"Cousin" vs. "sister"

[Lil_M]

Now to preface this, I totally understand the brother/cousin wording where the Gospels speak of Jesus’ “brothers”, and never had any doubts with it. But today it occurred to me, that it is very clear that Elizabeth is Mary’s cousin. So why wouldn’t Jesus’ relatives be identified as such? Or why wasn’t Elizabeth called Mary’s “sister”?

 

[Meggie]

It could have to do with distance, eg. Mary wouldn’t of had an extremely close day-to-day relationship with her cousin, Elizabeth, wheras those who hung around Jesus would be very close

 

[nkmeck]

Now to preface this, I totally understand the brother/cousin wording where the Gospels speak of Jesus’ “brothers”, and never had any doubts with it. But today it occurred to me, that it is very clear that Elizabeth is Mary’s cousin. So why wouldn’t Jesus’ relatives be identified as such? Or why wasn’t Elizabeth called Mary’s “sister”?

Luke wrote in Greek, where there was a word for “cousin.”

 

[Nita]

Luke wrote in Greek, where there was a word for “cousin.”

I would add to that:
Where Luke and the other evangelists use the word “brothers” and “sisters”, it is as a lead in to a quote where the speaker used the term “brothers” etc. Luke therefore uses the same term.

eg. Luke 8:19 Then His mother and his brothers came to Him…
(Next verse, 20) And He was told, “Your mother and your brothers…”

(The RSV uses the word “kinswoman” rather than “cousin”.)

Nita

 

[Oliviad]

It could have to do with distance, eg. Mary wouldn’t of had an extremely close day-to-day relationship with her cousin, Elizabeth, wheras those who hung around Jesus would be very close

That could never be a reason for the term in a Semitic manner of speach: blood is thicker than location in all the Old Testament.

But they were not actually cousins, as far as I can tell, but kindred in the sense of being from brother tribes of Israel, Judah and Levi. John the Baptist was the descendant of Aaron the brother of Moses.

However, this doesn’t remove the many Biblical and earliest Patristic difficulties with saying that “brother” was used in the Semitic manner in the Greek of the New Testament. JESUS must have had many cousins, not just a hand-full. Why, we must ask, was it understood that only two or three girls were HIS sisters, and only four guys HIS brothers? Why did the idea that they were cousins come long after both the idea of brethren through Mary and and the idea of step brethren through Joseph?

I have watched person after person debate from their different points of view, and have seen early Fathers misquoted, and various people with the same common name merged into one hybrid character (which then sets up the scene for the DaVinci Code nonsense, that claims no Saint got his peers’ identities right).

JESUS and John the Baptist, though, were likely not even second cousins. But where Scripture speaks of Barnabas and Mark, it calls them cousins, not brothers.

As for the brothers and sisters of JESUS, we do have to give a better reason why their parents are not named with them, but they are named in connection with JESUS and HIS mother and her husband.

It would be interesting to see what the earliest known quotation in support of each of three theories is, and see if it is known who said it, and in what context, etc.