Which denominations do not believe Jesus had siblings?

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There is zero evidence that the Blessed Virgin Mary had other children. There is no biblical evidence, no historical evidence, no monumental, archaeological, or artistic evidence – no evidence, period. This nonsense about Mary’s other children comes from post-16th century Protestants misinterpreting the scriptures – twisting them to make them convey what was never intended. It’s called eisogesis – reading doctrines into scripture – not taking into account the original biblical languages or understanding them; believing that the NT was written in English, failing to comprehend the exigencies of translation.

The Catholic Church was there in the upper room at Pentecost and knew the BVM personally. The Church was with her at the foot of the Cross. The Church observed her as she was cared for and protected by St. John. The Church was there when she died (called the dormition). The Church knows she had no other children.

Who’s more likely to know the truth – the 2,000-year-old Church that knew her personally or some come-lately Protestant reading a novel doctrine into a stolen document (the New Testament)? The other ancient Churches – the Orthodox – also hold that Mary was ever virgin. They and the Eastern Catholic Churches honor her with the title Theotokus, God-bearer.

This is but another of the doctrines among many that Protestants “found” or “discovered” in the NT many centuries after it was written. In fact, they invented the doctrine.

The Apostles never taught that Mary had other children, and the first Christians never believed it. Do the Apostles know better than come-lately Protestants? Yes, indeed, they do.

A little knowledge of historic Christianity would do a body a world of good.

JMJ Jay
 
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JulieofOregon:
It’s rather interesting to wonder about the family life of our Lord Jesus. In my opinion, it really doesn’t matter if Jesus had “blood” brothers and sisters. He may have and perhaps not. What matters to me the most is my fundamental belief of His life, His mission, and His fullfillment of the scriptures.

Rather than strive to seek differences between the Christian religions, I believe seeking our common denominators serves a far greater purpose. For we are all brothers and sisters.

semper fi
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We are all literal brothers and sisters. Genetically, we all trace our heritage to the same parents. The markers are in our blood.

Our beliefs are radically different – even among Christians. There is orthodoxy (right belief) and heterodoxy or heresy.

It matters a great deal whether the Catholic Church teaches the Truth or whether she teaches mere opinion.

JMJ Jay
 
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Katholikos:
Spokenword, I’ve asked you many times on other threads to tell us exactly what God’s Word is, and precisely which writings are 'God’s Word," and how you know.

There are many Christian organizations that have different versions of “God’s Word” (different Bibles with different tables of contents), so how do you know which one is right? For example, how do you know the letter that a presbyter (priest) named John wrote to his friend Gaius*** is*** the Word of God, and the letter from Barnabas, companion of St. Paul, is not? Do you get a burning in the bosom like Mormons do?

Do the Ethiopian Orthodox have the “Word of God” in their 81 writings? Or is the Catholic Church correct with 73 writings? Or why would the minimalist Protestants be right with only 66 writings? And there are others.

gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/canon2.stm

See my thread Which Bible? What canon? in the apologetics forum.

You can’t say which writings are the Word of God of your own knowledge. For the NT, you take the Catholic Church’s word for it. For the OT, you follow Martin Luther’s reduced canon.

You’ve only got part of the written Word of God and none of the Spoken Word of God that was preserved in the ancient Catholic and Orthodox Churches as Sacred Apostolic Tradition.

And you read what little of the Word of God you do have out of context. You can’t get the right meaning out of it unless you know the meaning the Sacred Writers put into it.

Where in the Bible does it say “these writings are the Word of God” and name them?JMJ Jay
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Spokenword, how about an answer?

JMJ Jay
 
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SPOKENWORD:
Hi Jay .See post #67.
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I’ve reread your post #67. It is not an answer. I conclude, then, that your answer is that you have no answer to these basic questions. You can only say, ‘I believe the Bible because I believe it. I don’t know what it is, or how it got put together, or which collection is the Word of God, but I believe it – and that’s that. Don’t confuse me with the facts.’

Peace,

😛 Jay
 
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Katholikos:
I’ve reread your post #67. It is not an answer. I conclude, then, that your answer is that you have no answer to these basic questions. You can only say, ‘I believe the Bible because I believe it. I don’t know what it is, or how it got put together, or which collection is the Word of God, but I believe it – and that’s that. Don’t confuse me with the facts.’

Peace,

😛 Jay
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Hi Jay I did answer you,its just that you dont understand what I said. Maybe you are not ready for revelation truth.God is in control.God Bless.
 
Too bad Dr. Luke didn’t ask Mary if she was a Virgin all her life when He interviewed her during the research for his Gospel. But then, perhaps that would have been gouche in uncivilized first century Palestine.

Brother Malachi, I love you, man. When you are ready for some logic, you will be quite an Appologist!
 
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Katholikos:
Spokenword, how about an answer?

JMJ Jay
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Sir do you really expect a reply?
We do have 66 books that we agree upon. This we both can agree is the Word of God. We can agree that Christ is the incarnate Word of God. The rest we seem to disagree upon. So how do we know what of the rest is Gods word. We come to know the One who spoke the word. By becoming intimate with God we not only know His word but that word becomes engraved in our hearts and put in our minds.
peace to you but it is more inmportant to know your God that it is to know your dogma.
 
What I dont understand is the logic some Catholics have that if Jesus had brothers and sisters it would diminish Mary and even himself?
 
Back in the 80’s I was ahappy go lucky born again christian who was so happy that i was saved from the evil clutches of the catholic church. I mean right in the bible it was written that the lord had brothers. I was raised in the catholic church and like so many catholics of that day we wernt taught why the church belived what she was teaching. Anyway back then I asked God and jesus why does the Catholic church teach that mary didnt have any children beside jesus when it was so clear that the bible tells us that jesus had siblings, or so I thought.
Anyway I was raeding the new testiment from start to finish convinced that I was SAVED. Never mind those verses thoughout the bible that were so “cathoilic” All I NEED IS FAITH…
Yeah the part about someones handkerchief haveing powers to heal, the part about haveing to eat the flesh of jesus. I didnt care. I is a born againer…
Then I stumbled upon John 19:27. Read it.
Now if Mary had so many kids, Why does St. John have to take care of her? Where are all his brothers and sisters? why can’t they take care of her? Because Jesus was an only child. Othewise the reason makes no sence. Surely if Christ had siblings there would be no point for Jesus to tell john to take her in his home. And then where does it say that mary had other children in the bible? Thank God I stumbled on that 1 verse. For if I had not I’d still be a confused bible christian. relying on so and so’s view of the bible instead of the churche’s.
Turns out those confused catholics had a leg to stand on after all.
Hail Mary, full of Grace. The Lord IS with Thee…
God how I love the Catholic Church!
 
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Xenos:
Too bad Dr. Luke didn’t ask Mary if she was a Virgin all her life when He interviewed her during the research for his Gospel. But then, perhaps that would have been gouche in uncivilized first century Palestine.

Brother Malachi, I love you, man. When you are ready for some logic, you will be quite an Appologist!
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Uh, 'scuse me, but the sacred writer of Luke was a second-generation Christian. He did not know Jesus or His Mother. He was not an eyewitness. He set down on papyrus the oral traditions he had heard concerning the events he wrote about in his Gospel and in Acts (they are actually one document) for a friend of his named Theophilus.

So the author of Luke/Acts wrote a personal letter to a friend; it took the literary form of a gospel. It circulated among the local churches, and the Catholic Church recognized this letter as the inspired Word of God – that Luke was writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Church eventually canonized these writings because she saw herself and her teachings in Luke/Acts and knew they were from God. Luke was a member of the Church.

When you are ready for some basic knowledge of Christian history and the history of the Bible, and have studied logic, let me know.😛

BTW, all of the Gospels and many of the other NT writings are anonymous. The Catholic Church knew they were the work of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (she was there, you know, when they were written) and added those names to the manuscripts.

👋 JMJ Jay
 
Although Russian church calls St. Iakov the Righteous and St. Iuda the epistle-writer brothers of Jesus, this is explained by Father Aleksandr Men in the following way:

In the New Testamen tno fewer than 6 persons are referred to as the brothers and sisters of Jesus. There is no doubt that these are close relatives in the flesh of Christ our Savior. The names of the sisters are not given. The brothers are called Iakov, Iosija, Iuda and Simon (Matt 13:55-56)… Neither in Church tradition or in biblical studies is there one simple answer to the question of the degree of relationship of the Brothers of the Lord to Jesus Christ and to each other. One thing is certain that the Holy Tradition of the Church decisively rejects that view of certain Protestants according to which the brothers of the Lord were brothers born of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. … Even the French rationalist Renan admitted that the Nazoreans called Christ “the Son of Mary” because he was well known as the only son of a Widow.

Even in the earliest centuries of Chrstianity various ideas were expressed about who were the "brothers of the Lord: although none of them is completely accepted:
  1. The brothers of the Lord are children of Joseph the Espoused from a previous marriage. Such an idea was held by Origen of Aleksandria,Kliment of Aleksandria and Epifani of Kypr.
  2. The brothers of the Lord were children of a certain other Mary, a relative of the Most Holy Virgin or of St. Joseph. These were therefore Jesus’ cousins or second cousins. … Such was the opinion of Jerome and blessed Augustine…
  3. According to the opinion of Renan and Russian historian Lebedev Cleophas was a brother of Joseph the Espoused. Therefore their wives, both called mary, were called “sisters”. Iakov the Righteous and his brother Iuda were children of Joseph from a first marriage. However the others- Iakov the Less, Simon Iosia and the “sisters” - were the children of Cleophas and the other Mary, Cleophas’ wife.
 
Although Russian church calls St. Iakov the Righteous and St. Iuda the epistle-writer brothers of Jesus, this is explained by Father Aleksandr Men in the following way:

In the New Testament no fewer than 6 persons are referred to as the brothers and sisters of Jesus. There is no doubt that these are close relatives in the flesh of Christ our Savior. The names of the sisters are not given. The brothers are called Iakov, Iosija, Iuda and Simon (Matt 13:55-56)… Neither in Church tradition or in biblical studies is there one simple answer to the question of the degree of relationship of the Brothers of the Lord to Jesus Christ and to each other. One thing is certain that the Holy Tradition of the Church decisively rejects that view of certain Protestants according to which the brothers of the Lord were brothers born of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. … Even the French rationalist Renan admitted that the Nazoreans called Christ “the Son of Mary” because he was well known as the only son of a Widow.

Even in the earliest centuries of Chrstianity various ideas were expressed about who were the "brothers of the Lord: although none of them is completely accepted:
  1. The brothers of the Lord are children of Joseph the Espoused from a previous marriage. Such an idea was held by Origen of Aleksandria,Kliment of Aleksandria and Epifani of Kypr.
  2. The brothers of the Lord were children of a certain other Mary, a relative of the Most Holy Virgin or of St. Joseph. These were therefore Jesus’ cousins or second cousins. … Such was the opinion of Jerome and blessed Augustine…
  3. According to the opinion of Renan and Russian historian Lebedev Cleophas was a brother of Joseph the Espoused. Therefore their wives, both called mary, were called “sisters”. Iakov the Righteous and his brother Iuda were children of Joseph from a first marriage. However the others- Iakov the Less, Simon Iosia and the “sisters” - were the children of Cleophas and the other Mary, Cleophas’ wife.
 
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Xavier:
What I dont understand is the logic some Catholics have that if Jesus had brothers and sisters it would diminish Mary and even himself?
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I don’t think that any sense of siblings diminishing Mary or Our Lord underlies this teaching except as I will explain below. As a former non-Catholic, I also quibbled with this, assuming that the teaching on Mary’s perpetual virginity came from some twisted Catholic horror of natural sex. (Never mind that the Catholic teaching on human sexuality and marriage is the most “natural” and positive of any faith group.)

I blatantly asked Our Lord to show me plainly what this teaching is about. And the answer came through prayer. What it came down to for me is this:
  1. As the mother of Jesus, Mary becomes the spouse of the Holy Spirit.
  2. The Holy Spirit is divine and, therefore, eternal. (Protestants and Catholics agree about that.)
  3. Thus, the spousal relationship between Mary and the Holy Spirit is eternal.
  4. Does the mother of Our Lord commit adultery?
This clinched it for me – particularly when taken together with Our Lord’s giving the care of Mary to John.
 
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Xavier:
Sir do you really expect a reply?
We do have 66 books that we agree upon. This we both can agree is the Word of God. We can agree that Christ is the incarnate Word of God. The rest we seem to disagree upon. So how do we know what of the rest is Gods word. We come to know the One who spoke the word. By becoming intimate with God we not only know His word but that word becomes engraved in our hearts and put in our minds. peace to you but it is more inmportant to know your God that it is to know your dogma.
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Hi, Xavier. We know only what we have read, studied, or heard – that’s how we put information into our minds. I have not put the Acts of Paul, the book of Enoch, the Gospels of Peter or Hebrews and other extra-biblical writings into my mind. I have not studied them.

God’s Word is what you have been taught it is – for you, it’s those 66 books you call “Bible.” Other Christians and Jews may accept fewer books or a great number of books. That is God’s Word for them. Only the Protestants have 66 books in their Bible.

If the written word is the only Word of God, as Protestants claim, and there are 73 books but you have read only 66 of them, then you haven’t read all of God’s Word. Only that part of it that you’ve read or studied or heard or memorized can be in your mind and heart.

God doesn’t open our minds and pour the knowledge in – we have to take it in through our senses.

I have asked the question: Whose Bible is the real, complete Word of God? And how do you know?

gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/canon2.stm

(this is a Methodist website)

If one’s dogmas come out of the written Word only, and one’s written Word is incomplete, obviously one’s dogmas are incomplete.

I ask, how do you (and other Protestants) know your Bible is complete? How do you know that this is the sum total of God’s Word?

Peace be with you, Jay
 
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Katholikos:
Uh, 'scuse me, but the sacred writer of Luke was a second-generation Christian. He did not know Jesus or His Mother. He was not an eyewitness. He set down on papyrus the oral traditions he had heard concerning the events he wrote about in his Gospel and in Acts (they are actually one document) for a friend of his named Theophilus.
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I don’t know about that. These are the theories of relatively modern “bible scholars”.

The internal evidence of the Gospel of Luke and Acts contradicts the “late Luke” argument.

First of all, Luke does claim to be an eyewitness to some of the journeys of Paul in Acts.

Second, he ends Acts before the martyrdom of Peter or Paul. At the end of Acts, Paul is in Rome and there is no hint of his coming martyrdom. If Luke had written his gospel and Acts after the martyrdoms, he would surely have included them. Paul and Peter were martyred in the mid 60s AD, so it is highly unlikely that Luke and Acts were written later than this.
 
Were the “brothers” and “sisters” of Jesus really brothers and sisters as we understand the words?

The word “brother” in the Bible is used to mean many levels of kinship and no kinship at all. Abraham’s nephew Lot was his “brother,” Jacob’s uncle Laban was his “brother,” cousins are called “brothers” in 1 Chronicles 23:21-22. Friends, countrymen, allies, all were called “brothers.”

The sacred writers of the NT were raised to call close relatives, distant relatives, and those who were not relatives at all, “brother” and “sister.”

Jesus was Mary’s only Son.

Who was first to say that “brother” meant the literal brothers of Jesus? Not Luther, not Calvin, not Zwingli, and not John Wesley who all believed in Mary’s perpetual virginity. It was some Protestant who – within the last 150 years – was reading the Bible and trusting his own interpretation of the words without knowing the ancient Aramaic language which underlies NT Greek and the constant unwritten Christian oral traditions about the ever-virgin Mary. This false opinion has now contaminated much of Protestantism.

ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ460.HTM

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Blessed Father Damien, pray for us!

JMJ Jay
 
I have followed most of this thread and have not seen John 20:17-18 cited as evidence of the broad meaning of the word “brother” (adelphous):

17] Jesus said to her [Mary Magdalene], “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren [adelphous]and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
18] Mary Mag’dalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”;
 
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Axion:
I don’t know about that. These are the theories of relatively modern “bible scholars”.

The internal evidence of the Gospel of Luke and Acts contradicts the “late Luke” argument.

First of all, Luke does claim to be an eyewitness to some of the journeys of Paul in Acts.

Second, he ends Acts before the martyrdom of Peter or Paul. At the end of Acts, Paul is in Rome and there is no hint of his coming martyrdom. If Luke had written his gospel and Acts after the martyrdoms, he would surely have included them. Paul and Peter were martyred in the mid 60s AD, so it is highly unlikely that Luke and Acts were written later than this.
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I tend to agree with you on this one, Axion. In fact it reminded me of a post I wrote about a month and a half ago concerning the validity of the infancy narratives. Anyhow, the main gist of that post was that in Luke’s introduction, he basically tells us that he diligently researched all aspects of his Gospel before comitting them to writing. Based on his background, I think it reasonable to take him at his word on that.

Here is the relevant part of that post. It begins with Luke’s “diligent research”:
The Greek word used here is akribos, which means carefully/accurately. Knowing that Luke had renounced Paganism and all that it entailed, it would stand to reason that he would have been reluctant to idly relay accounts of “messengers of God” revealing information to people. Yet after a careful/accurate (akribos) investigation of the events, this is exactly what he writes.

There is also the fact that the first two chapters show a much more “Jewish” character than the rest of Luke’s Gospel. I find it more than reasonable, as others have postulated, that these events were directly related to him by Mary, or at least by the apostle John. If he indeed did investigate the events carefully/accurately then it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that he got the information at least from St John (to whom Christ committed his Mother). As Frank Sheed reminds us, Luke would have had plenty of opportunities to do so during the 2 years or so he was in Caesarea while Paul was imprisoned there.
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Axion:
I don’t know about that. These are the theories of relatively modern “bible scholars”.

The internal evidence of the Gospel of Luke and Acts contradicts the “late Luke” argument.

First of all, Luke does claim to be an eyewitness to some of the journeys of Paul in Acts.

Second, he ends Acts before the martyrdom of Peter or Paul. At the end of Acts, Paul is in Rome and there is no hint of his coming martyrdom. If Luke had written his gospel and Acts after the martyrdoms, he would surely have included them. Paul and Peter were martyred in the mid 60s AD, so it is highly unlikely that Luke and Acts were written later than this.
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If it is correct that Luke the Physician, companion of Paul, is the author of the Gospel that bears his name, he certainly knew Paul and his missionary journeys first-hand. This does not make him an eyewitness to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Paul wasn’t an eyewitness either !!! Luke acknowledges in the preface to his Gospel (Lk 1:2) that his information about Jesus derives from others who were eyewitnesses.

We don’t know why Acts end when it does. We can’t speculate about what the author of Luke/Acts would have written – we know only what he did write. Well, we can speculate, but it’s only guesswork. The NT doesn’t record the fate of any of the Apostles, though St. John was the last to die. Even John didn’t write about the martrydom of the other apostles, though he had to have known about their deaths. Why assume that Luke would have?

I opine that Luke is dated by most scholars after the destruction of Jerusalem because of his allusions to the event (e.g., Luke 21:20). I’ve read that some scholars are rethinking the dating of the gospels, but I’ve not read the documentation. But no matter when it was written, Luke’s Gospel is not an eyewitness account. Neither is Mark (written by John Mark, based upon the recollections of St. Peter). Matthew is questionable. Only John is a certain eyewitness among the Gospel writers.

Thanks for your post. I really enjoyed reading it.

JMJ Jay
 
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