Anastasios
Objection 1: In the New Testament we have several evidences that Jesus has brothers (and sisters): “Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?” (Mt 13,55); “‘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?’ And they took offense at him” (Mk 6,3).
Objection 2: In Lk 2:7 it is said that she “gave birth to her firstborn son.” This does not mean, being he the first, that there were then others?
Objection 3: In Mt 1:25 it is said that Joseph “had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus.” So, can it mean that Joseph had a child with Mary after the birth of Jesus?
On the contrary, in Lk 1:41-42 is said: “Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom.” Why there is no mention of other siblings?
I answer that we are dealing with a topic that is tricky and that was debated from the beginning of Christian era. The passages of the New Testament here may seem ambiguous and so we need to consider them with care. Saint Jerome devote lots of attention to this topic. The Greek word Αδελφος, adelphos, means “brother.” I think there is a passage that is important for us, from the Gospel of John. Jesus on the cross entrusted Mary to John. But why? If Mary has other kids, why not entrust her to them? This passage does not making sense if Jesus had other brothers and sisters. Indeed, the term “brother” could also indicate other kinds of relationship aside from being a son of the same mother and father. It can also mean “cousins” in the Bible.
Reply to objection 1: Dr Brant Pitre (www.catholicproductions.com): “So in trying to figure out who they are we don’t just want to look at Matthew 13, we also want to look at the second time Matthew mentioned them. ‘There were also many women there [i.e. at the cross], looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among whom were Mary Magdalene [number one], and Mary the mother of James and Joseph [number two], and [number three,] the mother of the sons of Zebedee.’ Pause there for a second. So notice, Matthew’s describing the scene at the foot of the cross, and notice there’s lots of Mary’s there. Mary was a very popular name in Judaism at the time of Jesus, because it was the Greek form of the Hebrew name Miriam, Moses’ sister. So we have Mary Magdalene (number one), then Mary the mother of James and Joseph. Now that second woman is the one that’s important for us, because James and Joseph have already been identified in the Gospel of Matthew. We met them in chapter 13 when Matthew called them the brothers of Jesus. Now, what’s significant about this identification in Matthew 27 for us, is that if you keep reading the account of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, he’s going to go on to tell us that this Mary that was at the foot of the cross, also went out to the tomb with Mary Magdalene. And listen to how Matthew describes her. In Matthew 27:60 it says that they took ‘a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which [Joseph, meaning Joseph of Arimathea,] had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.’ And then in verse 61 it says, ‘Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the sepulchre.’ Now who is this other Mary? Well, as most scholars will argue here, this is a reference to Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and so this reference here cannot, it simply cannot, be referring to the Virgin Mary, because it’s impossible that Matthew would have ever referred to Jesus’ mother as, quote, ‘the other Mary.’ Obviously here, the other Mary refers to the mother of James and Joseph, who was at the foot of the cross, so this other Mary is explicitly identified in the Gospel of Matthew as being the mother of the two men called the brothers of Jesus. So we have a clue here, if this other Mary is their mother, then they can’t be the children of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. So even if we just had Matthew’s Gospel alone, we would have sufficient evidence to identify the brothers of Jesus as some other kind of relation, probably a cousin, the sons of this woman that Matthew very tellingly calls the other Mary.”
Reply to objection 2: In www.biblegateway.com it says: “The OT has many examples where ‘first-born’ does not indicate that others were born. ‘Every only child is a first-born child; but not every first-born is an only child’.” What does it mean? “Firstborn” does not mean that there are others born afterwards.
Reply to objection 3: To say he may have had relations after Jesus’ birth is an inference that is not supported by the statement. If I say: I did not take this medicine until now, that does not mean that I am going to take it from now on.
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