The correct word is “kinsmen”, since the Hebrew didn’t have a separate word for brother as the word is used today.
Yes. He had four step brothers and at least two step sisters from Joseph’s previous marriage. I doubt the writers of the Gospels would name four random cousins, especially without naming John. But remember, they kept Mary’s virgin pregnancy a secret, so to everyone outside the family they would have been his half brothers and half sisters.
It’s possible that John, the beloved disciple, was a nephew of Jesus through one of his older step brothers. It would explain why Mary was left in his care, and why he was allowed at the foot of the cross with her. He was very young and an older man would have been arrested as being a follower of Jesus. Plus, I don’t think he’s ever referred to as an apostle, so he’s not the same person as the apostle John. Which would explain why he wrote his Gospel so late.
It wasn’t relevant to the narrative. Plus, the writers tried to avoid mentioning Jesus’ relatives because people would want to follow them as the “rightful” successor. In those days the closest living relative was chosen as someone’s successor.
Again, it wasn’t relevant to the narrative. Just because it wasn’t mentioned doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. For all we know, Joseph’s parents, and some of his uncles, aunts, and cousins were living in Nazareth too. His other children might have gone ahead with them while he took care of his slow pregnant wife.
The New Testament was written in Greek. In the Old Testament Hebrew, the word ach was used for kinsmen/distant relative or actual brother or sister. There weren’t separate words to distinguish relationships in Old Testament Hebrew.
Hi!
St Paul sometimes used the word brethren (adelphos) to mean kinsmen (suggenes) by race:
Just a thought, but of Aramaic would have used a common word for kinsman/cousin/brother/sister, then when translated to Greek the specifics may not have been translated. For example, let’s assume that “James the brother of Jesus” was actually a cousin, but in Aramaic, everyone referred to him by the word which means brother/cousin/kinsman. That could be carried over into the Greek as brother.
When the NT was written, the majority of Christians were Greek speaking Jews who would have been familiar with the Semitic idiomatic usage of the words adelphos and adelphe. We read in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew OT:
The Gospel of Mark was originally written in Greek, so you’re mistaken that the word adelphos “always” means uterine brothers. Observe Mark 6:17-18*: ‘For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”’* Are we to presume that Herod Antipas and Philip were uterine brothers? Certainly not! Herod Antipas was the son of Mariamne the Hasonean, Herod the Great’s second wife. Philip the Tetrarch (Herod Philip 1) was the son of Cleopatra of Jerusalem, Herod’s fifth wife. Thus the two men are half-brothers, having the same father but different mothers. Mark employs the Semitic idiomatic term because there is no single word for half-brother or step-brother in Hebrew and Aramaic - just as there are no Hebrew words for uncle, nephew, aunt, and niece. Unfortunately, Protestants overlook or choose to ignore this passage when citing Mark 6:3 (cf. Mt. 12:46-50) as a proof-text against the Catholic dogma of Mary Ever-Virgin. And they fail to notice or choose to ignore that these supposedly biological brothers and sisters of Jesus are actually never called children of Mary, though Jesus himself is explicitly referred to as a child of hers (Jn. 2:1; Acts 1:14).
Hi!
1 Chronicles 23:22 uses the Hebrew word “’ă·ḥê·hem” which is a form of the word “ach” which means brother or relative. It isn’t specific for sibling, cousin, aunt, etc. This proves to be challenging when translating. Most of the English translations for this verse use brother or brethren for this term. This doesn’t mean that in English brother means cousin, but that the translation is complicated by the Hebrew word ‘ach.’ It doesn’t seem too surprising that the Greek Septuagint translators encountered the same thing and translated the term to adelphos/brother the same way English translators have. It doesn’t mean that ‘adelphos’ means cousin in Greek.
I didn’t use “uterine” in my post. I said that the Greek words “adelphos” and “adelphe” always mean brother and sister. Half-brothers and step-brothers are still brothers. I didn’t assert that Mary gave birth to other children, but that the terms used mean brother and sister. This doesn’t exclude half and step-siblings.
This is easily proven to be false, as in Genesis the word *adelphos *is used to describe an uncle/nephew relationship.
In 1 Chronicles, of the Septuagint, *adelphos *does mean “cousins”. The daughters of Eleazar married the sons of his brother Kish. The girls and boys, therefore, were cousins. We don’t need the Greek word for cousin (anepsios) to see how they are related as kin. So adelphos can be used to mean cousins, just as it is in the NT when referring to James, Joseph, Judas/Thaddeus, and Simon, three of whom were also members of the Twelve besides being cousins of Jesus.
But *adelphos/adelphe *mean “of the same womb”, so I assumed you meant brothers and sisters who are actual siblings. In Hebrew parlance, these Greek words may extend to other relatives and even clan members.
1 Chronicles 23:22
From what I see on online study tools the roots of adelphos/adelphe is “from” and “the same womb,” but the word is used in a broader sense. The terms adelphos/adelphe are used the same way brother/sister are used in English today.