Jesus cousins or brothers?

[Jonathan_1995]

Hi,

Today I read [BIBLEDRB]Matthew 12:46-50[/BIBLEDRB]

And I thought, how can “brethren” in this case (from a catholic’s perspective, since you don’t believe Jesus had any brothers), mean cousins, considering that Jesus says:

49 And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said: Behold my mother and my brethren.
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.

That would mean Jesus would say “Behold my mother and my cousins” and “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my cousin, and sister, and mother.”

How would that make sense?

 

[sousley]

No, brethren and cousin are not synonyms. When we use the word cousin today, we are referring to a very specific familial relation (ie. my mother’s sister’s child). The term brethren (biblically) generally refers to someone belonging to your family in a general sense or even to your ‘extended clan or tribe’, depending on the context.

Abraham calls Lot his brother, even though he would technically be his nephew; here the term ‘brother’ is used in a broader tribal sense.

The second reference you made was regarding Jesus’s removing the insistence on bloodline as a criteria for all of mankind to share in the adoptive sonship of the Father. Now, the Jews and Gentiles alike were offered the opportunity to share in the inheritance of the saints. So he broadens the scope of mother, sister, brother outside the scope of familial bloodline and proclaims that whosoever does the will of my Father is part of His family.

The first reference you make is more specific: the question of “Who is James, the Lord’s brother”. There are two circumstances that are handed down traditionally about who this man is: 1) the son of Mary (of Clopas) where Clopas is the brother (blood) of Joseph, making Mary and Mary (Virgin) sister-in-laws. This would make this James a cousin. The second option is that James is a child of St. Joseph from a previous marriage (also possible), making James and Jesus half-brothers. Both of these have been proposed in writings dating to the early church and are considered possible.

Either way the Virgin Mary bore the Son of God, according to her participation is His redemptive plan and didn’t have other children. Her life was dedicated to Him.

Hope that helps.

 

[po18guy]

For linguistic use, please read the Book of Tobit. In it, (4:12-13, 7:16, 8:9) we see that those of one’s own tribe were called brothers and sisters. The elder Tobit called his wife Edna “sister” as did Tobit’s son when marrying a woman from his tribe.

Going back even farther, Abraham called Lot (his nephew) his “brother.” See Genesis 11:27, 13:8.

Also, at the Pentecost (Acts 2) we see that, even though all present were Jews, the Apostles were all thought of, not as Jews per se, but as Galileans first (“Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans?” Acts 2:7). Thus, all of them were brothers of Christ - Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee. Women of Galilee were His sisters.

Matthew 1:25 certainly does not prove that there were other children of Mary. What it does is demonstrate the Christ is the fulfullment of the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14.

The confusion stems from language use.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Hi,

Today I read [bibledrb]Matthew 12:46-50[/bibledrb]

And I thought, how can “brethren” in this case (from a catholic’s perspective, since you don’t believe Jesus had any brothers), mean cousins, considering that Jesus says:

49 And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said: Behold my mother and my brethren.
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.

That would mean Jesus would say “Behold my mother and my cousins” and “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my cousin, and sister, and mother.”

How would that make sense?

As others have noted ‘brethren’ could be any of an extended family, or even tribe.

Here’s one for you:

It’s from Acts 1.

All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. [15] In those days Peter rising up in the midst of the brethren, said: (now the number of persons together was about an hundred and twenty

OK, so we have BRETHREN of about 120 here. Kind of a lot of ‘brothers’, wouldn’t you say? Even if Mary was very young when she had Jesus, that’s kind of a LOT of pregnancies one would imput to her. . .

 

[Todd977]

If you think about it, the only way Jesus could have brothers or sisters is if they too had no biological father but were miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. If Joseph and Mary had conceived children, those children would not be Jesus’ brothers and sisters but his half-brothers and sisters. If Joseph had children by a prior marriage, those children would be Jesus’ step-brothers and sisters. If Joseph and Mary had adopted other children or fostered other children, they would be Jesus’ adopted brothers and sisters or his foster brothers and sisters. We don’t know if the brothers and sisters of the Lord spoken of in Sacred Scripture were his step-brothers and sisters, his adopted brothers and sisters, his foster brothers and sisters, or more distant relations (cousins). All we know for certain is that Mary conceived and gave birth to only one child, Jesus Christ.

An apocryphal second-century Christian writing,, Protoevangelium of Jamessuggests that they were Joseph’s children by a prior marriage, as Joseph is described as a widower with grown children when he married the Virgin Mary.

 

[Karen107]

First and foremost in that scripture Jesus is teaching that it is important to do the will of God in order to be related to Him as a member of Gods family. So Jesus is using the terms mother, brothers and sisters in the ‘family of God’ sense, not the biological family sense. Notice He doesn’t call His mother a ‘sister’, nor does he calls any of the men ‘fathers’, but because Mary will always be Jesus Mother even as she is now in heaven with Jesus, Jesus calls her His mother. This shows that Jesus elevates Mary above all other women (because Jesus could very well have called Mary His sister there), the Queen Mother which is what we learn in the scripture as prophesied in the OT. This scripture than also reveals Jesus as 'Gods Word" made flesh.

Luke 1:28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

I could be wrong but I understood that brethren in the bible refers to children of God in the plural sense whether they are male or female.

 

[nuntym]

+JMJ+

With one heart all these joined constantly in prayer, together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. One day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers – there were about a hundred and twenty people in the congregation…
Acts 1:13-14

So Jesus has several dozen brothers? Poor Mary

 

[Mystophilus]

And I thought, how can “brethren” in this case (from a catholic’s perspective, since you don’t believe Jesus had any brothers), mean cousins, considering that Jesus says:

49 And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said: Behold my mother and my brethren.
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.

First, I am not Catholic, and so none of this is dogma for me: the question is linguistic/historical.

Second, that word does not mean “cousin”. In its most reductively simple sense, it does mean “brother”, i.e. “child of the same parent(s)”. However, it is frequently used for widely metaphorical extensions of that concept, and, particularly in κοινη (Biblical-era Greek), it gets used for all manner of things from “closest friend” to “friend” to “relative or associate” (see the other locations under that link). Thus, early Church theologians reading the Bible in their native Greek did not assume that it meant “child of the same parents”, nor were they simply obliged to assume that it meant “cousins”.

Third, John 19:26, when Jesus gives his mother into John’s care, makes no cultural sense if Jesus had direct siblings, because they ought to have taken care of her.

Fourth, the early Church rapidly developed the doctrine that Mary had no other children, and Jesus had no siblings. Thus the Protoevangelium of James, written around the end of the C1st asserts this, which would have been tricky if Jesus’ siblings or their descendants had been wandering around at the time. Further, had there been such descendants, they would naturally have been Early Church celebrities (“Everyone, here is Isaac, the great-grand nephew of Jesus himself!”), and yet we do not have a single source, in the Bible or outside of it, which refers to any one of the supposed siblings or to any of their descendants ever having existed.

So, from a linguistic, cultural, and historical point of view, there is more reason to believe that Mary did not have other children than that she did.

 

[TimothyH]

Mary is the spouse of the Holy Spirit who had a child by the Holy Spirit.

For Mary to have had a child by someone else means that Mary is an adulterer. It is not possible for Jesus to be both the Son of God and the Son of an adulterer.

-Tim-

 

[thistle]

Hi,

Today I read [BIBLEDRB]Matthew 12:46-50[/BIBLEDRB]

And I thought, how can “brethren” in this case (from a catholic’s perspective, since you don’t believe Jesus had any brothers), mean cousins, considering that Jesus says:

49 And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said: Behold my mother and my brethren.
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.

That would mean Jesus would say “Behold my mother and my cousins” and “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my cousin, and sister, and mother.”

How would that make sense?

It is not just from a Catholic perspective. All the founders of Protestantism - Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger declared in writing that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

Also see this site:

scripturecatholic.com/blessed_virgin_mary.html

 

[pnewton]

We also need to realize how slippery language is. The people of the time were of a Hebrew mindset, speaking Aramaic that evolved using their native Hebrew phraseology, then translated to Greek in the New Testament. One can see vestiges of both the Hebrew and the Aramaic in the Greek New Testament.

Think today how casually we use the word “brother”. If we were to translate common speech into some language in which brother was not used for a friend or a neighborhood acquaintance, the that would probably confuse people as well in a few centuries.

 

[dje14338]

Soudley, in his/her post above, discusses “Who is James, the Lord’s Brother”. The first circumstance he cites where James is the son of Mary and Clopas is probably the actual situation. I have somewhere in my files a 1906 paper from the journal Theology which presents a strong argument for this. In addition, most people [and scholars] have not investigated whether Mary [of Clopas] and Mary [of Joseph] had different names in their native language. Mary [of Clopas] is Maria in most of the early copies of the New Testament while Mary [of Joseph] is Miriam. Both Maria and Miriam are translated as Mary. The same problem occurs with Mary Magdalene and Mary [of Joseph].

 

[DaveBj]

snip

An apocryphal second-century Christian writing, Protoevangelium of James, suggests that they were Joseph’s children by a prior marriage, as Joseph is described as a widower with grown children when he married the Virgin Mary.

All we can do on this subject is guess, and this is the guess that I think comes closest to reality. For one thing, they act like bossy older half-siblings

 

[Randy_Carson]

Hi,

Today I read [BIBLEDRB]Matthew 12:46-50[/BIBLEDRB]

And I thought, how can “brethren” in this case (from a catholic’s perspective, since you don’t believe Jesus had any brothers), mean cousins, considering that Jesus says:

49 And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said: Behold my mother and my brethren.
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.

That would mean Jesus would say “Behold my mother and my cousins” and “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my cousin, and sister, and mother.”

How would that make sense?

Matthew 12:46-50 – Who is my Mother?

Matthew 12:46-50
46While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” 48He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (cf. Mark 3:31-35; Luke 8:19-21).

On another occasion, "A woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.” 28He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11:27-28).

In these two passages, it seems that Jesus Himself depreciated the dignity of His Blessed Mother. In reality, Jesus places the bond that unites the soul with God above the natural bond of parentage which unites the Mother of God with her Divine Son. The latter dignity is not belittled by this, but because we naturally appreciate the family connection more easily, it is employed by Our Lord as a means to make known the real value of holiness. In actuality, therefore, Jesus praises His mother in a most emphatic way for she exceeded the rest of men in holiness not less than in dignity.

Most probably, Mary was found also among the holy women who ministered to Jesus and His apostles during their ministry in Galilee (cf. Luke 8:2-3); the Evangelists do not mention any other public appearance of Mary during the time of Jesus’ journeys through Galilee or Judea. But we must remember that when the sun appears, even the brightest stars become invisible.

Since Mary was Jesus’ mother and she did the will of the Father in heaven, she is doubly blessed.

 

[ericc]

Hi,

Today I read [BIBLEDRB]Matthew 12:46-50[/BIBLEDRB]

And I thought, how can “brethren” in this case (from a catholic’s perspective, since you don’t believe Jesus had any brothers), mean cousins, considering that Jesus says:

49 And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said: Behold my mother and my brethren.
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.

That would mean Jesus would say “Behold my mother and my cousins” and “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my cousin, and sister, and mother.”

How would that make sense?

The actual Greek word used was “adelphoi” which could mean brothers, blood, step, half, adopted or otherwise, clansmen, relatives, spiritual brothers, cousins etc

An example of half brother is quoted in Mark 6:17

Herod’s brother Philip is actually his half brother. But in Greek is also written as adelphou The English translation is “brother” because of the Greek word used. A transliteration.

 

[DaveBj]

The actual Greek word used was “adelphoi” which could mean brothers, blood, step, half, adopted or otherwise, clansmen, relatives, spiritual brothers, cousins etc

An example of half brother is quoted in Mark 6:17

Herod’s brother Philip is actually his half brother. But in Greek is also written as adelphou The English translation is “brother” because of the Greek word used. A transliteration.

Picking a bit of a nit here, but adelphoi and adelphou are the same word. The former is the masculine nominative plural form, while the latter is the masculine singular genitive form.