cu558@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Mally) asks:

>Can anyone explain Mathhew, chapter 13 verse 55? Is Matthew saying
>that Jesus did have brothers and sisters? I was reading Halley's bible
>handbook and in the introduction of the books James and Jude it is
>plainly stated that James and Jude were brothers of Jesus.
>I hope some one can make this clearer to me, thank you.

It's going to be very hard for you to get any answer to this that
isn't determined by theological considerations.  There are three major
views:

1) that they are Jesus' full brothers.  This has little support from
the Fathers.  It's known as the Helvidian view, for Helvidius, but it
was also held by Tertullian and a couple of other minor figures.

2) that they are half-brothers, sons of Joseph by a former wife.  This
is the most common ancient view, having been held by Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Ambrose, etc.

3) that they are cousins, sons of Mary and Clopas.  This appears to
have been held first by Jerome.

3 appears to be the least likely.  It has virtually no ancient
support, and relies on Jerome's argument that /adelphos/ (brother) was
also used for cousin.  "Brother" certainly had a wider meaning, as it
does in English: it can be used for spiritual as well as physical
brothers, and those to whom the speaker is close.  But this sort of
metaphorical meaning seems impossible in this passage.  As far as I
can discover, there is little evidence for Jerome's theory that
/adelphos/ can mean cousin, except of course that cousins might be
included in the group when it's being used in the wider sense.

1 and 2 are both linguistically possible.  In general Protestants
choose 1 and Catholics 2 (or 3), for obvious reasons.  The choice here
is inextricably tied up with arguments for and against Mary's
perpetual virginity.

If you look only at the Bible, as Protestants do, Mat 1:25 seems most
consistent with the idea that Mary did not continue as a virgin.  The
fact that a former wife is never mentioned and no fuller explanation
of Jesus' brothers is given in any of the many references to them also
suggest that "brothers" should be taken in the obvious way.  There
are, of course, other ways to understand all of these passages, but if
you don't start with the assumption of perpetual virginity, it's
unlikely that these alternatives would occur to anyone.

If you accept tradition, there is support in the Fathers for perpetual
virginity.  According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church, the first explicit statement is in the Protevangelium of James
-- believed to be from about the mid-2nd Cent, and officially regarded
as heretical (though many of the Marian ideas appear there first).
Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria may have believed in it.  (I'm not
sure what they mean by "may" -- I guess the statements are ambiguous
in some way.)  Athanasius certainly did, and it was universal among
orthodox writers by the 5th Cent.

This particular pattern of support among the Fathers is not one that
reassures Protestants.  There's no evidence among the earliest
Fathers.  It appears first in the Protevangelium, and then possibly in
writers most closely involved with the Gnostics (Clement of Alexandria
in developing a Christian equivalent, Irenaeus in fighting it).

Halley's is, of course, a Protestant work.  (I am also a Protestant.)