Q: I got into a heated discussion recently with a friend of mine, who is not Catholic, about whether Jesus had brothers and sisters. She pointed to several texts in the Gospels that mention Jesus’ siblings and said that they prove that Jesus had them. Is this true? Doesn’t the Catholic Church teach that Jesus was an only child and that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life?
A: Thank you for your question! For many Catholics who spend time reading Scripture or engage in dialogue with those who do, passages in the Gospels that speak of Jesus’ brothers and sisters often come up. Mark 6:3 is an excellent example: “Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” Who are these brothers and sisters of Jesus that are mentioned? Are these other children of Mary and Joseph?
The great St. Ambrose of Milan in the late fourth century wrote: “Imitate her [Mary], holy mothers, who in her only dearly beloved Son set forth so great an example of maternal virtue; for neither have you sweeter children [than Jesus], nor did the virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son.”
St. Ambrose, drawing upon a tradition that preceded him by centuries, expresses here a firm belief that Mary had no children other than the Lord and that his birth was something miraculous in which her virginity was preserved. St. Ambrose and many other ancient Christian writers who commented on the passages mentioning “brothers and sisters” of the Lord interpreted them differently than your friend who pointed them out to you.
To figure out what scriptural passages like Mark 6:3 and others mean when they mention the brothers and/or sisters of the Lord, we have to look at the original language that they are translated from. In English, the word brother or sister, when used in relation to one’s family, refers to one’s actual siblings. This is not the case with Greek, the language from which the Gospels have been translated.
The Greek word for brother is adelphos, which means brother but not necessarily blood brothers born from the same mother. It is also used to describe other familial relationships such as cousins and nephews. The same is true with Hebrew, the language of the majority of the books of the Old Testament, and Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The word for brother meant blood brothers and sisters as well as cousins and other familial relationships. Not everything that meets the eye is as it seems.
Let’s apply this to a couple of examples. In Galatians 1:19 St. Paul writes, “But I did not see any other of the apostles, only James the brother of the Lord.” Next, if we go to Jude 1 we read this: “Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James …” If James was the brother of Jesus and Jude the brother of James, why would Jude be a slave of the Lord rather than his brother as well?
To answer that we have to go to a third passage (bear with me here!): Matthew 27:56. This passage tells us that at the foot of the cross of the Lord, in addition to Jesus’ own mother were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. If my math is correct, that means that there were three Marys standing at the foot of the cross! What this tells us is that James and Jude were sons of Mary the wife of Clopas, not Mary the mother of Jesus, and therefore not actual siblings of the Lord.
Another important Gospel account is John 19:26–27, when Jesus entrusts his mother to St. John: “Woman, behold your son … Behold your mother.” We are told that John immediately took Mary into his home to care for her. If Jesus had brothers and/or sisters, wouldn’t one of them have taken Mary to live with them? Did Jesus have an extended family? Certainly. Did he have blood siblings? No.
May God’s blessings be with you today and always!
Northwest Catholic - June 2015