The same Greek word “adelphoi” is used in 1 Corinthinas 15: 6. It simply cannot mean “son of the same mother”.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:6
Because of the Bible’s broad semantic range of “brother,” we can rest assured that although St. Paul writes, “[Jesus] appeared to more than five hundred…brothers at the same time” (1 Cor. 15:6), we need not infer from this verse that Mary gave birth to more than 500 children!
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jesus-had-brothers
LOS HERMANOS DE JESUS
Using Proof Texts Is Okay: Mary’s Virginity and the Jesus only child issues
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/using-proof-texts-is-okay
“1. The James and Joseph mentioned in Matthew 13:55 are elsewhere (Matt. 27:56, John 19:25) said to be the sons of Mary the wife of Cleophas, not Mary the wife of Joseph. Cleophas and Joseph were different men, so these two Marys were different women. This means James and Joseph couldn’t be Jesus’ brothers german. When Matthew calls them “brothers of the Lord,” he must have in mind some wider usage of “brothers.”
(By the way, notice how many Marys appear in the New Testament: the Virgin Mary, Mary of Cleophas, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and possibly one or two more. It is said that the name Mary was held by about one in five women in the Holy Land during our Lord’s time.)
2. From the cross Jesus gave his mother into John’s care, something he would not have done if Mary had other children who could take care of her. It would be strange for our Lord’s last command to be, in effect, a denial of the family relationship, if the “brothers of the Lord” were his brothers in the modern sense. He gave his mother into John’s care precisely because he had no brothers who could assume the duty.
3. The “brothers of the Lord” are never called sons of Mary, although Jesus regularly is called her son. If they also were her sons, why this odd construction? It is not a natural way for the Evangelists to write. You would think that at least one of the Evangelists would have called these men the “sons of Mary,” but not so.
4. John 7:3-4 reports, “His brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the works you are doing. No one works in secret if he wants to be known publicly.’” They were giving him advice about his future. In ancient times, younger brothers never gave older brothers advice on how to live their lives. It was considered rude to do so. (This remains the custom in the Orient and in other parts of the world: younger siblings defer to older siblings.)
This suggests either that the “brothers,” if Mary’s children, were older than Jesus—not possible, since he was the first born—or that they weren’t his brothers at all but were more distant relations, whether older or younger, who would have felt free to give him advice.
5. Answering the angel, Mary asks, “How can this be since I know not man?” If she had been intending to have a “normal” marriage with Joseph, she would have had no need to ask how she would have a child. She would have expected to have children. As a country girl, she certainly knew how babies came about; she wasn’t asking about the mechanics of the thing. Her question makes sense only if she had taken a vow of lifelong virginity.”
Encyclopedia – Brethren of the Lord
https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/brethren-of-the-lord
Did Mary Have Other Children?
https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/did-mary-have-other-children
Brethren of the Lord
Catholic Answers Encyclopedia
https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/brethren-of-the-lord
Jesus had Brothers?
Catholic Answers Magazine
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jesus-had-brothers
“Brethren of the Lord”
Catholic Answers Tract
https://www.catholic.com/tract/brethren-of-the-lord
Understanding the Biblical Use of ‘Brother’
When Catholics call Mary the “Blessed Virgin,” they mean she remained a virgin throughout her life. When Protestants refer to Mary as “virgin,” they mean she was a virgin only until Jesus’ birth. They believe that she and Joseph later had children whom Scripture refers to as “the brethren of the Lord.” The disagreement arises over biblical verses that use the terms “brethren,” “brother,” and “sister.”
There are about ten instances in the New Testament where “brothers” and “sisters” of the Lord are mentioned (Matt. 12:46;13:55; Mark 3:31–34; 6:3; Luke 8:19–20; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor. 9:5).
When trying to understand these verses, note that the term “brother” (Greek: adelphos) has a wide meaning in the Bible. It is not restricted to the literal meaning of a full brother or half-brother. The same goes for “sister” (adelphe) and the plural form “brothers” (adelphoi). The Old Testament shows that “brother” had a wide semantic range of meaning and could refer to any male relative from whom you are not descended (male relatives from whom you are descended are known as “fathers”) and who are not descended from you (your male descendants are your “sons”), as well as kinsmen such as cousins, those who are members of the family by marriage or by law rather than by blood, and even friends or mere political allies (2 Sam. 1:26; Amos 1:9).
Lot, for example, is called Abraham’s “brother” (Gen. 14:14), even though, being the son of Haran, Abraham’s brother (Gen. 11:26–28), he was actually Abraham’s nephew. Similarly, Jacob is called the “brother” of his uncle Laban (Gen. 29:15). Kish and Eleazar were the sons of Mahli. Kish had sons of his own, but Eleazar had no sons, only daughters, who married their “brethren,” the sons of Kish. These “brethren” were really their cousins (1 Chr. 23:21–22).
The terms “brothers,” “brother,” and “sister” did not refer only to close relatives. Sometimes they meant kinsmen (Deut. 23:7; Neh. 5:7; Jer. 34:9), as in the reference to the forty-two “brethren” of King Azariah (2 Kgs. 10:13–14).
No Word for Cousin
Because neither Hebrew or Aramaic (the language spoken by Christ and his disciples) had a special word meaning “cousin,” speakers of those languages could use either the word for “brother” or a circumlocution, such as “the son of my uncle.” But circumlocutions are clumsy, so the Jews often used “brother.”
The writers of the New Testament were brought up using the Aramaic equivalent of “brothers” to mean both cousins and sons of the same father—plus other relatives and even non-relatives. When they wrote in Greek, they did the same thing the translators of the Septuagint did. (The Septuagint was the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible; it was translated by Hellenistic Jews a century or two before Christ’s birth and was the version of the Bible from which most of the Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament are taken.)
In the Septuagint the Hebrew word that includes both brothers and cousins was translated as adelphos, which in Greek usually has the narrow meaning that the English “brother” has. Unlike Hebrew or Aramaic, Greek has a separate word for cousin, anepsios, but the translators of the Septuagint used adelphos, even for true cousins.
This same usage was employed by the writers of the New Testament and passed into English translations of the Bible. To determine what “brethren” or “brother” or “sister” means in any one verse, we have to look at the context. When we do that, we see that insuperable problems arise if we assume that Mary had children other than Jesus.
When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she would conceive a son, she asked, “How can this be since I have no relations with a man?” (Luke 1:34). From the Church’s earliest days, as the Fathers interpreted this Bible passage, Mary’s question was taken to mean that she had made a vow of lifelong virginity, even in marriage.
If Mary had anticipated having children in the normal way, she would hardly have to ask “how” she was to have a child. Her question makes sense only if there was an apparent conflict between keeping a vow of virginity and acceding to the angel’s request. A careful look at the New Testament shows that Mary kept her vow of virginity and never had any children other than Jesus.
When Jesus was found in the Temple at age twelve, the context suggests that he was the only son of Mary and Joseph. There is no hint in this episode of any other children in the family (Luke 2:41–51). Jesus grew up in Nazareth, and the people of Nazareth referred to him as “the son of Mary” (Mark 6:3), not as “a son of Mary.” In fact, others in the Gospels are never referred to as Mary’s sons, not even when they are called Jesus’ “brethren.”
Also, the attitude taken by the “brethren of the Lord” implies they are his elders. In ancient and, particularly, in Eastern societies, older sons gave advice to younger, but younger seldom gave advice to older—it was considered disrespectful to do so. But we find Jesus’ “brethren” saying to him that Galilee was no place for him and that he should go to Judea so he could make a name for himself (John 7:3–4). This kind of behavior could make sense for ancient Jews only if the “brethren” were older than Jesus, but that alone eliminates them as his biological brothers, since Jesus was Mary’s “first-born” son (Luke 2:7).
Consider what happened at the foot of the cross. When he was dying, Jesus entrusted his mother to the apostle John (John 19:26–27). The Gospels mention four of his “brethren”: James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude. It is hard to imagine why Jesus would have disregarded family ties and made this provision for his mother if these four were also her sons.
Fundamentalist Arguments
Fundamentalists insist that “brethren of the Lord” must be interpreted in the strict sense. They most commonly make two arguments based on Matthew 1:25: “[A]nd he did not know her until (Greek: heos, also translated into English as “till”) she brought forth her firstborn son.” They first argue that the natural inference from “till” is that Joseph and Mary afterward lived together as husband and wife, in the usual sense, and had several children. Otherwise, why would Jesus be called “first-born”? But they are using a narrow, modern meaning of “until.” In the Bible, it means only that some action did not happen up to a certain point; it does not imply that the action did happen later.
Consider this line: “Michal the daughter of Saul had no children till the day of her death” (2 Sam. 6:23). Are we to assume she had children after her death?
There is also the burial of Moses. The book of Deuteronomy says that no one knew the location of his grave “until this present day” (Deut. 34:6, Knox). But we know that no one has known since that day either.
You get the idea—nothing can be proved from the use of the word “till” in Matthew 1:25. Recent translations give a better sense of the verse: “He had no relations with her at any time before she bore a son” (New American Bible); “He had not known her when she bore a son” (Knox).
Fundamentalists claim Jesus could not be Mary’s “first-born” unless there were other children that followed him. But this shows ignorance of the way the ancient Jews used the term. For them it meant the child that opened the womb (Ex. 13:2; Num. 3:12). The first male child of a marriage was termed the “first-born” even if he turned out to be the only child.
Mary’s Perpetual Virginity
Fundamentalists say it would have been repugnant for Mary and Joseph to enter a marriage and remain celibate. They call such marriages “unnatural” arrangements. Certainly they were unusual, but this was a special family, set aside for the nurturing of the Son of God. No greater dignity could be given to marriage than that.
Backing up the testimony of Scripture regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity is the testimony of the early Christian Church. Consider the controversy between Jerome and Helvidius, writing around 380. Helvidius first brought up the notion that the “brothers of the Lord” were children born to Mary and Joseph after Jesus’ birth. The great Scripture scholar Jerome wrote a reply, a treatise called On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary. He used not only the scriptural arguments given above, but cited earlier Christian writers, such as Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr.
So, if it is established that the “brethren of the Lord” were not Jesus’ brothers or half-brothers through Mary, who were they?
Prior to the time of Jerome, the standard theory was that they were Jesus’ “brothers” who were sons of Joseph though not of Mary. According to this view, Joseph was a widower at the time he married Mary. He had children from his first marriage (who would be older than Jesus, explaining their attitude toward him). This is mentioned in a number of early Christian writings. One, known as the Protoevangelium of James (A.D. 125) records that Joseph was selected from a group of widowers to serve as the husband/protector of Mary, who was a virgin consecrated to God.
Was James Jesus’s Half Brother?
Today, the most commonly accepted view is that they were Jesus’ cousins. Of the four “brethren” who are named in the Gospels, consider only James; similar reasoning can be used for the other three. We know that James the younger’s mother was named Mary. Look at the descriptions of the women standing beneath the cross: “among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (Matt. 27:56); “There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome” (Mark 15:40).
Then look at what John says: “But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). If we compare these parallel accounts of the scene of the crucifixion, we see that the mother of James and Joseph must be the wife of Clopas.
An argument against this, though, is that James is elsewhere (Matt. 10:3) described as the son of Alphaeus, which would mean this Mary, whoever she was, was the wife of both Clopas and Alphaeus. But Alphaeus and Clopas are the same person, since the Aramaic name for Alphaeus could be rendered in Greek either as Alphaeus or as Clopas. Another possibility is that Alphaeus took a Greek name similar to his Jewish name, the way that Saul took the name Paul.
So it’s probable that James the younger is the son of Mary and Clopas. The second-century historian Hegesippus explains that Clopas was the brother of Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus. James would thus be Joseph’s nephew and a cousin of Jesus, who was Joseph’s putative son.
This identification of the “brethren of the Lord” as Jesus’ first cousins is open to legitimate question, but our inability to determine for certain their exact status strictly on the basis of the biblical evidence (or lack of it) says nothing at all about the main point, which is that the Bible demonstrates that they were not the Blessed Virgin Mary’s children.
NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004″
The Case for Mary’s Perpetual Virginity
Catholic Answers Magazine
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-case-for-marys-perpetual-virginity
MUST READ: Does the use of this Greek word for sibling indicate that Jesus had brothers?
Jesus as “Firstborn”
Catholic Answers
https://www.catholic.com/audio/ddp/jesus-as-firstborn
Jesus had Brothers?
ACTS 1: 14: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jesus-had-brothers
