Did Jesus have brothers and sisters?

Did Jesus have brothers and sisters?

Q. Where does it say in scripture that Jesus had brothers? Did he have sisters too? My Catholic friends said that the scripture does talk about brethren but that were not Jesus' brothers.

(Submitted by: Linda)

A. There are thirty seven verses containing the name of James in the New Testament. We understand that three men were identified. One was the son of Zebedee who had a brother John. These two were apostles but this James was beheaded early in his life by Herod Aggripa. The second James listed is James the Less in the list of disciples of Jesus Christ. This James was the author of the Epistle of James and was the head of the Jerusalem congregations that Peter and John and Paul met with in Acts15.

The reason that this is important is because to understand who James the Less was and what was his relationship to Jesus will tell us if Mary the wife of Joseph had other sons and daughters besides Jesus. There are some references to Mary's sister Mary or perhaps a sister in law. Logically I have difficulty with having two Mary's in the same primary family being sisters.

So the first question that needs answering is: Is Mary's sister the mother of James the Less or is Mary herself the mother of James the Less? In the King James Version of the New Testament the word wife is in italics meaning that it was inserted by the translators. This insertion of words is a common practice but sometimes leads the reader astray in comprehending who is who in this case. John 19:25 is the verse I am analyzing to figure out who James' mother is. When you understand whose mother belongs to James the Less then the verses that refer to the family of Jesus as James, Joses, Simon and Judas as well as at least one sister Salome are more clear.

It is unclear from Scripture whether the man whose name is Clopas or Cleophas and Alphaeus is the same man or not. James the Less had a father called Alphaeus. But when translating out common names they get damaged in the spelling as could be the case here. "Phas" that ends the word Cleophas could be the same as the "phas" part of the name Alphaeus. Even though the spelling is different phonetically it would sound similar enough to cause confusion. The Hebrew equivalent is XLP with X sounding like our hard ch or k sound.

If Alphaeus was the brother of Mary and the son of Heli with the second Mary as his wife who produced James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, then these would be cousins of Jesus and the word brethren or brothers could be used to identify them as close kinsmen of Jesus.

Consider the following from my Online Bible reference software:

(in the spelling of this word _h_ is inserted by mistake from Latin MSS.), rather Cleopas, which is the Greek form of the word, while Clopas is the Aramaic form. In John 19:25 the Authorized Version reads, "Mary, the wife of Clopas." The word "wife" is conjecturally inserted here. If "wife" is rightly inserted, then Mary was the mother of James the Less, and Clopas is the same as Alphaeus (see Mt. 10:3; 27:56)

And

Alphaeus means 02501, Alpheus
the same as 02500, Greek 256 Alfaiou
AV-Heleph 1; 1
Heleph = "exchange"

Matthew or Levi was also the son of Alphaeus according to Mark 2:14. Was he to be considered part of the family of Jesus' too? Or does this sentence mean something entirely different when rendered without the insertions by the translators. It would read "And as he passed by he saw Levi of Alphaeus . . . ". In the other three passages that mention the word Alphaeus it is in relationship to James which might better be rendered as the following.

Matthew 10:3 in the list of the disciples that Jesus called ". . . James of Alphaeus. . . " and in Mark 3:18 again " . . . James of Alphaeus . . .", and in Luke 6:16 " . . .James of Alphaeus . . " and in the book of Acts 1:13 " . . .James of Alphaeus . . . " because son of is in italics and is an insertion.

The Greek interlinear version gives John 19:25 as follows (Numbers between "<" and ">" are Strong's Concordance Number references):

Notice the little word "autou" , Strong's number 848 in the above Greek. We get the word prefix "auto" meaning something that is of itself. It was Jesus' own mother and his aunt who was with these women.

If on the other hand these four men were actually offspring of Mary and her husband Joseph as other passages seem to indicate then yes, Jesus had brothers and sisters. Matthew 13:55 seems to indicate a need to identify who Jesus is. It would not seem totally logical for someone to question the identity of cousins to substantiate Jesus' identification. It is possible to do this I am sure but is it likely?

When Jesus bestowed upon John the responsibility of caring for his mother could he have been his cousin too? If so they were a very closely associated family.

" When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! " (John 19:26)

My cousins do not look much like me and do not even live in my same physical region. If someone wanted to know who I was would he claim just my cousins as my closest kin to use as an identification marker if I had brothers and sisters? And there is something particularly interesting about how this verse is spoken. It puts a mother, a sister, and a brother all in the same breath. Jesus can have but one mother and an aunt does not qualify. So when the mother and the brothers and sisters are all put together as it is and they are all claimed to be the carpenter's immediate family it tells me that Jesus must have had other siblings even though they were only half-brothers or half-sisters.

Matthew 12:46, Mark 3:31 and Luke 8:19 all suggest that Jesus' mother of which he only has one and his brethren were all outside waiting to talk to him. If the word for brother or brethren meant the whole kindred of Jesus or his countrymen it would have to include the ones who were appealing to him at the door and the ones who were in the crowd. If the word brother meant just the sons of his aunt Mary the wife of Cleophas/Clopas/Alphaeus then why is not his mother at the door and why would the door man think that he should be wanting to stop what he was doing to speak to them? No, I believe that the person at the door was indeed his own mother because that would be the only person who would be important enough for any man to stop an important lecture to speak with her. Aunts and cousins could wait until he was finished with his lecture or whatever he was doing, but only a mother would be bringing some kind of news he needed to know urgently.

Once we can identify who James the Less truly was and who his father and mother were we can see that the scripture aligns him with Jude or Judas, Simon, and Joses as well as at least one sister Salome. The next two scriptures identifies Salome as the child of one of the Mary's who attended to Jesus' burial rites and stood afar off while he was being crucified. She and another brother Joses were with her on the hill overlooking the crucifixion. Could they have been too young at the time to understand the situation?

"There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, . . . " (Mark 15:40)

" Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him." (Mark 16:1)

If Salome and James were with their mother and their mother Mary was in fact Mary the the aunt of Jesus they could technically be his sisters and brothers to the Christ. It could technically be so, but why is an aunt of Jesus doing the personal care that is due to a mother of a dead son?

" And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's sons. " (Matthew 27:55-56)

" There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem. " (Mark 15:40-41)

Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him." (Mark 16:11)

" It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles." (Luke 24:10)

" Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene." (John 19:25)

The only scripture verse which includes all three of the Marys into one is the last one and this would indicate that Jesus's mother had a sister or sister in law named Mary whose husband was Cleophas/Clopas, but it does not say that she is the mother of James the Less.

So then we come to a passage in Acts 1:14 which says :

"These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers."

Why would the mother of Jesus be here with the rest of the church if she had not been the same one who cared for the body and watched from afar? Her other two sons Jude and James were also disciples of the first apostolic church and wrote epistles to the brethren that are in the canonized Scripture. I would say that the conclusion is still undetermined as a certainty but it really does not matter in any case. When Jesus discussed who his family was in Matthew 12:50 it was the brothers and sisters that had been called out of this world by his heavenly Father whom he was addressing when the call came from the doorman in the passages above. Eventually we will all be his brothers or sisters as Jesus is just the firstborn of many brethren. There will only be one family and that is the family of God.

Now as a follow up I did not elaborate on the concept of a third man whose name is James. Most of my outside Bible dictionary sources mention that possibility but do not elaborate on who this third James might be. It might be a phantomized idea to try to explain what I have said above. James the Less is identified in the list of apostles with whom Paul conferred in Galatians 1:19 and shows that this James was the Lord's brother. Whether this means his own blood half brother or a spiritual brother is open for interpretation. We may not know the answer to this question until Jesus returns and explains the full understanding of these verses.

Nowhere does it say that Mary and the men called Simon, James, Judas, and Joses can't be the mother and brothers of Jesus. The Scripture does identify that Clopas' wife was also called Mary, but does not identify that these four men are his sons or that Salome is his daughter through that Mary the sister in law of Mary the mother of Jesus. And if Alphaeus is a place rather than a father's name it might explain why Levi/Matthew and James may come from the same place rather than the same father. I do not know about this last suggestion and it seems plausible but would need further study.

In a book by Jacob Bryant 1775, he discusses a more correct method of identifying names of places. The two roots or radicals that might be important in deciphering this word Alphaeus might be the two roots El or Al meaning God and Phi which means a place where God speaks. It is possible that we need to do more study of this particular word rather than assume it means a "son of" a man by that name. Thank you for asking this question. It gives us a reason to confirm our scriptural evidence and put things into the proper perspective. May God Bless your studies.

Answer Given By: Charlotte Grantham