers' were either His reputed half-brothers, children of Joseph by a former marriage (so Epiphanius and Origen), or else His cousins (so Jerome and others). Tertullian and Helvidius among ancient writers
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defended the more natural interpretation."6
Perhaps we shall be told: "What Matthew and, before him, Mark report are words used by the Jews and the former are not responsible for the latter's terms. The Jews may loosely pass off half-brothers and half-sisters or else cousins or any relations as real brothers and sisters."
The answer is simple. In both Matthew and Mark there are earlier references than 13:55-56 and 6:3 respectively. Here the evangelists are speaking in person. Matthew (12:46) recounts on his own: "...behold, his mother and his brethren stood without..." Mark too (3:31) narrates directly: "There came then his brethren and his mother... " Nor in this matter is Luke lacking in straight story-telling, although his reference comes after his brief version (4:22) of the Jews' inquiry. He now narrates: "Then came to him his mother and his brethren..." (8:19).
In addition, we have the Gospel of John testifying in the same vein. The last of the four evangelists writes in persona propria: "After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples..." (2:12). Again, John tells us: "His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest....For neither did his brethren believe in him... But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also unto the feast...." (7:3, 5,10).
The four Gospels are not the only texts to bring in the brothers. The Acts of the Apostles, commonly attributed to Luke, has the passage: "These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, with his brethren" (1:14).
Even before any of the evangelists there is Paul (1 Corinthians 9:5) referring, not in the course of repeating others' evidence but on his own, to "the brethren of the Lord", and anticipating the name of one of those mentioned by Mark and Matthew: his Galatians 1:19 supplies to us the designation: "James the Lord's brother." Interestingly, Josephus, the Jewish historian (first century A.D.), the earliest writer outside
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the Bible to mention Jesus, does so at one place - which is adjudged authentic and not an interpolation7 - by way of mentioning "James... the brother of Jesus who was called Christ" (Antiquities, XX.9,1).
Could Paul and Josephus no less than Mark, Matthew, Luke and John mean half-brothers or cousins of Jesus? A wife of Joseph before Mary and, by that wife, four sons and at least two daughters, who would be half-brothers and half-sisters to Jesus, are a gigantic hypothesis warranted by nothing in the whole New Testament. Matthew and Luke themselves, who provide infancy narratives, are not only silent on Joseph's past but create the strongest impression of his having had no children attached to him before Mary "brought forth her firstborn son" (Matthew 1:25; Luke 2:7). Even the opinion that Joseph was aged when he married Mary "rests on very unsatisfactory evidence".8 The total picture of him as a widower of advanced years with already a substantial progeny when he married Mary is an egregious multiple fiction. The only hope of denying to Mary children after Jesus lies in proving the irrelevance of the term "cousins" or the general label "relatives".
But Paul can be shown to frustrate this hope. When he wants to specify the relationship between a friend of his, named John Mark, and another friend named Barnabas, what does he say? True, the English Authorised Version quoted so far by us reads: "sister's son" (Colossians 4:10). But all subsequent translations are unanimous in setting right the mistake. For example, today's English Version on which the Protestant Canon David Edwards of Westminster Abbey bases his admirable Jesus For Modern Man9 has: "Mark, the cousin of Barnabas." The prestigious Jerusalem Bible, which is a Roman Catholic publication with a "Nihil Obstat" from the church authorities, carries the same phrase.10 Thus very plainly Paul, who wrote in Greek like the rest of the New-Testament authors, makes a difference between "brother" (Greek "adel-phos") and "cousin" ("anepsios" in the Greek original). If James were a cousin of Jesus and not a brother, Paul could
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certainly be expected to draw the distinction. And when he speaks of "the brethren of the Lord" he must be taken to mean what he says and rule out cousinship and all the more the vague implication of "relatives".
Paul's testimony, the earliest in the New Testament, is indeed crucial and decisive. Still, hesitation in a small or great degree can be traced in Roman Catholic scholarship. Look at Brown himself, perhaps the most accurate and modern-spirited exegete in the Roman Church. He is perfectly balanced when he faces the issue on which Rawlinson has commented. His observation11 is that the doctrine of Mary's virginity after Jesus' birth {virginitas post partum) "depends on how one understands the family relationship implied in the reference to Jesus' brothers (and sisters) in Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55; and John 2:12; 7:5. Were they siblings (Tertullian, Helvid-ius, modern Protestants); or were they stepbrothers (Epipha-nius) or cousins (Hegesippus, Jerome, principal Reformers)?"
Out of the three courses supposedly open, the one towards "stepbrothers" is touched upon just once by Brown in a very indirect manner. The second-century Protevangelium of James is mentioned as supporting the virginal conception and given the footnote:12 "Although this apocryphal gospel pretends to come from Jesus' family circle (his stepbrother James), the author was not a Palestinian Jew, for he betrays real ignorance of the Temple and its customs. Writing in mid-second century, he combines the Matthew and Lucan information with imaginative details of another origin." Apparently, the stepbrother-relationship is the claim going with the document: it is not Brown's assessment. The claim is connected with the legend first found in the Protevangelium (9:2) that Joseph was an old man when he married Mary and had already a number of children by his first wife.
Brown elsewhere is not clear whether he opts for "brothers" literally or broadly, for, after referring to Acts 1:14, which distinguishes the Twelve Apostles from Jesus' "brethren", he13 uses the expression: "these brothers or relatives." One wonders why he hesitates and leaves room for thinking of "cou-
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sins" or still further removed members of the family. Not only has he cited Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55 and John 2:12; 7:5 as listing the brothers of Jesus: he14 has also cited Galatians 1:19 where Paul mentions "James the Lord's brother", as well as Corinthians 15:7 in which Paul alludes to a "James" who was one of the witnesses of the resurrected Jesus and whom Brown identifies with "the Lord's brother" of the Galatians. Besides, has he not tacitly sided with those scholars who hold that Mary entered matrimony with the same intention as any other girl and that there is no sign in the Gospels of a vow or resolve on her part to be perpetually a virgin? Brown's alternative "relative" is absolutely arbitrary and inexplicable.
The same can be averred about the stand taken by The Jerusalem Bible. In the teeth of all evidence its editors,15 while annotating 12:46 of Matthew, whose Gospel is conventionally placed before Mark's in all Bibles, write apropos of Jesus'' "brothers": "Not Mary's children but near relatives, cousins perhaps, which both Hebr[ew] and Aramaic style 'brothers', cf. Gn. 13:18; 14:16; 29:15; Lv. 10:4; 1 Ch. 23:22f." Do not the editors realise how odd it would be for a once-orthodox converted Jew like Paul to speak - as Mark, Matthew and Luke do later - of brothers in connection with the family of Jesus but change over to cousin when dealing with another family? Can we question that Paul knew Hebrew and Aramaic? The Jerusalem Bible16 quotes him as saying: "I was born of the race of Israel and of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents... As for the Law, I was a Pharisee..." (Philippians 3:5). The annotation17 refers to Acts 21:40 and informs us that "Paul spoke Aramaic,... unlike the hellenist Jews" mentioned in Acts 6:lf. Acts 21:40 tells us in The Jerusalem Bible18 how Paul addressed the Jews of Jerusalem : "... he spoke to them in Hebrew." The annotation19 corrects the statement: "i.e. Aramaic: Hebrew was not spoken after the Exile." So Paul, who must have known the Old Testament's alleged habit to style near relatives "brothers" at times, is found not to follow that habit. Surely a vital point is here involved. The argument from Hebrew and Aramaic falls under suspicion and needs to
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be closely examined.
On turning to the texts cited by The Jerusalem Bible we light upon an eye-opening fact. In Genesis 13:6 near relatives are indeed termed "brothers".20 But how does The Jerusalem Bible itself render the other texts? In Genesis 14:16 we have "kinsmen" instead.21 Genesis 29:15 gives "kinsmen".22 Leviticus 10:4 yields "brothers".231 Chronicles 23:22f, however, has "kinsmen" again.24 Evidently, the Old Testament, by The Jerusalem Bible's own confession, does not employ a clear-cut word from which an analogy can be drawn for the New Testament. The words employed by the latter do not seem to admit variable translation. And the reason why is unmistakable the moment we realise the true linguistic situation as between the two Testaments.
The Old Testament is written in Hebrew. The vocable on which The Jerusalem Bible builds its case is "achim" (pronounced "akim"). In Hebrew (and in its dialect Aramaic) it means at the same time "brother" and "kinsman".25 Therefore, "cousin" or any other relative can be indicated by it: the correct shade depends on the context. The New Testament is written not in Hebrew but in Greek and is not at all,a translation from the Hebrew or its dialect Aramaic. The ambiguity of "achim" has no application here. The New Testament writers knew what they were talking about and used Greek words to mean what they wanted to communicate. Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, when speaking of Jesus' family, have written "adelphos" which is the Greek for "brother"26 and which allows in a family-reference no equivocation: literally, it has the sense of being born from the same womb. We may add that Josephus too wrote his Antiquities in Greek and chose the same word for James.
No doubt, one can speak of "brethren" in a general connotation to mean comradeship in the faith or in the work, as at several places in the New Testament (Matthew 5:22-24; 7:3-5; Colossians 1:2; Thessalonians 5:4; Philippians 4:1, etc.). In two places Paul suggests a wider sense. Romans 9:3-4 reads: "... my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are
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Israelites..." Philemon 10:16 pleads with the addressee about one Onesimus who was a "servant" of the former but seems to have run away from him to Paul who has converted him and kept him. Now Paul is returning the runaway and asking Philemon to receive him back: "Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?" (16) The Jerusalem Bible renders the closing phrase: "as a blood-brother as well as a brother in the Lord."27 Paul's meaning in both the places is "fellow-member of the community or nation or race". Onesimus occurs also in Colossians 4:9. The Authorised Version translates: "Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you." The Jerusalem Bible28 supplies a gloss on its "blood-brother" by ending the verse with: "who is a fellow citizen of yours."
Further, it is reasonable to think that in some contexts "adelphos", in the widest connotation, could refer to a fellow-man, another human being like oneself. Or else the term might be used as a mistaken description: one who is not born from the same womb could be mentioned as such because of certain confusing circumstances. From The Jerusalem Bible we can gather two occasions of error in the use of "brother" by the evangelists in their accounts of Judean history in the Roman period.
Thus Matthew writes of the tetrarch Herod Antipas marrying "Herodias, his brother Philip's wife" (14:3).'The annotation29 informs us: ".. .this Philip is not the tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lk 3:1; cf. Mt. 16:13; he is another son of Herod the Great by Mariamne II and therefore half-brother of Antipas..." The same slip is in Mark 6:17 and Luke 3:19.The other slip is in Luke 3:1 where we are told of "Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the lands of Ituraea and Trachonitis..." The annotation to "Herod" runs: "The Herod referred to is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and Malthake.. ."30 "Philip" is annotated: "Son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra.. ."31 So we have again a half-brother mentioned as full brother. But neither slip can be considered
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a conscious blurring of distinctions, as if it were customary to mix up the two kinds of brotherhood. There was real cause for a capital confusion. The very first annotation we have quoted begins by saying that the Vulgate version - the Latin translation from the Hebrew and the Greek by Jerome, 331-420 A.D., and the earliest to be accepted by the Roman Catholic Church - omits the name "Philip" on account of "the difficulty the name seemed to create". We are further told: "Josephus himself calls him Herod." In fact, the husband of Herodias was known as Herod Philip. Herod the Great whose sons are here concerned was responsible for a lot of mix-up in men's minds and his various sons greatly added to it. "The marriage tangles of the Herod family," comments William Barclay,32 "are quite incredible, and their inter-relations are so complicated that they become almost impossible to work out." Barclay continues that "Herod the Great was married many times". From his five marriages mentioned by Barclay he had, according to the latter,33 seven sons. Naturally it would not be easy always to tell who were true brothers and who half ones.
Apart from the two easily understandable historical inaccuracies in the "brother"-relationship on the evangelists' part, there is no ambiguity in their usage. To quote a few passages from The Jerusalem Bible:34 "As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew.... Going on there he saw another pair of brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John..." (Matthew 4:18, 21) - "Then some Saducees... put this question to him, 'Master, we have it from Moses in writing, if a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother.'... (Mark 12:18-19) - "He said to them, 'I tell you solemnly, there is no one who left house, wife, brothers, parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not be given repayment many times over...' " (Luke 18:29-30). In all these passages, the "brothers" are real ones: they are not "half-brothers" or "cousins" or other relatives, and everywhere the Greek "adelphos" has been employed, which has no two
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senses when family-relationship is spoken of.
If half-brothers and half-sisters were intended, the Greek term "amphimetores" or "amphipatores"35 could come into play, depending on the situation - the first one designating brothers and sisters from different mothers but the same father and the second the offspring of the same mother but different fathers. Since a single person is incapable of having different mothers or fathers, these terms have always to be in the plural. Thus Mark who in 6:3 speaks of Jesus in the singular as being "the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon" could not have availed himself of either of the terms. The very fact that a manner of speech was adopted, which rendered them impossible, argues a literal sense of "brother". But in 3:31 Mark could have taken advantage of them, for he speaks of Jesus' "brothers". His abstaining from them now is as strong an argument as 6:3 for their irrelevance, though from a different angle. The same should hold for the reference by Matthew, Mark and John.
Perhaps Matthew and Luke specially abstained because such turns of language would not help their advocacy of Jesus' virgin birth. "Amphimetores" would indicate that, Jesus, while having a different mother than the other members of the family, would still be the son of Joseph who would figure as the father he had in common with James, Joses, Judas and Simon and the sisters. He would be Mary's sole son, yet still a child from Joseph. "Amphipatores" would prevent him from being Joseph's son, but render him true brother to the remainder of the offspring mentioned: then all of these would be Mary's children by Joseph while he alone would be Mary's child by another man than Joseph. Matthew and Luke would compromise their infancy narratives if they brought in either "amphimetores" or "amphipatores". To save the narratives one would have to go past "half-brothers" to a new description.
Would "stepbrother"do? Hardly. For, now Jesus would not need to be Joseph's and Mary's son but he would still be Mary's by a previous marriage of hers. Again, no virgin birth
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would be in the picture, merely a new father brought on the scene. The description required should get past "stepbrother" as much as "half-brother".
There is, for instance, the term "syntrophos" in Acts 13:1 in connection with the prophet and teacher Manaen who "had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch" - a term capable of indicating one who is neither a brother nor a half-brother nor even a stepbrother but a foster-brother: in fact, A. D. Nott36 does translate the Greek noun thus. Had Mark in 6:3 thought of distinguishing Jesus as having with the listed children a relationship as of a brother simply in virtue of living together with them from childhood, he would unquestionably have pressed "syntrophos" into service. Jesus would not then perforce be accounted Joseph's son or anybody else's even though remaining Mary's: the Virgin Birth would be a possibility despite Mark's being completely devoid of any trace of it. But what about Mark in 3:13 or Matthew and Luke in similar contexts or John in his references to Jesus' brothers? The brothers everywhere would be sheer outsiders somehow staying with Joseph and Mary - a very unlikely situation which is dismissible particularly in the face of no less than four of them being there, not to count the two or more girls going with them.
None of the terms we have so far introduced will do. We have to make our peace with the posture that the New-Testament writers have avoided all complexities and made use of the straightforward "brothers". It being impossible to think of half- or step- or foster-brothers, the one alternative left is "cousins" or, in general, "relatives". But, as against "adelphos" for "brother", the word in Greek for "cousin" stands sharply differentiated: it is, as we have seen, "anepsios",37 the word Paul uses for John Mark in relation to Barnabas.
Here we may mention in passing that the Authorised Version's erroneous "sister's son" for "anepsios" is an incongruous interpretation in view of the explicit Greek phrase which we find with that meaning in Acts 23:16. The Authorised Version itself responds with "Paul's sister's son" to a phrase
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of three words "uios tes adelphes" ("son of sister") quite in contrast to the single vocable "anepsios".
The Authorised Version is at fault elsewhere too - now a little loose rather than incorrect. When in Luke 1:36 the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary, the translation begins: "And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth..." What is "cousin" here is "suggenis" in Greek, denoting broadly "of the same stock"38 and Englished correctly by The Jerusalem Bible as "kinswoman".39 This is a term for a somewhat distant or general family-connection. If Elisabeth were a female cousin, she would be called " anep-sia".40 When Mark, Matthew and Luke write of Jesus' "sisters" along with his "brothers", we get for the former the plural "adelphai", the feminine of "adelphoi". As family-members, sisters no less than brothers cannot be jumbled with cousins or the like in normal Greek. If the evangelists had wanted to suggest mere kinsfolk without any particularity, they would have employed a suitable adaptation of the Lucan "suggenis". Then we should have had the broad category "relatives". But everywhere in the New Testament we are debarred from invoking ambiguity in a family-context bearing on Jesus. Jesus has to be a true brother of the persons denoted in association with him and Mary.
A half-hearted attempt by the renowned scholar J. A. Fitz-myer in the monumental Catholic production, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, to water down the Greek adelphos may be noticed here. Commenting on Paul's mention of "James the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:19), Fitzmyer41 writes: "In classical and Hellenistic Greek adelphos means 'blood brother.' In the LXX it translates Hebrew 'ah, even when used in the sense of 'kinsman' (Genesis 13:8; 29:12-15; see AG4215). Greek papyri from Egypt also preserve the wide sense of adelphos, 'relative' (see J.J. Collins, TS43). In view of the NT teaching on the virginal conception of Jesus (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:34) and the Christian tradition about Mary 'ever virgin,' in the Creeds, adelphos is understood as 'kinsman, relative.' "
What is brought home to us directly or indirectly by Fitzmyer is: (1) a wide sense has been employed by the Septu-
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agint (LXX) and some Egyptian papyri, but (2) classical and Hellenistic usage is strictly for "blood brother", by which Fitzmyer evidently signifies "one of the sons of the same mother", and (3) this usage may be considered relevant to Galatians 1:19, but let us ignore this since a sense other than the classical and Hellenistic exists somewhere and since the Church traditionally subscribes to the perpetual virginity of Mary.
Here is rather unconvincing "special pleading", particularly as in a different place in The Jerome Biblical Commentary44 Fitzmyer cannot help marking Paul's Hellenistic background. He is not oblivious of the fact that a reassessment of the influence of this background is called for in certain points of theological thought and theological terminology. However, in his opinion, the reassessment cannot touch the "evidence of the influence of the Greek world in his style... Paul knew Greek and had some sort of Greek training... Paul lived for roughly ten years in a Hellenistic atmosphere... This Greek atmosphere cannot be lightly dismissed. Its influence is seen in the figures and illustrations he uses". It would be indeed a perversion of historical truth to hold that he who could distinguish several family-relationships by means of current Greek terms would signify "kinsman, relative" by adelphos. Nor would he have any theological reason to do so. There is not the slightest hint in Paul of the virginal conception. He never even bothers to mention Jesus' mother by name, leave aside taking any interest in her. Jesus is said only to be "born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4) which is far from suggesting any distinction from common human birth. As for the idea of Mary's being "ever virgin", it can have no relevance to anything in the whole New Testament. Sheer fantasy alone would look for the least bearing of it on Paul, when J. L. McKenzie could affirm in The Jerome Biblical Commentary45 in connection with even a later writer than Paul: "The absence of the infancy narratives in Mark suggests very strongly that these narratives did not exist in the earliest form of the Christian traditions about Jesus and that various traditions about the infancy were formed later."
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II
In spite of all these linguistic facts and scriptural and other references, David Quinlan46 still voices as quite definite the old Roman Catholic pleas that the four named "brethren" of Jesus and the un-named "sisters" are recognisable as cousins from several designations traceable in the Gospels and Acts. He identifies the four "brethren" as follows: "Joseph [=Joses] is stated to be the brother of James and Salome (who thus qualifies to be called a 'sister' of Christ) as well as of Jude [=Juda, Judas] Thaddeus; Simon known as Zelotes and as the Cananaean. These were the children of Alpheus (of the Synoptists, otherwise known as Clopas or Cleophas) by Mary, sister or sister-in-law of the Virgin Mary. Alpheus was the brother of Joseph, foster-father of Jesus. Thus the four men and Salome were our Lord's first cousins." Quinlan goes on: "Alpheus and Mary were among those who 'used to follow Jesus and minister to him' (Matt 15, 40; 16, 1). Of the four, James the apostle is called a 'brother of the Lord' by Paul (Gal. 1,19) and Jude (ch. 1) refers to himself as the brother of James."
Quinlan is taking advantage of the commonness of several names in the Jewry of Jesus' time. A little attention to detail can prove him wrong. Jude begins his Epistle: "Jude the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James..." If this "James" is the same as Paul's "brother of the Lord", why does Jude not call himself correctly yet humbly "the brother and servant of Jesus Christ"? Why bring James in? Again, out of the several James's of the New Testament, who is this James? We know of three persons separately mentioned but bearing the same name: "(1) One of the three disciples who were with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9). The brother of John, a son of Zebedee, he was later killed by Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-2). (2) Another disciple, the son of Alpheus, of whom nothing more is known (Mark 4:18). (3) The brother of Jesus who apparently became an apostle after a special resurrection appearance to him (1 Corinthians 15:7, Galatians 1:19) and subsequently became leader of the
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Jerusalem Church (Acts 15:13-21).47 Both in Luke (16:16) and in Acts (1:13) we find "Judas [=Jude] the brother of a James" (to be distinguished from Judas Iscariot, the future betrayer of Jesus) put among the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus and, if we attend to the just preceding phrase in Luke - "Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon called Zelotes" - the Jude of the Epistle who is James's brother should be another son of Alpheus, but this does not at all identify him with Mark's "Jude" or Matthew's "Judas" who is Jesus' brother, any more than "Simon called Zelotes" and the earlier-mentioned choice of Jesus, "Simon, (whom he also named Peter)" (Luke 6:14) whose "brother" is Andrew (ibid.) can be equated to Jesus' brother Simon. None of those who have the same names as Jesus' brothers can be equated to the latter - especially since Acts (1:13-14) unmistakably differentiates them when, after Jesus' ascension into heaven, the apostles come together: "And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." After this statement, how can any of Jesus' "brethren", whether called James or Jude or Simon or Joseph, be identified with one or another person listed quite separately from them? The four sons of Alpheus who, along with their sister Salome, "were Our Lord's first cousins" stand in the New Testament as absolutely distinct from those to whom Jesus in Mark is a "brother" and who in Matthew and Luke are his "brethren".
A matter of curious interest here is that The Jerusalem Bible, although a mouthpiece of Roman Catholicism trying to make Jesus' "brethren" out to be his "cousins", flatly contradicts Quinlan's identification of them with the apostles hailing from Alpheus's family. We read: "The apostle Jude is not the Jude 'brother' of Jesus, of MT. 13:55; MK 6:3, and brother of James Jude 1). Nor is it likely that the apostle James son of
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Alphaeus was James the brother of the Lord, Acts 12:17; 15:13, etc."48
Even Brown, classifying the various witnesses cited by Paul to the Resurrection of Jesus, one of whom is "James", remarks in a footnote: "in describing James, 'the brother of the Lord' (Gal 1:19) as a new follower of Jesus, I am accepting the common scholarly opinion that this James is not to be identified with either of the two Jameses who are named in the Lucan lists of the Twelve (Luke 6:13-16; Acts 1:13), to wit, James of Zebedee and James of Alphaeus; for Luke explicitly distinguishes the Twelve from the brothers of Jesus (Acts 1:14)."49
Another point to be cleared is also a bit of legerdemain attempted by Quinlan.50 In support of "Mary's perpetual virginity" he resorts to a Gospel-text: "we take John 19, 26, in which the dying Jesus commends his mother to the keeping of John. It is unbelievable that this would have been his disposition if Mary had other children who could have, and should have, cared for her."
Here there are two criticisms to be made. First, Quinlan is unaware that the text's authenticity has been challenged. John's picture is hardly credible. Let us compare it to that in the three earlier Gospels. In two of them two other Marys than Jesus' mother are specifically listed among the women at the crucifixion, "looking on afar off" (Mark 15:40) or "beholding afar off" (Matthew 27:56). The absence of Jesus' mother hits us in the eye. Luke offers no details and speaks of Jesus' "acquaintances and the women that followed him from Galilee" as standing "afar off, beholding these things" (23:49). A little later (24:10) he identifies them as "Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James [the son of Zebedee] and other women that were with them". Even if - per impossibile - the mother of Jesus were taken to be there among the unnamed women in Luke, we could not imagine Jesus addressing her, for all the women were at a distance, and this point of dis-tantness is made in each of the three Synoptic Gospels. It sets all of them at loggerheads with John's statement: "Now there
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stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene" (19:25). And naturally it leads us to be extremely sceptical of John's story of Jesus talking to her as well as to "the disciple standing by, whom he loved" (19:26-27). They would simply be not within call. Furthermore, Nineham,51 commenting on Mark's version, observes: "contrast the claim of John's passion narrative that Christian witnesses were present at the foot of the cross, whereas in fact 'it is intrinsically improbable that friends and relations of Jesus would be allowed to stand near the Cross' (Barrett, St. John [S.P.C.K., 1955], p. 98)." Thus John's touching scene looks inauthentic.
Even if we accept it as genuine we may rightly ask: "Those who in Mark, Matthew and Luke are mentioned as Jesus' brothers and said by all the three evangelists to accompany Mary when she goes to see Jesus among his disciples and sends word to him from the fringe of the group around him (Mark 3:31; Matthew 12:46; Luke 4:22) are surely still alive at the time of Jesus' death? They are openly referred to in Acts 1:14 as being with Mary after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. They were there, if needed, to take care of her when Jesus died. Identifying them as first cousins cannot radically change the situation. For, their past association with and accompaniment of Mary should show that she did not and could not have lacked her own people to look after her. It is not because of the absence of sons (or else nephews) that she was commended to John's keeping. If the text is genuine, some other reason has to be found: a possibility is that none of them were present when Jesus was dying or else that Jesus did not regard any of them as dependable. As we saw, John himself has four allusions to Jesus' brethren in his Gospel (2:12; 7:3, 5, 10) and in the first, soon after the story of the miracle at Cana, we have the whole family in an ensemble. In the fact of John's own testimony to the existence of Jesus' brothers, Quinlan's argument sounds all the more hollow."
The last lap of our discussion, serving as a final support to our thesis, is what Matthew says about Joseph and Mary
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when Joseph, instructed by "the angel of the Lord" that Mary's unexpected child was of the Holy Ghost, has accepted his wife instead of putting her away (1:19-20). We are told that Joseph "knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son..." (1:25). This informs us that, although Joseph had no sexual intercourse with Mary before Jesus was born, he had it later, and it suggests that Jesus was the precursor of several sons.
Luke too has the telltale "firstborn" in his report on Mary at Bethlehem, when "great with child" she had accompanied Joseph there. Her "days were accomplished" for delivery -"And she brought forth her firstborn son..."(2:7).
Here Quinlan52 puts in a caveat: "... the phrase that Mary knew not Joseph until the birth of Jesus does not imply, as it might do in English usage, that she knew him afterwards. The Hebrew usage is clear from similar statements, that the first raven released from the Ark did not return until the waters dried up (Genesis 8,7) or that the followers of Jude Machabeus rejoiced because not one of them was slain until they returned home____The term 'first-born' needs to be understood in the same sense in which it was used. It did not imply the birth of any later child. God's command that the first-born of every womb be dedicated to him did not exempt children without brother or sister (Exodus 13, 1-2). Luke's reference to Jesus as the first-born of Mary indicates only that he was subject to the Mosaic law of consecration to God (Numbers 3,12ff. and 41-51; 8, 16-18; 18, 16; Exodus 34, 19ff.) and this explains his account of the presentation to the Temple (Luke 2,22ff.)."
One wonders why Quinlan talks of Hebrew usage. All the Gospels, let us repeat, are in Greek, and they are original compositions and not translations from the Hebrew. They employ words as in Greek usage - and not only here but also in another place the same Greek part of speech has been employed by Matthew with the identical meaning. Ironically enough, Quinlan himself cites the text we have in view. Discussing judgments on sin, he53 writes: "He also taught the paying of atonement by the parable of the debtor imprisoned, to whom it was said, 'Believe me,' thou shalt not be set at liberty
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until thou hast paid to the last farthing (Matthew 5, 25)." Clearly we learn from this statement of Matthew's that the debtor would remain imprisoned before he has discharged his liabilities fully and that his liberty would start after the event of full payment. The case is parallel to Joseph's "knowing" Mary not before but only after Jesus' birth. Matthew's Greek "till" has the same implication as the English.
Secondly, Matthew does not narrate any presentation in the Temple: his "firstborn" has no connection with any act of offering the child to God. The term here is merely enumerative and, although the same term is related in certain Biblical texts elsewhere to the Mosaic law of consecration to God, it is not confined to such texts. For instance, in the Genesis story of Jacob, Laban and Laban's two daughters Leah and Rachel, Laban deceives Jacob by sending to him at night not Rachel whom he loves and who has been promised to him but Leah. When Joseph protests, saying: "...did I not serve with thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?" Laban answers: "It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn" (29:25-26). Here there is no question of consecration, and the enumerative character of the expression is openly exemplified. And, as with "until", Quinlan convicts himself out of his own mouth when he54 begins a Note on "Predestination and Reprobation" thus: "God wills that all souls be saved yet Paul wrote that all who from the first were known to him be destined to be moulded into the image of his Son, the first-born among many brethren. So predestined, God called them; so called, he justified them; so justified, he glorified them (Romans 8, 29)." Here "many brethren" are clearly compatible with "the first-born".
It is true that in the matter of dedication Jehovah did not exempt the firstborn child who had no brother or sister and also that the word "firstborn" can connote a birth's taking place for the first time in a person's house, yet by involving a numerical element it must imply either the actuality of follow-up births or else their expectation. As Matthew and Luke are telling a story of the past, their use of the word in the sense
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of expectation at a particular point in the lives of Joseph and Mary ought to signify the evangelists' knowledge that the expectation had been fulfilled.
Matthew's and Luke's "firstborn" cannot be equated in any circumstances to the expression "only son" which occasionally comes in the New Testament about ordinary people (e.g., Luke 7:12: "... there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother...") and about Jesus as a special Son of God (e.g., John 1:14: "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father...").
To justify our general reading of "firstborn" and our particular discernment of its shade in Matthew and Luke we have simply to pursue the line already indicated by Quinlan's quotation from Paul. More than one analogy is to hand. A sequence is projected as a certainty when Paul spoke of Jesus: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation..." (Colossians 1:15). Again, Paul, in the course of hailing Christ's universal primacy, tells us with the resurrected Christ in view as our fore-runner: "...he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence" (Ibid., 1:18). Quinlan's example has a sequence inbuilt too, when Paul, referring to Jesus and his disciples who are termed his brothers in a non-family sense, writes of those "that love God" becoming "conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:28-29). Repeatedly the scripture's "firstborn" calls for successors in his wake. We may quite legitimately apply in a family-sense Paul's phrase from Romans to Matthew and Luke and infer that the son Jesus was "the firstborn among many brethren" as well as the pre-eminent among them.
All things considered, not the slightest misgiving should linger about Jesus having brothers and sisters. Perhaps Quinlan and his ilk and possibly even more enlightened scholars like Brown are unwilling to admit them from fear lest suspicion should attach to their claim to set Jesus apart from all human beings as extraordinarily born by a virginal conception. Extension of natural birth to Jesus does not inevitably
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follow, but in the Gospels of Mark and John, where no virginal conception is spoken of, the presence of brothers and sisters cannot help strengthening the impression that these evangelists put Jesus, for all his exceptional character and mission, on a par with them as a natural member of a human family observed day after day within the common Galilean scene. Then, as Matthew and Luke repeat from Mark the presence of brothers and sisters, one may doubt the authenticity of the infancy narratives and look back on the birth of Jesus in the light of Mary's subsequent relationship with Joseph. Pope Siricius, Epistle 9,3, in the fourth century saw the danger and argued that if one denies the perpetual virginity of Mary one plays into the hands of scoffers who say that Jesus could not have been born of a virgin.55 Be that as it may, Mary's being the mother of James, Joses, Simon, Judas and at least two girls no less than of Jesus cannot on scriptural authority be denied.
31.7.1983
APPENDIX
'To round off our discussion we should not omit reference to an issue raised by Brown in The Birth of the Messiah (p. 398). Annotating Luke 2:7 which he translates "and she gave birth to a son, her firstborn", he writes:
"Although prototokos, 'firstborn', is sometimes clearly equivalent to monogenes, 'only born' (Psalms of Solomon 13:8; 4 Ezra 6:58), some would take this to mean 'firstborn among many'. And so, since the time of Helvidius (A.D. 380), this verse has played a role in the dispute among Christians as to whether Jesus was Mary's only child (because she remained a virgin), or she had other children, born after Jesus (the brothers and sisters of Jesus, mentioned in Mark 6:3)____In the second century A.D. the Cynic Lucian of Samosata (Demonax 29) proposed a dilemma about a philosopher who claimed to be the first and only: 'If the first, not the only; if the only, not the first'; and many have seen fit to quote that here.
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More subtly, Plummer, Luke, 53, argues that the evangelist would not have used ' firstborn' of Jesus if he knew Mary had no more children, so that at least in Luke's time there was no well-known tradition that Jesus was an only child. However, the use of prototokos rather than monogenes proves only that Luke had no interest in presenting Jesus as Mary's only son. Others have seen in 'firstborn' an implication of special affection; yet when Luke wants to imply that, as in the case of the widow of Nain, he uses monogenes (7:12; also 8:42; 9:38).
"Actually the designation prototokos tells us only that there was no child before Jesus, and that therefore he was to have the privilege and position that Hebrew tradition gives to the firstborn (Exod 13:2; Num 3:12-13; 18:15-16). Luke mentions it here to prepare for the dedication of Jesus as firstborn in 2:22-23. That the designation need not imply the birth of subsequent children is clear from the grave inscription of a Jewish woman named Arsinoe, found near ancient Leontopolis in Egypt and dated to 5 B.C. The Greek text reads: 'In the pains of giving birth to a firstborn child, Fate brought me to the end of my life.' If she died in giving birth to her firstborn, obviously she had no more children. Thus, despite Lucian's clever dilemma, in that case the child was the 'first and only'."
Several points call for comment. No doubt, it is possible to connect Luke's prototokos of 2:7 and the Temple-dedication which goes with the firstborn son and which Luke mentions for Jesus in 2:22-23; but it is exaggerative to hold that he initially employed the word to prepare for the later occasion. The natural interpretation is simply that there was no child of Mary's preceding Jesus and that Luke was not interested in putting Jesus forward as her only son. Luke's usage is non-committal and the second part of its implication, leading him not to say monogenes, leaves the door wide open for supposing that Mary had other children as well as that the word "brothers" occurring three times in Luke 8:19-21 along with "mother" is to be taken literally. Also to urge that only monogenes can express affection is to be over-restrictive.
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Brown's example of the grave inscription in Egypt, dating to 5 B.C., is very far from driving home the shade he favours. "Firstborn" is used in it to indicate the occasion on which Arsinoe died. If nothing more than "giving birth to a child" were mentioned, we would be left fn the dark about the precise occasion. What we are made to know is the occurrence of death not merely at any delivery but at the very first delivery: the term "firstborn" comes to focus our minds on this fact. The inscription has no bearing one way or the other on Brown's general problem. It is a limited particularised reference in which the term just had to be present quite apart from the question whether or not it need imply subsequent children.
Nothing hazes off the conclusion at which we have arrived before glancing at Brown's statements.
1.9.1984
References
1. The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), pp. 27-28.
2. Ibid., p. 40 and fn. 52.
3. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 304.
4. Ibid.
5. The English Authorised Version.
6. The Gospel of St. Mark (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1972), p. 166.
7. Howard Clark Kee, Jesus in History: An Approach to the Study of the Gospels, Second Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), pp. 43,44,45.
8. Encyclopedia Americana (New York: American Corporation, 1966), Vol. 18, p. 346, col. 1.
9. Glasgow: Collins, Fontana Books, 1975, p. 55.
10. The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), p. 346 of The New Testament.
11. The Virginal Conception..., p. 28, fn. 32.
12. Ibid., p. 51, fn. 78.
13. Ibid., p. 94, fn. 160.
14. Ibid., p. 55, fn. 87.
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15. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 35, col. 2, note o of The New Testament.
16. Ibid., p. 238.
17. Ibid., p. 341, col. 2, note p.
18. Ibid., p. 238.
19. Ibid., p. 239, col. 1, note q.
20. Ibid., p. 29 of The Old Testament.
21. Ibid., p. 30.
22. Ibid., p. 48.
23. Ibid., p. 141.
24. Ibid., p. 522.
25. The Megiddo Modem Dictionary, compiled by Reuban Sivan and Edward A. Levensten (Tel Aviv: Megiddo Publishing Co., Ltd., 1972), p. 15.
26. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 11, col. 1.
27. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 371 of the New Testament and note g in col. 2.
28. Ibid., p. 349.
29. Ibid., p. 39, col. 1, note a.
30. Ibid., p. 95, col. 2, note c.
31. Ibid., note d.
32. The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 150.
33. Ibid., pp. 150-51.
34. Ibid., p. 150.
35. Liddell and Scott, op. cit., p. 45, col. 1.
36. St. Paul (London: The Home University Library, Thornton Butter-worth Ltd., 1938), p. 90.
37. Liddell and Scott, op. cit., p. 61. col. 1.
38. Ibid., p. 657, col. 1.
39. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 91 of the New Testament.
40. Liddell and Scott, op. cit., p. 61, col. 1.
41. "The Letter to the Galatians", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond E. Brown, S. S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S. J., Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm. (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, St. Peter's Seminary, 1962, by arrangement with the original Publishers: Prentice Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968), p. 239, col. 2.
42. W.F. Arndt and F.W. Ginrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago, 1957).
43. Theological Studies, 5 (1944), pp. 484-94.
44. "Paul's Background", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 803, col. 1.
45. Ibid., p. 66, col. 1.
46. Roman Catholicism (London: The Teach Yourself Books, The English Universities Press Ltd., 1966), p. 164.
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47. "Biblical Glossary", Pears Cyclopaedia (London: Pelham Books Ltd., 1979-80), S13, col. 2.
48. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 201, col. 2, note o of The New Testament.
49. The Virginal Conception..., p. 94, fn. 160.
50. Roman Catholicism, p. 163.
51. The Gospel of St. Mark, p. 491.
52. Roman Catholicism, pp. 163,164.
53. Ibid., p. 74.
54. Ibid., p. 57.
55. Quoted from Brown's Virginal Conception..., p. 39, fn. 50.
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