Common Questions & Answers
“When Catholics call Mary
the "Blessed Virgin," they mean she remained a virgin throughout her
life. When Protestants refer to Mary as "virgin," they mean she was a
virgin only until Jesus’ birth. They believe that she and Joseph later
had children whom Scripture refers to as "the brethren of the Lord."
The disagreement arises over biblical verses that use the terms "brethren,"
"brother," and "sister."
There are about ten instances in
the New Testament where "brothers" and "sisters" of the
Lord are mentioned (Matt. 12:46; Matt. 13:55; Mark 3:31–34; Mark 6:3;
Luke 8:19–20; John 2:12, 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor.
9:5).
When trying to understand these
verses, note that the term "brother" (Greek: adelphos)
has a wide meaning in the Bible. It is not restricted to the literal meaning of
a full brother or half-brother. The same goes for "sister" (adelphe) and the plural form "brothers" (adelphoi). The Old Testament shows that
"brother" had a wide semantic range of meaning and could refer to any
male relative from whom you are not descended (male relatives from whom you are
descended are known as "fathers") and who are not descended from you
(your male descendants, regardless of the number of generations removed, are
your "sons"), as well as kinsmen such as cousins, those who are
members of the family by marriage or by law rather than by blood, and even
friends or mere political allies (2 Sam. 1:26; Amos 1:9).
Lot, for example, is called
Abraham’s "brother" (Gen. 14:14), even though, being the son of
The terms "brothers,"
"brother," and "sister" did not refer only to close
relatives. Sometimes they meant kinsmen (Deut. 23:7; Neh.
5:7; Jer. 34:9), as in the reference to the forty-two
"brethren" of King Azariah (2 Kgs. 10:13–14).
No Word for Cousin
Because neither Hebrew nor Aramaic
(the language spoken by Christ and his disciples) had a special word meaning
"cousin," speakers of those languages used either the word for
"brother" or a circumlocution, such as "the son of the sister of
my father." But circumlocutions are clumsy, so the Jews used "brother."
The writers of the New Testament
were brought up to use the Aramaic equivalent of "brothers" to mean
both cousins and sons of the same father—plus other relatives and even
non-relatives. When they wrote in Greek, they did the same thing the translators
of the Septuagint did. (The Septuagint was the Greek version of the Hebrew
Bible; it was translated by Hellenistic Jews a century or two before
Christ’s birth and was the version of the Bible from which most of the
Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament are taken.)
In the Septuagint the Hebrew word
that includes both brothers and cousins was translated as adelphos,
which in Greek usually has the narrow meaning that the English
"brother" has. Unlike Hebrew or Aramaic, Greek has a separate word
for cousin, anepsios, but the translators of
the Septuagint favored adelphos, even for true
cousins.
You might say they transliterated
instead of translated, importing the Jewish idiom into the Greek Bible. They
took an exact equivalent of the Hebrew word for "brother" and did not
use adelphos in one place (for sons of the
same parents), and anepsios in another (for
cousins). This same usage was employed by the writers of the New Testament and
passed into English translations of the Bible. To determine what
"brethren" or "brother" or "sister" means in any
one verse, we have to look at the context. When we do that, we see that
insuperable problems arise if we assume that Mary had children other than
Jesus.
When the angel Gabriel appeared to
Mary and told her that she would conceive a son, she asked, "How can this
be since I have no relations with a man?" (Luke 1:34). From the
Church’s earliest days, as the Fathers interpreted this Bible passage,
Mary’s question was taken to mean that she had made a vow of lifelong
virginity, even in marriage. (This was not common, but neither was it unheard
of.) If she had not taken such a vow, the question would make no sense.
Mary knew how babies are made
(otherwise she wouldn’t have asked the question she did). If she had
anticipated having children in the normal way and did not intend to maintain a
vow of virginity, she would hardly have to ask "how" she was to have
a child, since conceiving a child in the "normal" way would be
expected by a newlywed wife. Her question makes sense only if there was an
apparent (but not a real) conflict between keeping a vow of virginity and
acceding to the angel’s request. A careful look at the New Testament
shows that Mary kept her vow of virginity and never had any children other than
Jesus.
When Jesus was found in the
Also, the attitude taken by the
"brethren of the Lord" implies they are his elders. In ancient and,
particularly, in Eastern societies (remember,
Another time, they sought to
restrain him for his own benefit: "And when his family heard it, they went
out to seize him, for people were saying, ‘He is beside
himself’" (Mark 3:21). This kind of behavior could make sense for
ancient Jews only if the "brethren" were older than Jesus, but that
alone eliminates them as his biological brothers, since Jesus was Mary’s
"first-born" son (Luke 2:7).
Consider what happened at the foot
of the cross. When he was dying, Jesus entrusted his mother to the apostle John
(John 19:26–27). The Gospels mention four of his "brethren":
James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude. It is hard to imagine why Jesus would have
disregarded family ties and made this provision for his mother if these four
were also her sons.
Fundamentalist Arguments
Fundamentalists insist that
"brethren of the Lord" must be interpreted in the strict sense. They
most commonly make two arguments based on Matthew 1:25: "[A]nd he did not know her until (Greek: heos, also translated
into English as "till") she brought forth her firstborn son."
They first argue that the natural inference from "till" is that
Joseph and Mary afterward lived together as husband and wife, in the usual
sense, and had several children. Otherwise, why would Jesus be called "first-born"?
Doesn’t that mean there must have been at least a
"second-born," perhaps a "third-born," and so on? But they
are using a narrow, modern meaning of "until," instead of the meaning
it had when the Bible was written. In the Bible, it means only that some action
did not happen up to a certain point; it does not imply that the action did
happen later, which is the modern sense of the term. In fact, if the modern
sense is forced on the Bible, some ridiculous meanings result.
Consider this line: "Michal the daughter of Saul had no children till the day of
her death" (2 Sam. 6:23). Are we to assume she had children after
her death?
There is also the burial of Moses.
The book of Deuteronomy says that no one knew the location of his grave
"until this present day" (Deut. 34:6, Knox). But we know that no one
has known since that day either.
The examples could be multiplied,
but you get the idea—nothing can be proved from the use of the word
"till" in Matthew 1:25. Recent translations give a better sense of
the verse: "He had no relations with her at any time before she bore a
son" (New American Bible); "He had not known her when she bore
a son" (Knox).
Fundamentalists claim Jesus could
not be Mary’s "first-born" unless there were other children
that followed him. But this shows ignorance of the way the ancient Jews used
the term. For them it meant the child that opened the womb (Ex. 13:2; Num.
3:12). Under the Mosaic Law, it was the "first-born" son that was to
be sanctified (Ex. 34:20). Did this mean the parents had to wait until a second
son was born before they could call their first the "first-born"? Hardly. The first male child of a marriage was termed the
"first-born" even if he turned out to be the only child of the
marriage.
The Holy Family
Fundamentalists say it would have
been repugnant for Mary and Joseph to enter a marriage and remain celibate.
They call such marriages "unnatural" arrangements. Certainly they
were unusual, but not as unusual as having the Son of God in one’s
family, and not nearly as unusual as having a virgin give birth to a child! The
Holy Family was neither an average family nor should we expect its members to
act as would members of an average family.
The circumstances demanded
sacrifice by Mary and Joseph. This was a special family, set aside for the
nurturing of the Son of God. No greater dignity could be given to marriage than
that.
Backing up the testimony of
Scripture regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity is the testimony of the
early Christian Church. Consider the controversy between Jerome and Helvidius, writing around 380. Helvidius
first brought up the notion that the "brothers of the Lord" were
children born to Mary and Joseph after Jesus’ birth. The great Scripture
scholar Jerome at first declined to comment on Helvidius’
remarks because they were a "novel, wicked, and a daring affront to the
faith of the whole world." At length, though, Jerome’s friends
convinced him to write a reply, which turned out to be his treatise called On
the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary. He used not only the
scriptural arguments given above, but cited earlier Christian writers, such as
Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr. Helvidius was unable to come up with a reply,
and his theory remained in disrepute and was unheard of until more recent
times.
So, if it is established that the
"brethren of the Lord" were not Jesus’ brothers or
half-brothers through Mary, who were they?
Prior to the time of Jerome, the
standard theory was that they were Jesus’ "brothers" who were
sons of Joseph though not of Mary. According to this view, Joseph was a widower
at the time he married Mary. He had children from his first marriage (who would
be older than Jesus, explaining their attitude toward him). This is mentioned
in a number of early Christian writings. One work, known as the Proto-evangelium of James (A.D. 125) records that Joseph was
selected from a group of widowers to serve as the husband/protector of Mary,
who was a virgin consecrated to God. When he was chosen, Joseph objected:
"I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl"
(4:8–9).
Today, the most commonly accepted
view is that they were Jesus’ cousins. Of the four "brethren"
who are named in the Gospels, consider, for the sake of argument, only James.
Similar reasoning can be used for the other three. We know that James the younger’s mother was named Mary. Look at the
descriptions of the women standing beneath the cross: "among whom were
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the
sons of Zebedee" (Matt. 27:56); "There were also women looking on
from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the
younger and of Joses, and Salome" (Mark 15:40).
Then look at what John says:
"But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his
mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and
Mary Magdalene" (John 19:25). If we compare these parallel accounts of the
scene of the crucifixion, we see that the mother of James and Joseph must be
the wife of Clopas. So far, so
good.
An argument against this, though,
is that James is elsewhere (Matt. 10:3) described as the son of Alphaeus, which would mean this Mary, whoever she was, was
the wife of both Clopas and Alphaeus.
But Alphaeus and Clopas are
the same person, since the Aramaic name for Alphaeus
could be rendered in Greek either as Alphaeus or as Clopas. Another possibility is that Alphaeus
took a Greek name similar to his Jewish name, the way that Saul took the name
Paul.
So it’s probable that James
the younger is the son of Mary and Clopas. The
second-century historian Hegesippus explains that Clopas was the brother of Joseph, the foster-father of
Jesus. James would thus be Joseph’s nephew and a cousin of Jesus, who was
Joseph’s putative son.
This identification of the
"brethren of the Lord" as Jesus’ first cousins is open to
legitimate question—they might even be relatives more distantly
removed—but our inability to determine for certain their exact status
strictly on the basis of the biblical evidence (or lack of it, in this case) says
nothing at all about the main point, which is that the Bible demonstrates that
they were not the Blessed Virgin Mary’s children.”
[This
section quoted from: Catholic Answers, “Brethren of the Lord” (
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