My last post discussed some evidence for the consistency and historicity of what the New Testament reports about the siblings of Jesus. That material is relevant to the issue of whether Mary was a perpetual virgin, but that wasn't the focus of my last post. I do want to focus on it here and expand on what I said earlier.
I've said a lot about other lines of evidence elsewhere, but here's an overview of a few facts I want to address here:
- The brothers of Jesus are active together in earlier contexts (Matthew 12:46-50, Mark 3:21-35, Luke 8:19-21, John 2:12, 7:3-10, Acts 1:14). I just cited six passages, but we need to distinguish between passages and events. There are parallel passages in the Synoptics, involving one event discussed in multiple passages. And one passage can involve multiple events. In John 2:12, the brothers of Jesus apparently leave the wedding to go to Capernaum, so they seem to have been acting as a group in two contexts, attending the wedding together and going to Capernaum together afterward. Similarly, they have a conversation with Jesus together in John 7:3-9, then go to Jerusalem together in verse 10. So, I would count a total of six instances in which the brothers are acting together in these passages.
- The brothers are referred to as acting individually in later contexts (Acts 12:17, 15:13-21, 21:18-25, 1 Corinthians 15:7, Galatians 1:19, 2:9-10, 2:12, James 1:1, Jude 1). 1 Corinthians 9:5 is ambiguous. The brothers could be acting as a group in that context, but they need not be. The same verse refers to Paul and Barnabas together, but we know they didn't always act together in the relevant contexts. Similarly, the apostles are referred to together, but we know from Acts and elsewhere that they didn't always act together. The sisters of Jesus are referred to together in Matthew 13:56 and Mark 6:3, but it doesn't follow that they were acting together in that context. There's a difference between being referred to together and acting together. 1 Corinthians 9:5 is ambiguous about whether the brothers were acting together, but the rest of the New Testament suggests they were at least largely operating independently during that timeframe. Every unambiguous reference to them in the later history of the New Testament has them acting as individuals. Even if 1 Corinthians 9:5 is taken as an instance of group activity on the part of the brothers, and some of the passages about an individual, such as Acts 12:17, are taken as not involving activity, there's still at least a change from group activity early on to mostly individual activity later. Either way, there's a significant change from the earlier timeframe to the later one.
- The brothers are usually with Mary when they're acting together (Matthew 12:46-50, Mark 3:21-35, Luke 8:19-21, John 2:12, Acts 1:14), but not always (John 7:3-10).
- The sisters of Jesus are never mentioned with the brothers when their group activities are described.
I think the most efficient explanation of that evidence as a whole is that the brothers of Jesus were the youngest siblings born from Mary after she gave birth to Jesus. They were still living in the same house, probably with James having a leadership role in the home after Jesus' departure. They were old enough to travel, carry on conversations, form views about Jesus and other controversial topics, be held accountable for those views, sometimes be away from Mary, and so on. But they were still living together and were usually with Mary. That would explain why the sisters are never mentioned as being with them. The absence of the sisters can't be explained on the grounds that the brothers were involved in activities more appropriate for males (e.g., confronting Jesus when they disagreed with him, as in John 7), since not all of the contexts are of that nature. And Mary, who wasn't a male, is usually present with the brothers in these passages. Jesus refers to sisters in Matthew 12:50 and Mark 3:35, yet sisters aren't mentioned in Matthew 12:46-49 and Mark 3:31-34. It would have been in the interest of the gospel authors to have mentioned sisters in the earlier verses, if the sisters of Jesus were present, in order to have more of a parallel with what Jesus goes on to say. (Luke shortens the account in multiple ways, so his leaving out the sisters is more ambiguous, though he does agree with the other sources in only mentioning Mary and the brothers.) Similarly, when John 7:5 refers to how "even his brothers" didn't believe in Jesus, an inclusion of his sisters would make John's point more emphatically, so the best explanation for the absence of any mention of the sisters seems to be that they weren't there. That seems to be the best explanation for these passages involving the brothers in general. If the brothers were younger siblings born from Mary, aged in the teens to twenties at the time of Jesus' public ministry, still living in the home they grew up in after Jesus and their sisters had moved out, that seems to make the most sense of the evidence as a whole.
If there was no change in living arrangements to explain the move from the brothers' being together to their acting more individually, then what comparable or better explanation would be offered for the move from group to individual activities? If older brothers from a previous marriage of Joseph or cousins close to Jesus' age or older were involved, why would they stop acting as a group at the point where the group activity ends? And why would only the male children of Joseph from a previous marriage or male cousins be involved? Then there are all the other problems with the appeals to children of Joseph from another marriage or cousins, which I've discussed in other posts (the absence of any reference to Mary's being a perpetual virgin, the use of so much language suggesting otherwise in such a large number and variety of contexts, the fact that Joseph and Mary's having had other children to tend to makes better sense of their losing track of Jesus in Luke 2:41-44, the fact that Matthew 13:55-56 is most straightforwardly interpreted as involving members of Jesus' immediate family, etc.).
To get around some of these problems, somebody could argue that the brothers were cousins of a particular type, namely younger cousins. That would have some advantages over alternatives. Their younger age would make better sense of how active the brothers and their wives (1 Corinthians 9:5) still were in the middle of the first century. Just as younger brothers of Jesus born from Mary could still be living together during the timeframe in which their group activities occurred, so could younger cousins. Just as the sisters could be left out because they'd moved out of the house under my scenario, the same could be true under a scenario involving younger cousins. Maybe Mary had moved into the house where those cousins lived after Joseph's death or after Jesus' departure from the home.
That kind of scenario would avoid some of the problems I've brought up with perpetual virginity views. But it would still face some significant problems and make less sense of the evidence as a whole than a scenario in which Mary had other children after Jesus. The younger cousins scenario still involves a lot of linguistic difficulties, doesn't explain the lack of interest in expressing a belief in Mary's perpetual virginity on the part of the earliest authors, etc. Though Mary could have often been with a group of nephews, the fact remains that sons offer a better explanation for the identity of a group of men who would often be with her. The fact that nephews could do such a thing doesn't prove that they offer the best explanation for who did it. Sons are better candidates than nephews. Furthermore, if Mary just needed male protection or some such thing, that could have been accomplished by the accompaniment of one nephew rather than a group of them. The group interest in their remaining near her makes more sense with sons than with nephews. And the absence of any reference to the other relatives Mary would have been living with under the cousin scenario, namely the parents of the cousins (e.g., in Matthew 13:55-56), is a problem. With a passage like the Matthew 13 one, there are a few different problems a cousin hypothesis faces, all of which are avoided if the brothers and sisters are taken to be other children born from Mary (the use of the terms "brothers" and "sisters" rather than something like "cousins" or "relatives"; their being mentioned just after two members of Jesus' immediate family were mentioned, which means that it would be more straightforward for the brothers and sisters to be taken as members of his immediate family as well; the absence of any reference to other relatives outside the immediate family, like the parents of the cousins).
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