The Genealogy of Jesus

Part Four

THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF JESUS

The brothers of Jesus are named in Mark 6:3: James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. Matthew 13:55 list the same names, but reverses the order of the last two. Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:56 indicate Jesus also had at least two sisters, who are known to tradition as Mary and Salome. There are three ways to interpret these brothers and sisters.
  1. Most modern Protestants assume they were the natural children of Joseph and Mary, born after the birth of Jesus. Most of the early reformers, however (Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Bullinger, and Wesley, for example), held to the traditional doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. In the ancient church, Jerome wrote On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary (ca. 380) to answer the claims of one Helvidius that Mary bore other children after Jesus--a view which he described as "novel, wicked, and a daring affront to the faith of the whole world."
  2. Prior to Jerome, the prevailing theory was that James et al. were the children of Joseph from a previous marriage, and Joseph was a widower of advanced age when he became betrothed to Mary. The "brothers of Jesus" were thus his stepbrothers and stepsisters. According to Jerome’s information, Joseph’s first wife was Escha, the daughter of Haggi, who was the brother of Zechariah. This marriage produced four sons and two daughters, all of whom presumably would have been adults by the time of Jesus’ birth. This is also the line taken in the Protevangelium of James, which even has Joseph and Mary, along with Joseph’s two sons, traveling to Bethlehem to be taxed! This is the prevalent view among the Greek Fathers.
  3. Jerome (and most later Latin Fathers) promoted the view that James and the others were the children of a close relative of Jesus, namely Clopas the brother of Joseph. They were thus his first cousins but not his brothers and sisters in the literal sense. Jerome resisted the Eastern view because, in his opinion, it was based on spurious works. He sought to derive the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity from canonical sources alone.
For the sake of completeness, let me outline the broad strokes of an argument for Mary’s perpetual virginity:
Regardless of whether one chooses to accept the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, there are still questions with regard to the identity of Jesus' brothers and sisters. Most people today know childless couples, even in an age where medical science has transformed infertility from a spiritual stigma to a medical condition. Infertility was an issue for Mary's cousin Elizabeth and, according to tradition, for Mary's mother Anna. Both of these women would have died childless were it not for divine intervention. The simple fact is that the oldest strands of tradition do not make room for additional children born to Mary after Jesus. This fact may in fact have been a factor in the development of the whole idea of Mary's perpetual virginity--if it were commonly known that she had children subsequent to Jesus, the idea would never have been advanced.

So, let us assume that the genealogical traditions have some kernel of truth, whether or not we agree with the theological interpretation placed upon them. If Mary was not the mother of Jesus’ "brothers," where do they fit on Jesus' family tree? Before we can answer this question, we need to make a brief excursus to sort out the identities of the women who followed Jesus to Jerusalem.

THE WOMEN AT THE CROSS AND THE TOMB

The Gospels report several women disciples who followed Jesus to Jerusalem and were witnesses to his crucifixion and resurrection. They are presented as follows:

Matthew
At the cross: Matthew 27:56 reports (1) Mary Magdalene, (2) Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and (3) the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
At the tomb: Matthew 28:1 reports (1) Mary Magdalene and (2) the other Mary.

Mark
At the cross: Mark 15:40 reports (1) Mary Magdalene, (2) Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, (3) Salome, and (4) "many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem."
At the tomb: Mark 16:1 reports (1) Mary Magdalene, (2) Mary the mother of James, and (3) Salome

Luke
At the cross: Luke 23:49 reports "the women who had followed him from Galilee"
At the tomb: Luke 24:1 reports simply "the women," Luke 24:10 reports (1) Mary Magdalene, (2) Joanna, (3) Mary the Mother of James, and (4) "the others."

John
At the cross: John 19:25 reports (1) his mother, (2) his mother’s sister, (3) Mary the wife of Clopas, and (4) Mary Magdalene. This may be three names instead of four. More on this later.
At the tomb: John 20:1 reports (1) Mary Magdalene

Some observations:

(1) In all of the accounts there are two women named Mary and a third woman who is described in various ways. Only John listed four specific women. The fourth (although first on his list) is the mother of Jesus. Luke mentioned "the others" besides the three he named, and Mark made room for "many other women" (Mk 15:40).

(2) Of the two women named Mary, one is always given the byname "Magdalene." She is identified in Luke 8:2 along with other women who followed Jesus and supported him. Mary Magdalene is thus always easy to identify and may be safely bracketed out of the further discussion.

(3) The other woman named Mary is described variously:
John’s designation "wife of Clopas" is problematic on two counts. First, church tradition commonly equates James the Small with James the son of Alphaeus (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:15; Ac 1:13). Is Clopas the same person as Alphaeus? Is Clopas James and Joseph's stepfather? The identification of Alphaeus = Clopas is at least as old as Papias (second century). Both names are found in Talmudic sources, the first as Alphai and the second as Chalphai. Even if the names are not the same, there is no reason one or the other name could not have been this man’s given name and the other a byname. For example, a Jew named Alphai/Chalphai may have taken the similar-sounding Greek name Cleopatros, which then became shortened to Cleopas or Clopas.

On the other hand, there is no explicit biblical equation of James the Small with James the son of Alphaeus. As we shall see, the equation is problematic in terms of how the "brothers of Jesus" are described in the Gospels and Acts.

Second, if Clopas is equated with Cleopas (Lk 24:18), does that make Mary the other, unnamed disciple on the road to Emmaus? It seems highly unlikely that she would describe the reports of the resurrection as if it were second-hand information about what "some women" said they saw (Lk 24:22). If John's Clopas is the same person as Luke's Cleopas, one would have to conclude that he was traveling to Emmaus with someone other than his wife. Perhaps one of his sons? Perhaps someone else entirely?

(4) All of the accounts have a third woman, described in various ways:
Let us begin to untangle this by assuming that Matthew, as is common, followed Mark rather closely, and that Salome is therefore to be identified as the mother of the sons of Zebedee. This leaves us with "Joanna" and "[Jesus'] mother’s sister." Is Joanna the same woman as Salome? Is either of them the sister of Jesus’ mother, or is she someone else entirely?

Let us next assume that Joanna is the wife of Chuza mentioned in Luke 8:2. Since she is the wife of Chuza, she cannot be the wife of Zebedee (who was still alive at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Mk 1:20). Luke therefore reported the presence of a woman at the cross who is passed over in all of the other Gospels.

That leaves us with "his mother's sister." There are two possibilities. First, the punctuation in John 19:25 could be read so that John was describing three women at the tomb, not four, namely (1) his mother (2) his mother's sister Mary the wife of Clopas, and (3) Mary Magdalene. This raises the problem of two sisters with the same name, but this can be mitigated by assuming that adelphe here describes a slightly more distant relationship--perhaps cousins or sisters-in-law. In fact, in Orthodox tradition, Salome was in fact a first cousin of Mary, the daughter of Mary's aunt (also named Mary) and an unnamed man from Bethlehem. In any case, most modern interpreters understand John to be listing four women, not three.

Second, if John is in fact reporting the presence of four women, Mary's sister would most naturally be understood to be Salome, the mother of James and John. This would bring John into harmony with Mark and Matthew. This is an appealing hypothesis, for if James and John were in fact close relatives of Jesus, it sheds light on a number of details:
(5) Mark 15:40 gives us a bit of wiggle room by introducing "many other women" at the cross who followed Jesus to Jerusalem from Galilee. These women would include Joanna (Lk 8:2; 24:10) and perhaps Susanna (Lk 8:2).

Having sorted out some of the supporting characters, let us now return to the identification of Jesus' brothers and sisters.

THE CHILDREN OF CLOPAS AND MARY

Let us assume for the sake of argument that Jerome's theory was right and that Jesus' "brothers" were in fact the sons and daughters of Clopas. According to the Gospels, the "brothers of Jesus" are (1) James, (2) Joses or Joseph, (3) Judas, and (4) Simon. The sons of Clopas and Mary can be demonstrated to include (1) James, (2) Joses or Joseph--both of these are named in the Gospels, and (3) Simon--Hegesippus (ca. AD 170) reports that Simon (or Symeon) son of Clopas became leader of the Jerusalem church after the death of James. He also identifies Clopas as the brother of Joseph of Nazareth. There is no clear-cut evidence of Clopas having a son named Judas, but otherwise the names and their sequence are intriguing. It should also be noted that Mark gives "Joses" (Yossei) as the name of both the second brother of Jesus and the second son of the other Mary. In Matthew, the name is rendered as "Joseph" in both places. This provides circumstantial evidence that he intended to identify the same person in both verses. All in all, it would seem beyond the realm of probability for two brothers to each have four sons and that each brother would give his sons the same four names--apparently in the same order!

But there are two problems with this theory: First, what of Salome? I have argued above that the most natural candidate for "his mother’s sister" in John 19:25 was Salome (Mk 15:40; Mk 16:1). Some prefer to read her name in Mark as an undeclined genitive rather than a nominative, implying that she is not an additional woman present at the cross and the tomb, but rather the daughter of the other Mary and presumably one of the unnamed "sisters" mentioned in Mark and Matthew. Even so, the word order in Mark 15:40 seems to bracket Salome away from James and Joses. If these identifications are correct, that still does not make Mary the wife of Clopas into the blood sister of Jesus' mother. In fact the more pervasive tradition is that Clopas was Joseph's younger brother. This makes the other Mary the sister-in-law of Jesus' mother, but does not require her to be confused with Salome. By this reading, Clopas would have become the head of Joseph's household after his death. We can imagine Mary and Jesus coming to live in the house of Clopas with his wife and children some time after Jesus' twelfth birthday (Lk 2:41-42 indicates that Joseph was still living when Jesus was twelve years old). We can equally imagine people referring to these sons of Clopas as the "brothers" of Jesus, for even though they were technically cousins they spent some of their formative years in the same household.

The second problem is the most difficult, but it only arises if we follow church tradition in identifying "James the Small," the son of Clopas and Mary, with "James the son of Alphaeus," who was one of the Twelve. The depiction of the brothers of Jesus in the Gospels makes this highly unlikely. Everything we know about Jesus' brothers from the Gospels indicates they were slow to accept his ministry. In Mark 3:21, 31-35--after the calling of the Twelve--Jesus' mother and brothers were saying that Jesus was out of his mind and arrived where he was teaching, apparently to take him home. The same event is recorded in Matthew 12:46-50 and Luke 8:19-21. At that time, Jesus drew a distinction between those in the circle around him (presumably including the Twelve, see Mt 12:49) and his biological family. The same distinction between the Twelve and Jesus' brothers is preserved in Acts 1:13-14. Most telling is the straightforward statement of John 7:5: "For even his own brothers did not believe in him." If we are to maintain the connection with the sons of Clopas, there are some possible solutions:
All of these explanations are plausible, but it is difficult to say that any of them are truly credible. In the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, it seems best to jettison the equation of James the Small with James son of Alphaeus.

Finally, it should be noted--although I am not in a position to render an opinion--that some church traditions state that Joseph Barsabbas, one of the two candidates selected to replace Judas Iscariot (Ac 1:23), was in fact one of the brothers of Jesus.

OLDER OR YOUNGER?

A final question: What were the relative ages of Jesus and his "brothers"? The episodes narrated in Mark 3:21, 31-35 and John 7:3-5 certainly seem to depict a younger Jesus being instructed, advised, and perhaps or scolded, by older relatives who thus were in a position (humanly speaking) to command his attention.

The only real evidence is the account of Hegesippus, who stated that Simon son of Clopas died during the reign of emperor Trajan and the proconsul Atticus--at the ripe old age of 120! The traditional date of his martyrdom is AD 106 or 107, which would have him born ca. 14 BC. Taken at face value, this would make him about ten years older than Jesus. It seems likely that Simon was in fact the youngest of the sons of Clopas, with James being the oldest. If there was some exaggeration of Simon’s longevity in Hegesippus’ account, we might perhaps imagine him as about the same age as Jesus or even a little younger, with the remainder of the brothers a few years older.

What then of the relative ages of Joseph and Clopas, and the age of Joseph at his betrothal to Mary? Joseph would have to be the firstborn son, or else Clopas would have been the true legal heir to the throne of David. This is especially true if, as I strongly suspect, a levirate marriage was involved. If Joseph was the natural son of Heli but the legal son of Jacob (by levirate marriage), then Clopas would trace his lineage directly from Heli with no reference to Jacob and thus to the royal line.

So Clopas was the younger brother, and yet he apparently married and began having children before Joseph was betrothed. If we assume that Clopas married at about age 18 (quite common for men of his day) and immediately began fathering children at a rate of one every one or two years, we can calculate his approximate birth year using Hegesippus’ statement about Simon's age at his death:

Clopas born: 40-36 BC
James born: 21-17 BC
Joseph born: 19-16 BC
Judas born: 17-15 BC
Simon born: 15-14 BC

Jesus’s "sisters" are overlooked in this calculation because we do not know precisely how many there were or their ages relative to the four "brothers." In all likelihood, their existence pushes these dates back by at least another year or two. On the other hand, one possible explanation for the variation in the order of Judas and Simon between Mark and Matthew is that the two were twins. If admitted, this possibilty would tend to bring Clopas' birth year back into line with what is suggested above.

The writers of the second and third centuries seem to be unanimous that Jesus was born around 3-2 BC, although modern scholars prefer a date around 7-4 BC. Let us assume the patristic writers were correct. If Joseph were one or two years older than Clopas, his birth year would be ca. 41-37 BC, which puts him in his mid- to late thirties when he became engaged to Mary, who at the time was likely no older than about 14 or 15. If desired, there is ample time to fit a first wife and some children into this timeframe (though we still are at a loss to identify them!), but not enough to support the Eastern tradition that Joseph was in fact a very old man when he married Mary. Indeed, the need to keep Clopas' children alive and vital at least through the first half of the first century AD all but requires Clopas to be born not much earlier than ca. 40 BC.

But what if we assume that Hegesippus exaggerated Simon’s longevity? If we assume, for example, that Simon and Jesus were approximately the same age and proceed with the same calculations, we arrive at the following:

Clopas born: 28-24 BC
James born: 9-5 BC
Joseph born: 7-4 BC
Judas born: 5-3 BC
Simon born: 3-2 BC

This would make Joseph born ca. 30-25 BC. He would therefore have been about 21-28 years old when he became engaged to Mary--somewhat older than was customary for his day but not an impossibility. [Of course, since we are hypothesizing at this point, why not hypothesize that Simon was somewhat younger than Jesus and that Joseph was betrothed around age 17-19 like all the other young men in Nazareth?]

SUMMARY

All of this data can be represented graphically in the descendancy charts below. Names known only from extrabiblical sources are set in [brackets]. People known from Matthew's genealogy are in blue; those from Luke in red, and those that appear in both are in purple.

Descendants of Eliud
1 Eliud
   2 Eleazar
      3 Matthan
         + [Estha]
         4 Jacob, died without issue
            + Wife of Jacob

Descendants of Melchi
1 Melchi
   2 Levi
      3 Matthat
         + [Estha], the widow of Matthan
         4 Heli
            + Wife of Jacob, married Heli after Jacob’s death
                5 Joseph, levirate son of Jacob
                   + Mary, daughter of Joachim
                5 Clopas
                   + Mary
                      6 James “the Small”
                      6 Joseph or Joses (“Barsabbas”??)
                      6 Judas
                      6 Simon or Simeon
                      6 [Mary]
                      6 [Salome]
      3 [Levi Pantera]
         4 [bar-Pantera]
            5 [Joachim]
               + [Anna]
                6 Mary
                   7 Jesus

Descendants of Nathan
1 [Nathan or Matthan], a priest
    + [Mary]
     2 [Mary]
        + Unnamed man from Bethlehem
         3 Salome
           + Zebedee
            4 James
            4 John
     2 [Soba, Sovin, Sophia, or Zoia]
        + Unnamed man from Bethlehem
          3 Elizabeth
             + Zechariah
              4 John the Baptist
     2 [Anna]
        + [Joachim], son of [bar-Pantera]
         3 Mary
            4 Jesus

On to PART FIVE
Back to CHRONOLOGY