19<\/strong>. “Other of the apostles I saw not, but James, the brother of the Lord.” The A. V. would lead to the conclusion that James was one of the Apostles, in the same sense as Peter was an Apostle, i.e. one of the Twelve. But it is almost certain that ‘save’ is an incorrect rendering, as in Luk 4:26-27<\/span> (where indeed it makes nonsense of the passage). See note on ch. Gal 2:16<\/span>. St James may still have been spoken of as an Apostle in the wider sense, in which it is now generally admitted the term is used in N. T.<\/p>\n James, the Lord’s brother<\/em> ] How are we to identify this James? And what are we to understand by the designation ‘the Lord’s brother’?<\/p>\n (1) Two of the Twelve bore the name of James; one, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, the other the son of Alphus (or Cleopas). It is agreed on all hands that the former is not the James here spoken of. It is also highly improbable that he is identical with the son of Alphus, called ‘James the less’ (literally ‘the Little’) in Mar 15:40<\/span>. If St Paul had conferred with two<\/em> of the number of the Twelve, his characteristic candour would have led him to state the fact distinctly. He admits that James was one of the Apostolic body, but he was not, like Cephas, one of the original Twelve. We therefore conclude that this James was the president of the Church at Jerusalem (see Act 15:13<\/span>; Act 21:18<\/span>) and distinct both from the son of Zebedee, who fell by the sword of Herod (Act 12:2<\/span>), and from the son of Alphus [25] . In the Book of Common Prayer ‘St James the Apostle’ is identified with the ‘brother of John’, and the other St James (coupled with St Philip) with the author of the Epistle, and brother of Jude.<\/p>\n [25] “I count it the more probable opinion that this James was not one of the Twelve”. Dr Salmon, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 478.<\/p>\n (2) It would seem that whatever we understand by the ‘Lord’s brethren’, they were not of the number of the Twelve. For we are expressly told that towards the close of our Lord’s earthly ministry, His brethren did not believe on Him (Joh 7:5<\/span>).<\/p>\n Three views of the relationship here expressed have been held by expositors of Scripture. ( a<\/em>) Some contend that the expression ‘brethren’ is to be understood literally of sons of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, born after the birth of our Lord. This opinion is maintained by Archdeacon Farrar in Dict. of the Bible<\/em>, Art. ‘Brother’; but it is rejected by all who with the chief Patristic writers insist on the perpetual virginity of Mary. ( b<\/em>) Others regard these ‘brethren’ as cousins<\/em> of our Lord, the sons of Mary (sister of the Virgin) and Cleopas. This may be dismissed for the reason stated already that one of them was of the number of the Twelve, and therefore could not be described as not believing on Him. ( c<\/em>) A third hypothesis is that they were sons of Joseph by a former marriage, and therefore half-brothers of our Lord. (That they were the offspring of a Levirate marriage of Joseph with Mary wife of Cleopas, after the death of the latter, may be mentioned as an instance of groundless assumption, only to be discarded.)<\/p>\n The choice then lies between the first and the third view. In a case where the arguments are almost evenly balanced, it is not easy to decide, but on the whole they seem to favour the conclusion that the ‘brethren’ were sons of Joseph by a former marriage, and therefore ‘half-brothers’ or step-brothers of our Lord. In support of this conclusion we note that if Joseph is called the father of our Lord (Luk 2:48<\/span>), Joseph’s sons may without great violence be called His brethren. For a full discussion of the subject, see Dict. of the Bible<\/em>, ut supra, Bp Lightfoot, Dissertation II, Alford on Mat 13:56<\/span>.<\/p>\n The other Apostles were probably absent from Jerusalem at this time, on a missionary tour, visiting and confirming the Churches of Juda and Galilee and Samaria.<\/p>\n Save James the Lords brother – <\/B>That the James here referred to was an apostle is clear. The whole construction of the sentence demands this supposition. In the list of the apostles in Mat 10:2-3<\/span>, two of this name are mentioned, James the son of Zebedee and brother of John, and James the son of Alpheus. From the Acts of the Apostles, it is clear that there were two of this name in Jerusalem. Of these, James the brother of John was slain by Herod Act 12:2<\/span>, and the other continued to reside in Jerusalem, Act 15:13<\/span>; Act 21:13<\/span>. This latter James was called James the Less Mar 15:40<\/span>, to distinguish him from the other James, probably because he was the younger. It is probable that this was the James referred to here, as it is evident from the Acts of the Apostles that he was a prominent man among the apostles in Jerusalem. Commentators have not been agreed as to what is meant by his being the brother of the Lord Jesus. Doddridge understands it as meaning that he was the near kinsman or cousin-german to Jesus, for he was, says he, the son of Alpheus and Mary, the sister of the virgin; and if there were only two of this name, this opinion is undoubtedly correct.<\/P> In the Apostolical Constitutions (see Rosenmuller) three of this name are mentioned as apostles or eminent men in Jerusalem; and hence, many have supposed that one of them was the son of Mary the mother of the Lord Jesus. It is said Mat 13:55<\/span> that the brothers of Jesus were James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas; and it is remarkable that three of the apostles bear the same names; James the son of Alpheus, Simon Zelotes, and Judas, Joh 14:22<\/span>. It is indeed possible, as Bloomfield remarks, that three brothers of our Lord and three of his apostles might bear the same names, and yet be different persons; but such a coincidence would be very remarkable, and not easily explained. But if it were not so, then the James here was the son of Alpheus, and consequently a cousin of the Lord Jesus. The word brother may, according to Scriptural usage, be understood as denoting a near kinsman. See Schleusher (Lexicon 2) on the word <\/SPAN><\/span> adelphos. After all, however, it is not quite certain who is intended. Some have supposed that neither of the apostles of the name of James is intended, but another James who was the son of Mary the mother of Jesus. See Koppe in loc. But it is clear, I think, that one of the apostles is intended. Why James is particularly mentioned here is unknown. Since, however, he was a prominent man in Jerusalem, Paul would naturally seek his acquaintance. It is possible that the other apostles were absent from Jerusalem during the fifteen days when he was there.<\/P> <\/p>\n Gal 1:19<\/span><\/p>\n Save James the Lord<\/em>s brother.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n James appears, to whatever source we may turn for information, as the one authoritative ruler, the one undoubted representative of the Christian society. But whatever the influence he exercised, or the authority be maintained, it was due not to his apostleship, but to those relations which are brought before us by the epithets affixed to his name, James the brother of our Lord, James the Just. If we open the contemporary Christian records it is to his decision (Act 15:13<\/span>) that the council of Jerusalem bows; and to him, taking precedence even of Cephas and John, that Paul communicates the revelation that had been entrusted to him (Gal 2:9<\/span>). If we turn to later traditions preserved in Hegessipus, or in the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, he appears before us as the one mysterious bulwark of the chosen people; invested with a priestly sanctity before which the pontificate of Aaron fades into insignificance–as the one universal bishop of the Christian Church. If we look to the impression produced on the mind of the Jewish people, we find that he alone of all the apostles has obtained a place in their national records, whether in the simple narrative of Josephus, or in the wild legends of the Talmud. He was emphatically the Just; the predictions of the Just one were regarded as fulfilled in his person; the people vied with each other to touch the hem of his garment; after the manner of Elijah he was reported in the droughts of Palestine to have called down rain; and with the austere features, linen ephod, bare feet, long locks and unshorn beard of the Nazarite, he was believed to have gathered round him the admiring populace to ask: What is the gate of salvation? And in that striking scene, when at the close of a long life he is described as standing on the front of the temple and bearing witness to the coming judgment of the Son of man, it was with a feeling of bitter disappointment that the Scribes and Pharisees are represented as rushing upon him with the cry, Woe, Woe, the Just one also is deceived; and in his cruel death, the Jewish historian, no less than the Christian martyrologist, saw the filling up of the cup of guilt which was to hasten on the final catastrophe of the apostate nation. His chair was preserved as a relic till the fourth century, and the pillar which marked the spot where he fell long remained in the valley of Jehoshaphat, under the precipice from which he was thrown. (Dean Stanley.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Verse 19. James the Lord’s brother.<\/B><\/I>] Dr. Paley observes: There were at Jerusalem two apostles<\/I>, or at least two<\/I> eminent members of the Church, of the name of James<\/I>. This is distinctly inferred from the Acts of the Apostles, Ac 12:2<\/span>, where the historian relates the death of James<\/I>, the brother of John<\/I>; and yet, in Ac 15:13-21<\/span>, and in Ac 21:18<\/span>, he records a speech delivered by James<\/I> in the assembly of the apostles and elders. In this place JAMES, the Lord’s brother<\/I>, is mentioned thus to distinguish him from JAMES the brother of John<\/I>. Some think there were three<\/I> of this name:-<\/P> 1. JAMES, our Lord’s brother<\/I>, or cousin<\/I>, as some will have it;<\/P> 2. JAMES, the son of Alphaeus<\/I>; and<\/P> 3. JAMES, the son of Zebedee<\/I>. But the two former names belong to the same person.<\/P><\/p>\n The apostles were at this time scattered, either through the persecution, or for the fulfilling of the work of their apostleship; so as probably there were at this time no more of the apostles at Jerusalem, except Peter, and James the less, the son of Alpheus, who is here called the brother of our Lord, as is generally thought, according to the Hebrew idiom, who were wont to call near kinsmen, brethren. Upon another journey which Paul made to Jerusalem, he saw others (as we shall hear in the next chapter); but that was several years after this his first journey thither. <\/P> <\/p>\n 19.<\/B> Compare Act 9:27<\/span>;Act 9:28<\/span>, wherein Luke, as anhistorian, describes more generally what Paul, the subject of thehistory, himself details more particularly. The history speaks of”apostles”; and Paul’s mention of a second<\/I> apostle,besides Peter, reconciles the Epistle and the history. At Stephen’smartyrdom, and the consequent persecution, the other ten apostles,agreeably to Christ’s directions, seem to have soon<\/I> (thoughnot immediately,<\/I> Ac 8:14<\/span>)left Jerusalem to preach elsewhere. James remained in charge of themother church, as its bishop. Peter, the apostle of the circumcision,was present during Paul’s fifteen days’ stay; but he, too, presentlyafter (Ac 9:32<\/span>), went on acircuit through Judea. <\/P> James, the Lord’sbrother<\/B>This designation, to distinguish him from James the sonof Zebedee, was appropriate while that apostle was alive. But beforePaul’s second visit to Jerusalem (Gal 2:1<\/span>;Act 15:1-4<\/span>), he had beenbeheaded by Herod (Ac 12:2<\/span>).Accordingly, in the subsequent mention of James here (Gal 2:9<\/span>;Gal 2:12<\/span>), he is not designatedby this distinctive epithet: a minute, undesigned coincidence, andproof of genuineness. James was the Lord’s brother, not in our strictsense, but in the sense, “cousin,” or “kinsman”(Mat 28:10<\/span>; Joh 20:17<\/span>).His brethren are never called “sons of Joseph,” which theywould have been had they been the Lord’s brothers strictly. However,compare Ps 69:8<\/span>, “I am analien to my mother’s children.<\/I>” In Joh 7:3<\/span>;Joh 7:5<\/span>, the “brethren”who believed not in Him may mean His near relations,<\/I> notincluding the two of His brethren, that is, relatives (James andJude) who were among the Twelve apostles. Ac1:14<\/span>, “His brethren,” refer to Simon and Joses, andothers (Mt 13:55<\/span>) of Hiskinsmen, who were not apostles. It is not likely there would be twopairs of brothers named alike, of such eminence as James and Jude;the likelihood is that the apostles James and Jude are also thewriters of the Epistles, and the brethren of Jesus. James and Joseswere sons of Alpheus and Mary, sister of the Virgin Mary.<\/P><\/p>\n But other of the apostles saw I none<\/strong>,…. This is observed to show, that as he did not receive the Gospel from Peter, so neither from any of the other apostles, whom he did not so much as see, much less converse with;<\/p>\n save James the Lord’s brother<\/strong>; not James the son of Zebedee, the brother of John, whom Herod slew with the sword; but James the son of Alphaeus, he who made the speech in the synod at Jerusalem,<\/p>\n Ac 15:13<\/span> was the writer of the epistle which bears his name, and was the brother of Joses, Simon, and Judas, who are called the brethren of Christ, Mt 13:55<\/span> and that because they were the kinsmen and relations of Christ according to the flesh, it being usual with the Jews to call such brethren. The relation came in and stood thus; this James was James the less, the son of Mary the wife of Cleophas,<\/p>\n Mr 15:40<\/span> which Cleophas was the brother of Joseph, the husband of Mary the mother of our Lord, as Eusebius, from Hegesippus, relates; and so our Lord and this James were brothers’ children, as was supposed: or else the wife of Cleophas the mother of James, was sister to Mary the mother of Christ, as she is called, Joh 19:25<\/span> and so they were sisters’ children, or own cousins; and thus Jerom t, after much discourse on this subject, concludes that Mary the mother of James the less was the wife of Alphaeus, (or Cleophas, which is the same,) and the sister of Mary the mother of the Lord, whom the Evangelist John surnames Mary of Cleophas; and persons in such a relation, and even uncles and nephews, were called brethren by the Jews; see Ge 12:5<\/span> nor is James one of our Lord’s disciples being called his brother, any contradiction to Joh 7:5<\/span> as the Jew u affirms, where it is said, “neither did his brethren believe in him”; since they might not believe in him then, and yet believe in him afterwards: besides, Christ had brethren or relations according to the flesh, distinct from his disciples and apostles, and his brethren among them; see Mt 10:1<\/span> such as were James, Judas, and Simon; nor does the Evangelist John say, that none of Christ’s brethren believed in him, only that they that came to him and bid him go into Judea did not. Some have been of opinion that a third James, distinct from James the son of Zebedee and James the son of Alphaeus, is here meant; who was not of the twelve apostles, and was surnamed James the just, and called the brother of Christ because of his faith, wisdom, and becoming conversation; but certain it is, that this James was of the number of the apostles, as appears from the exceptive clause, “other of the apostles saw I none, save James”, c. and from his being put with Cephas and John, who were pillars and the chief among the apostles and besides it was James the son of Alphaeus, who was surnamed the “just”, and Oblias w, and presided over the church at Jerusalem, and was a man of great esteem among the Jews; and is by x Josephus, as here, called the brother of Jesus.<\/p>\n t Advers. Helvidium, Tom. II. fol. 4. M. u R. Isaac, Chizzuk Emuna, par. 2. c. 8. p. 469. w Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 2. c. 23. Hieron. Catalog. Script. Eccl. sect. 3. fol. 89. x Antiqu. l. 20. c. 8. sect. 1.<\/p>\n Except James the brother of the Lord <\/B> ( <\/SPAN><\/span>). James the son of Zebedee was still living at that time. The rest of the twelve were probably away preaching and James, brother of the Lord, is here termed an apostle, though not one of the twelve as Barnabas is later so called. Paul is showing his independence of and equality with the twelve in answer to the attacks of the Judaizers. <\/P> <\/p>\n Save James [ ] <\/SPAN><\/span>. With the usual exceptive sense. I saw none save James. Not, I saw none other of the apostles, but I saw James. Jas. is counted as an apostle, though not reckoned among the twelve. For Paul ‘s use of “apostle,” see on 1Th 1:1<\/span>, and comp. 1Co 14:4 – 7<\/span>. <\/P> The Lord ‘s brother. Added in order to distinguish him from James the son of Zebedee (Mt 4:21<\/span>; Mt 10:2<\/span>; Mr 10:35<\/span>), who was still living, and from James the son of Alphaeus (Mt 10:3<\/span>). 42 The Lord ‘s brother means that James was a son of Joseph and Mary. This view is known as the Helvidian theory, from Helvidius, a layman of Rome, who wrote, about 380, a book against mariolatry and ascetic celibacy. The explanations which differ from that of Helvidius have grown, largely, out of the desire to maintain the perpetual virginity of Mary. Jerome has given his name to a theory known as the Hieronymian put forth in reply to Helvidius, about 383, according to which the brethren of the Lord were the sons of his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Alphaeus or Clopas, and therefore Jesus ‘ cousins. A third view bears the name of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus (<\/span>ob. 404), and is that the Lord ‘s brothers were sons of Joseph by a former wife. 43<\/P> <\/p>\n 1 ) “But other of the apostles saw I none,”<\/strong> (heteron de ton apostolon ouk eidon) “But I saw not (any) other of the apostles,” either of the twelve or of the seventy. The Gk. term “heteron,” means he saw not another except James only. Whether this James was pastor of the Jerusalem church, brother of Jude, or one of the twelve apostles, is not clear, Act 12:17<\/span>; Act 15:13<\/span>; Act 21:18<\/span>; 1Co 9:5<\/span>.<\/p>\n 2) “Save James, the Lord’s brother,”<\/strong> (ei me lakabon ton adelphon tou kuriou) “Except James, the Lord’s brother,” Mat 13:55<\/span>. This James was perhaps one of the seventy apostles, not one of the twelve, Mat 12:46<\/span>. Apparently Barnabas carried a report of his testimony to other apostles, while he was in the fifteen day conference with Peter, Act 9:27-30<\/span>.<\/p>\n 19. But I saw no other of the apostles. This is added to make it evident that he had but one object in his journey, and attended to nothing else. <\/p>\n Except James. Who this James was, deserves inquiry. Almost all the ancients are agreed that he was one of the disciples, whose surname was “Oblias” and “The Just,” and that he presided over the church at Jerusalem. (33) Yet others think that he was the son of Joseph by another wife, and others (which is more probable) that he was the cousin of Christ by the mother’s side: (34) but as he is here mentioned among the apostles, I do not hold that opinion. Nor is there any force in the defense offered by Jerome, that the word Apostle is sometimes applied to others besides the twelve; for the subject under consideration is the highest rank of apostleship, and we shall presently see that he was considered one of the chief pillars. (Gal 2:9<\/span>.) It appears to me, therefore, far more probable, that the person of whom he is speaking is the son of Alpheus. (35) <\/p>\n The rest of the apostles, there is reason to believe, were scattered through various countries; for they did not idly remain in one place. Luke relates that Paul was brought by Barnabas to the apostles. (Act 9:27<\/span>.) This must be understood to relate, not to the twelve, but to these two apostles, who alone were at that time residing in Jerusalem. <\/p>\n (33) “ Qui estoit pasteur en l’eglise de Jerusalem.” “Who was pastor in the church at Jerusalem.” <\/p>\n (34) “ Qu’il estoit cousin-germain de Jesus Christ, fils de la soeur de sa mere.” “That he was cousin-german of Jesus Christ, his mother’s sister’s son.” <\/p>\n (35) This is fully consistent with the opinion commonly held, that Alpheus or Cleopas was the husband of the sister of Mary, the mother of our Lord, and consequently that James, the son of Alpheus, was our Lord’s cousin-german. — Ed. <\/p>\n (19) Other of the apostles.<\/strong>From the form of this phrase it would appear that James, the Lords brother, was considered to be an Apostle. In what sense he was an Apostle will depend very much upon who he was (see the next Note). If he was a cousin of our Lord, and identical with James the son of Alphus, then he was one of the original Twelve. If he was not the son of Alphus, but either the son of Joseph alone or of Joseph and Mary, then the title must be given to him in the wider sense in which it is applied to Paul and Barnabas.<\/p>\n The Lords brother.<\/strong>What relationship is indicated by this? The question has been already dealt with in the Notes on the Gospels. (See Notes on Mat. 12:46<\/span>; Mat. 13:55<\/span>; Joh. 7:3<\/span>; Joh. 7:5<\/span>.) The present writer has nothing to add, except to express his entire agreement with what has been there said, and his firm conviction that the theory which identifies the brethren of the Lord with His cousins,<\/em> the sons of Clopas, is untenable. A full account of the James who is here mentioned will be found in the Introduction<\/em> to the Epistle which goes by his name.<\/p>\n 19<\/strong>. <\/strong> Save James<\/strong> This is, no doubt, the James of Jerusalem. Act 21:18<\/span>, and Mat 10:3<\/span>. It is questioned, with little reason, we think, whether he is here called an apostle. The Greek may indeed be rendered: Other of the apostles saw I none, save that I saw James. But James has to be counted to make out the apostles <\/strong> of Act 9:27<\/span>, where see note.<\/p>\n Gal 1:19<\/span><\/em><\/strong>. <\/strong>James, the Lord’s brother.<\/em><\/strong><\/strong> He was the Son of Alpheus and Mary, the sister of the virgin; so that he was cousin-german <\/em>to Jesus. See Mar 3:18<\/span>. <\/p>\n Gal 1:19<\/span> . But another of the apostles saw I not, save James the brother of the Lord<\/em> . Thus this James is distinguished indeed from the circle of the twelve (1Co 15:5<\/span> ) to which Peter belonged, but yet is included in the number of the apostles, namely in the wider sense (comp. 1Co 15:7<\/span> ; 1Co 9:5<\/span> ); which explains the merely supplementary mention of this<\/em> apostle. After we must supply not merely (as Grotius, Fritzsche ad Matth<\/em> . p. 482, Winer, Bleek in Stud. u. Krit<\/em> . 1836, p. 1059, Wieseler), but, as the context requires, .<\/p>\n is not qualitative here, as in Gal 1:6<\/span> , but stands in contrast to the one<\/em> who is named, Peter. In addition to the latter he saw not one more of the apostles, except only that he saw the apostle in the wider sense of the term<\/p>\n James the brother of the Lord (who indeed belonged to the church at Jerusalem as its president), a fact which conscientiously he will not leave unmentioned.<\/p>\n On the point that James the brother of the Lord<\/em> was not<\/em> James the son of Alphaeus, as, following Clemens Alex., Jerome, Augustine, Pelagius, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, most modern scholars, and among the expositors of the epistle Matthies, Usteri, Schott, Baumgarten-Crusius, Jatho, Hofmann, Reithmayr, maintain, but a real brother of Jesus<\/em> (Mat 13:35<\/span> ; Mar 6:3<\/span> ), the son of Mary, called James the Just (Heges. in Eus<\/em> . ii. 23), who, having been a Nazarite from his birth, and having become a believer after the resurrection of Jesus (1Co 15:7<\/span> ; Act 1:14<\/span> ), attained to very high apostolic reputation among the Jewish Christians (Gal 2:9<\/span> ), and was the most influential presbyter of the church at Jerusalem, [37] see on Act 12:17<\/span> ; 1Co 9:5<\/span> ; Huther on Ep. of James<\/em> , Introd. 1; Laurent, neutest. Stud<\/em> . p. 175 ff. By the more precise designation, , he is distinguished<\/em> not only from the elder James, the brother of John (Hofmann and others), but also from James the son of Alphaeus, who was one of the twelve. Comp. Victorinus, “cum autem fratrem<\/em> dixit, apostolum negavit<\/em> .” The whole figment of the identity of this James with the son of Alphaeus is a result of the unscriptural (Mat 1:25<\/span> ; Luk 2:7<\/span> ) although ecclesiastically orthodox ( Form. Conc<\/em> . p. 767) belief (extending beyond the birth of Christ) in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Comp. on Mat 12:46<\/span> ; 1Co 9:5<\/span> . We may add that the statement, that Paul at this time saw only Peter and James at Jerusalem, is not at variance with the inexact expression , Act 9:27<\/span> , but is an authentic historical definition of it, of a more precise character.<\/p>\n [37] Wieseler also justly recognises here the actual brother of Jesus, but holds the<\/em> James, who is named in Gal 2:9<\/span> ; Gal 2:12<\/span> (and Act 12:17<\/span> ; Act 15:13<\/span> ; Act 15:21<\/span> ; 1Co 15:7<\/span> ) as the head of the Jewish Christians, not to be identical with this brother of the Lord, but to be the apostle James the son of Alphaeus;<\/em> affirming that it was the latter also who was called . See, however, on Gal 2:9<\/span> . The Gospel of the Hebrews, in Jerome, Vir. ill<\/em> . 2, puts James the Just among the apostles who partook of the last Supper with Jesus, but nevertheless represents him as a brother<\/em> of the Lord, for it makes him to be addressed by the Risen One as “ frater mi<\/em> .” Wieseler, indeed, understands frater mi<\/em> in a spiritual sense, as in Joh 20:17<\/span> , Mat 28:10<\/span> . But, just because the designation of a James as is so solemn, this interpretation appears arbitrary; nor do we find that anywhere in the Gospels Jesus addressed<\/em> the disciples as brethren.<\/p>\n 19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Ver. 19. But other of the apostles<\/strong> ] These were busily attending upon their particular charges and offices, according to Rom 12:7<\/span> . <\/p>\n 19<\/strong> .] This verse admits of two interpretations, between which other considerations must decide. (1) That James, the Lord’s brother, was one of the Twelve, and the only one besides Peter whom Paul saw at this visit: (2) that he was one , but not necessarily of the Twelve. Of these, (1) apparently cannot be: for after the choosing of the Twelve ( Joh 6:70 ), the of our Lord did not believe on Him ( Joh 7:5 ): an expression (see note there) which will not admit of any<\/em> of His brethren having then been His disciples. We must then adopt (2): which is besides in consonance with other notices respecting the term , and the person heve mentioned. I reserve the subject for full discussion in the prolegomena to the Ep. of James. See also notes, Mat 10:3<\/span> ; Mat 13:55<\/span> ; Joh 7:5<\/span> .<\/p>\n Gal 1:19<\/span> . . may either state an exception to the preceding negative clause (= except, save<\/em> ), or merely qualify it (= but only<\/em> ), as it does in Luk 4:26<\/span> , to none of them, sc.<\/em> , the widows in Israel, but only to Sarepta in Sidon<\/em> ; and in Gal 1:7<\/span> , no other Gospel, only<\/em> ( ) there are some that pervert the Gospel<\/em> . The latter appears to be its meaning here. If James had been entitled an Apostle, the author would probably have written that he saw no other Apostles but Peter and James. But here he states emphatically that he saw no second ( ) Apostle, only James. The Epistle, like the Acts (see Act 12:17<\/span> , Act 15:13<\/span> , Act 21:18<\/span> ), fully recognises the leading position of James in the local Church ( cf.<\/em> Gal 2:9<\/span> ; Gal 2:12<\/span> ); and the ecclesiastical tradition which entitles him Bishop of Jerusalem corresponds to this. All the evidence left of his life suggests that he clung throughout his Christian life to Jerusalem and did not undertake such missionary labours as would entitle him to the designation of Apostle. James is here described as the brother of the Lord<\/em> in order to distinguish him from James the son of Zebedee, who was living at the time of Paul’s first visit; but elsewhere as James: after the death of the other James there could be no question who was meant.<\/p>\n other. Greek. heteros, as in Gal 1:6. <\/p>\n saw. Greek. eidon. App-133. <\/p>\n none. Greek. ou. <\/p>\n save = except. Greek. ei me. <\/p>\n the Lord’s brother. See App-182. <\/p>\n 19.] This verse admits of two interpretations, between which other considerations must decide. (1) That James, the Lords brother, was one of the Twelve, and the only one besides Peter whom Paul saw at this visit: (2) that he was one , but not necessarily of the Twelve. Of these, (1) apparently cannot be: for after the choosing of the Twelve (Joh 6:70), the of our Lord did not believe on Him (Joh 7:5): an expression (see note there) which will not admit of any of His brethren having then been His disciples. We must then adopt (2): which is besides in consonance with other notices respecting the term , and the person heve mentioned. I reserve the subject for full discussion in the prolegomena to the Ep. of James. See also notes, Mat 10:3; Mat 13:55; Joh 7:5.<\/p>\n Gal 1:19. , the Lords brother) cousin of Jesus. There was no other James, the Lords brother, and an apostle.<\/p>\n Gal 1:19<\/p>\n Gal 1:19<\/p>\n But other of the apostles saw I none,-On this visit to Jerusalem, he saw none of the apostles besides Peter.<\/p>\n save James the Lords brother.-[This James is called the Lords brother to distinguish him from the two apostles of the same name. Brother is not cousin, but a younger son of Mary and Joseph. Compare the words, and knew her not till she had brought forth a son (Mat 1:25); and she brought forth her firstborn son. (Luk 2:7). The cousin theory of the Roman Catholic Church is exegetically untenable, and was suggested chiefly by the doctrinal ascetic bias in favor of the perpetual virginity of Mary and Joseph.]<\/p>\n James: Mat 10:3, Mar 3:18, Luk 6:15, Act 1:13, James the son of Alphaeus, Jam 1:1, Jud 1:1 <\/p>\n the Lord’s: Mat 13:55, Mar 6:3, 1Co 9:5 <\/p>\n Reciprocal: Mat 12:46 – his Mar 15:15 – willing Mar 15:40 – Mary the Luk 8:20 – thy brethren Joh 2:12 – and his brethren Act 9:27 – the apostles Act 12:17 – James Act 15:13 – James Act 21:18 – unto<\/p>\n Gal 1:19. , -And another of the apostles I did not see, except James the Lord’s brother; or, None other of the apostles did I see, save James the Lord’s brother. <\/p>\n The adjective is simply numerical, not qualitative. Two different meanings have been assigned to the verse. Victorinus, Grotius, Fritzsche (on Mat 13:55), Bleek, and Winer supply simply after -none other of the apostles did I see, except that, or but, I saw James the Lord’s brother;-the inference being, that this James was not an apostle. In this case still retains its exceptive force, which is, however, confined to the verb. Thus in Mat 12:4 it is rendered but only; Luk 4:26-27, save, saving; Rev 21:27, but. Others more naturally supply -none other of the apostles did I see, except the Apostle James, the Lord’s brother; or, none other of the apostles saw I, save James the Lord’s brother;-the inference plainly being, that the Lord’s brother was an apostle. Thus 1Co 1:14, , -none of you I baptized, save Crispus and Gaius: I baptized them, and they were -of you. The being suggested by , thus refers to the whole clause. See under Gal 1:7, Gal 2:16. <\/p>\n Note on Chap. Gal 1:19. <\/p>\n -James the Lord’s brother. <\/p>\n What, then, is meant by the phrase, the Lord’s brother? If, as here implied, he was one of the apostles, was he one of the twelve-James, son of Alphaeus? or if he did not belong to the twelve, why is he ranked among the apostles? <\/p>\n First of all, who are these , brothers of our Lord, to whom this James belonged? One may surely discuss this theme without incurring the censure of Calvin: Certe nemo unquam hac de re questionem movebit nisi curiosus, nemo vero pertinaciter insistet nisi contentiosus rixator.-On Mat 1:25. For, after all, it is simply an attempted answer to the question, Are there two only or are there three Jameses mentioned in the New Testament? What, then, from the simple narrative may be gleaned about the ? They are referred to nine times in the four Gospels, once in the Acts, and once in the first Epistle to the Corinthians. From these incidental notices we learn the following:<\/p>\n 1. The brothers are a party distinct from the apostles. Thus, Joh 2:12 : After this He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; Mat 12:46-47 : While He yet talked to the people, behold, His mother and His brothers stood without, desiring to speak with Him. Then one said, Behold, thy mother and thy brothers stand without, desiring to speak with thee. Mar 3:31; Luk 8:19. Again, the men of His own country cried, Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brothers, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us? Mat 13:55. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses, and of Judas and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? Mar 6:3. His brothers said to Him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For neither did His brothers believe on Him. But when His brothers were gone up, then went He also up unto the feast. Joh 7:3; Joh 7:5; Joh 7:10. Four times do this party, so nearly related to Him, pass before us in the gospel history: immediately after His first miracle; as wishing an interview with Him; as sneeringly referred to by His fellow-townsmen; and as not yet believing on Him. The same distinction is still marked after the ascension: These all (the apostles) continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers. Act 1:14. The plea of the Apostle Paul is: Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? 1Co 9:5 <\/p>\n 2. The brothers appear always in connection with Mary, save in John 7 -the scene and expression of their unbelief, and she could not be entangled in that unbelief; and she is always found in company with them, save in Luk 2:42, Joseph being then alive, and in Joh 19:25, where she was commended to John and not to one of them. Four times is she-a widow probably by this time-connected with them as their parental head. 3. As a family they are once named as consisting of four brothers-James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon-and of at least two sisters, as the word all ( ) would seem to imply. 4. We have in the verse before us James the Lord’s brother, not to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee, as Hug supposes, for then his patronymic Alphaei would have been quite sufficient. He was therefore one of these . <\/p>\n Now, had there been no theological intervention,-no peculiar views as to the perpetual virginity of Mary, or at least no impression that the womb chosen for the divine infant was so sacred-so set apart in solitary honour and dedication, that it could have no other or subsequent tenant,-the natural or usual domestic meaning would have been the only one given to the previous quotations, and Jesus, His brothers, and His sisters would have been regarded as forming one household having the common relationship of children to Mary their mother. The employment of the anomalous double plural brethren, instead of brothers, in all these places of the Authorized Version, lessens or diverts the impression on the English reader; for brethren now never denotes sons of the same parents, but is official, national, functional, or congregational in its use. But the simple and natural meaning of has not been usually adopted, and two rival explanatory theories have had a wide and lasting prominence. <\/p>\n The theory so commonly held among ourselves is, that the brothers of our Lord were His cousins-either children of the Virgin’s sister, wife of Clopas, or children of Clopas, Joseph’s brother. The first hypothesis is real cousinhood; the second is only legal and unreal in reference to Him who was not Joseph’s son. <\/p>\n Jerome, who is identified with the theory of cousinhood, as being the first who gave it an elaborated form, refers (under Gal 1:19) to his Adversus Helvidium de perpetua Virginitate Beatae Mariae, written about 382,-an essay which he wrote, as he says, dum Romae essem, impulsu fratrum. Now, to hold, according to the title of this tract, the perpetual virginity of Mary, forecloses the discussion as to the question of full and natural brotherhood; and Jerome’s avowed and primary object was to show that no theory about the was permissible which brought the perpetual virginity under suspicion or denial. But the dogma has no scriptural support, so that it cannot demand acceptance as an article of faith. For, <\/p>\n I. What does imply? We read, Mat 1:25, -and knew her not till she brought forth her first-born son. Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles exclude , but only on the authority of B, Z, and , and on the suspicion that the phrase was taken from Luk 2:7. It may be replied, however, that this intense belief in the perpetual virginity formed a strong temptation to leave out the epithet; for from it, as Jerome bitterly asserts, some men perversissime suspected that Mary had other and subsequent children. The epithet, however, occurs in Luk 2:7, where there is no difference of reading. Now, in ordinary language, first-born implies that others are born afterward; and Jesus could have been as easily called her only as her first-born son. The force of this argument is somewhat neutralized by the opinion, that the word first-born may have had a technical sense, since in the Mosaic law it might be applied to the first child, though none were born after it,-the firstling of man and beast being devoted to God. Exo 13:2; Luk 2:23. Thus Lightfoot says: The word is to be understood here according to the propriety and phrase of the law, and he instances 1Ch 2:50, where Hur is called the first-born of Ephrath, and yet no mention made of any child that she had after. But first-born occurs generally in these genealogical lists in its relative sense; and as sons are usually registered only, might not Ephrath have had daughters? The Hebrew law, as originally ordained, was a present enactment with a prospective reference as regards the first child or son, whether an only child or not, and the statute was easily interpreted. The same principle is applicable to the term first-born as belonging to the Egyptian families that suffered under the divine judgment, and to Jerome’s objection that the law of redemption applying to the first-born would, if the word be taken in its relative sense, be held in suspense till the birth of a second child. But Jerome’s definition is true only in a legal sense: Primogenitus est non tantum post quem alii, sed ante quem nullus.For the diction of law and history are different. The law ordained the dedication of that child by the birth of which a woman became a mother, and called it the firstling or first-born irrespective of any subsequent children, and at its birth the redemption must be made. But in writing the history of an individual many years after his time, it would be strange to call him a first-born son, or to say of his mother that she brought forth her first-born son, if there were in that family no subsequent births. A biographer would in that case most naturally call him an only son. Epiphanius must have been greatly at a loss for an argument to prove first-born to be the same as only, when he bases it on the position of in Mat 1:25 : . . . . . . , as if did not belong to both words. <\/p>\n Besides, the epithet first-born is used by an evangelist who in subsequent chapters speaks of brothers and sisters of Jesus; and what could he suppose would be the natural inference of his readers when they brought and together, there being no hint or explanation that the relations indicated are other than the ordinary and natural one of blood? The epithet, too, does not seem to have an absolute sense as used in the New Testament: , Rom 8:29. Compare Col 1:15; Col 1:18; Heb 11:28; Rev 1:5. The inference of Eunomius is a natural one: . Helvidius, who, as is well known, holds the natural kinship, and against whom Jerome fulminated in the tract already referred to, argues, as might be supposed, in the same way; and Lucian says: , , . <\/p>\n II. No definite argument can be based on the particle in the same verse, for it does not always mean that what is asserted or denied up to a certain point of time is reversed after it. In 2Sa 6:23, where it is said she (Michal) had no child till the day of her death, the meaning cannot be mistaken. But the sense must be determined by the context, whether what is asserted as far as ceased or continued after it. See Fritzsche on Mat 28:20; Meyer on Mat 1:25. <\/p>\n This verse undoubtedly affirms the virginity of Mary up to the birth of Jesus, and this prior virginity is the principal fact; but it as plainly implies, that after that event Mary lived with Joseph as his wife. Even prior to the birth she is called Mary thy wife, and her virginity is stated as if it had been a parenthesis in her wifehood. Basil himself, while asserting that her virginity before the birth was necessary, and that the lovers of Christ cannot bear to hear that she, , ever ceased to be a virgin, admits that the phrase creates a suspicion, , that afterwards this prenuptial condition ceased: . The theory of Jerome, on the other hand, was intended, in fact, to conserve the perpetual virginity both of Joseph and Mary. It is beside the point, and a mere assumption, to say, with Olshausen on Mat 1:25, Joseph might justly think that his marriage with Mary had another purpose than that of begetting children. It seems, he adds, in the order of nature, that the last female descendant of David, in the family of which the Messiah was born, closed her family with this last and eternal scion. This is only sentiment without any proof, though I confess that one naturally clings to such a belief. The perpetual virginity cannot, however, be conclusively proved out of Scripture; but an inference decidedly against it may be maintained from both the terms and in Mat 1:25. <\/p>\n If the were only cousins, the perpetual virginity becomes at least possible. Jerome’s first argument on behalf of cousinhood is, that in Gal 1:19, James is recognised as an apostle, and must therefore be James son of Alphaeus, one of the twelve. If not, he reasons that there must have been three Jameses,-the son of Zebedee, the son of Alphaeus or James the Less, and this third one; but the epithet given to the one James implies that there were only two; so that the imagined third James is identical with the son of Alphaeus. Mar 15:40. But in reply, first, James the Lord’s brother was not, in our view, one of the twelve, so that such an argument forms no objection; and, secondly, the comparative minor, the Less, is not the proper rendering of the positive ; and though it were the true rendering, it might still be given to James the Lord’s brother, to distinguish him from James the son of Alphaeus. Probably the epithet is absolute, and alludes to stature and not to age; at all events, the other James is never called James the Great. Gregory of Nyssa, indeed, gives him that title because he was among the apostles; the Lord’s brother, on the other hand, being called Little as not being among them,-a conjecture on a par with that of Lange, that James was named the Less from his later entrance into the apostolic college in comparison with the other James. It is highly probable, too, that the Little was not the epithet he bore at the period of the resurrection, but was his individualizing epithet when the Gospel was written. <\/p>\n 2. The other steps of Jerome’s argument are: Alphaeus father of James, was married to Mary sister of the Virgin; so that James was the Lord’s cousin, and might be called His brother according to Jewish usage. That is, Mary the mother of James the Little is asserted to be wife of Alphaeus his father,-it being assumed, first, that James the Little is the same with the son of Alphaeus; secondly, that this Mary is the wife of Clopas and the Virgin’s sister; and thirdly, that Alphaeus and Clopas are the same person. Yet Jerome says in his very tract against Helvidius that he does not contend earnestly for the identity of Mary of Clopas with Mary mother of James and Joses, though one should say that it was the key to his whole argument. Nay, in his epistle to Hedibia he writes: Quatuor autem fuisse Marias, in Evangeliis legimus, unam matrem Domini Salvatoris, alteram materteram ejus quae appellata est Maria Cleophae, tertiam Mariam matrem Jacobi et Jose, quartam Mariam Magdalenam. Licet alii matrem Jacobi et Jose materteram ejus fuisse contendunt.<\/p>\n But Clopas and Alphaeus cannot be identified with certainty. The names are not so like as some contend. In Mat 10:3, Mar 3:18, Luk 6:15, Act 1:13, we have James the son of Alphaeus, and in Mar 2:14 we have Levi the son of Alphaeus; but whether these two Alphaeuses are the same or different, it is impossible to decide. Then we have (Clopas) in Joh 19:23, and (Cleopas) in Luk 24:18, the proper spelling of the two names in the Greek text. The original Syro-Chaldaic form, as given in the Syriac version, is , Chalphai, and is found in the five places where occurs, but it gives for the two names Clopas and Cleopas in John and Luke. The names are thus evidently regarded as quite different by the author or authors of this oldest version. Clopas therefore is not, as is often affirmed, the Aramaic form of Alphaeus; and to assert that Alphaeus and Clopas are varying names is opposed to philological analogy. The Syriac Cheth may pass into the Greek with the spiritus lenis, as in , for the Hebrew is so treated by the Seventy, , H2558 becoming , though often it is represented by the Greek or . But would have any alliance with the consonantal Kuph in Clopas or Klopas? At least the Hebrew Koph seems never to be represented by a vowel in the Septuagint, but by , , or . Frankel, Vorstudien, etc., p. 112. In fine, it cannot be safely held that by James the Little must be meant the son of Alphaeus, for, as Hegesippus says, there were many Jameses. <\/p>\n Nor can any solid assistance for this theory of cousinhood be got from Joh 19:25, for it cannot be proved that the words His mother’s sister are in apposition with Mary the wife of Clopas. The punctuation of the verse is, probably, not , -Mary His mother, and His mother’s sister Mary wife of Clopas; but there should be a comma after , so that Mary of Clopas becomes a third and different person, the sister’s name not being given: His mother and His mother’s sister, Mary wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. The Peschito inserts and before ; and in the Greek the four clauses are arranged in couplets, as in Mat 10:2-4. This punctuation is preferable, for it is not very likely that two sisters in one family should have the same name, and there is no parallel case in Scripture; for the name of Herod, an example adduced by Mill, comes not, as being a royal name repeated in the family, into comparison. But again, there is no certainty that is wife of Clopas; for it may be either wife, mother, or daughter of Clopas, as the context may determine. Thus a Mary is called mother of James and Joses in Mat 27:56, ; but in Mark (Mar 15:47) she is named simply , and in Luke (Luk 24:10), . Why may not these two last places guide us to interpret as Mary mother of Clopas? It cannot, then, be demonstrated, either that Alphaeus and Clopas are the same person, or that Mary of Clopas is necessarily his wife, and to be identified with Mary mother of James and Joses. But it has been triumphantly asked, If a Mary, not the Virgin, is called for distinction’s sake mother of James, what James can be meant but the most famous of the name-James of Alphaeus called the Lord’s brother, and in the early church James the Little, and therefore the cousin of our Lord? But be James the Little who he may, his position does not seem of sufficient prominence to distinguish his mother, for the name of another son, Joses, is added, as if for such a purpose, in Mar 15:40. The combination of both names was apparently required to point out the mother, so that it is natural to infer that this James, like his brother Joses, was of small note in the church, and could not therefore be the son of Alphaeus. And to show what confusion reigns on this point, it may be added that not a few identify Mary mother of James with Mary mother of our Lord. This is virtually done in the apocryphal gospel Historia Josephi, cap. iv., by Gregory of Nyssa, by Chrysostom, by Theophylact, by Helvidius, by Fritzsche, and by Cave who makes Alphaeus another name of Joseph. The James and Joses who had this Mary as their mother could not, therefore, be the brethren of our Lord, as the four would most likely have been mentioned together; and it is not possible either that mother should have a vague significance, or that her maternal relation should be ignored, and two other sons or step-sons placed in the room of her First-born. <\/p>\n Again, if the brothers were merely cousins, sons of Alphaeus, how could they be called again and again ? Jerome replies, Quatuor modis fratres dici, natura, gente, cognatione affectu; natura, Esau, Jacob; gente qua omnes Judaei inter se fratres vocant; . . . cognatione qui sunt de una familia, id est patria, Abraham, Lot,-Laban, Jacob; affectu . . . Christiani fratres, etc. Then he asks, Were these cousins fratres juxta naturam? non; juxta gentem? absurdum; juxta affectum? verum si sic, qui magis fratres quam apostoli? . . . Restat igitur fratres eos intelligas appellatos cognatione.But in these examples referred to, the context prevents any confusion of sense. Lot is called a brother of Abraham, and Jacob of Laban, they being only nephews, and specially beloved for the original fraternal relation. These indefinite terms of relation are found in the oldest book of Scripture; but there is no instance of this laxity in the New Testament found with in reference to kinship, nor with unless it is used tropically, Rom 16:1. The New Testament has special terms, as , : Mar 6:4; Luk 1:36; Luk 2:44; Col 4:10. Even in the old books of the Old Testament, when relation is to be marked, there is perfect definiteness in the use of , H278, as in Gen 37:10; Gen 50:8, Lev 21:2, Num 6:7, Jos 2:13. When it is employed along with father, mother, or sister, it evidently bears its own proper meaning. In the same way, in those clauses of the New Testament already referred to, is used along with ; and it would be strange if in such a connection, where the maternal relation is indicated, the fraternal should not correspond,-if along with mother in its true meaning, brother should be found in a vague and unusual sense. Do not the phrases, His mother and His brothers, thy mother and thy brothers, suggest that Mary stood in a common maternal relation to Him and to them? And if these brothers were only first cousins, sons of Mary’s sister and Alphaeus, why are they always in the evangelical history associated with the mother of Jesus, but never with their own mother, while they are uniformly called His brothers? <\/p>\n It is also held by many, though not by Jerome, that along with James Alphaei there were among the twelve two other brothers, a , Jude brother of James, and a Simon called the Zealot; the proof being that in the lists of Luke and Acts, James is placed between these two, as if he had belonged to the same family. See Mat 13:55, Luk 6:16, and Jud 1:1. That is, His brothers are James, Joses, Simon, and Judas; and these being cousins, three of them are found among the primary apostles. But if in the same list be James son of Alphaeus, why should not mean Jude son and not brother of James, especially as brotherhood is marked by in a previous part of the catalogue in Luk 6:16? Son is the more natural supplement, as in the Peschito, and the opinion is adopted by Luther, Herder, Jessien, Dahl, and Wieseler. As Lightfoot has remarked, Had brotherhood been intended, the clause would have run as in other cases, such as that of the sons of Zebedee,-James the son of Alphaeus, and Jude his brother, or James and Jude, sons of Alphaeus. Simon Zelotes is never called brother of James; and Jude is termed Lebbaeus whose surname was Thaddaeus in Mat 10:3, in Mar 3:18 simply Thaddaeus, and Judas not Iscariot in Joh 14:22. It is likewise passing strange, that if three out of the four brothers were apostles, not one of them should be ever designated by that honourable appellation. Nor is there any probability at all that Jude and Simon are two of the four; nor is the case different with James and Joses, for if Joses be not one of the so-called brethren, neither was his brother James. One of the Lord’s brothers is called by the Nazarenes, in Mat 13:55, (Joseph), according to the best reading; but the son of a Mary is called (Joses), making a genitive , in Mat 27:56, according to the highest authorities. These Greek words may represent different Syro-Chaldaic forms, and the Syriac has for Joses 5, the other form being 5. But no great stress can be laid on such variations, unless we had faith in the minute exactness of copyists. Schneckenburger’s identification of Joses with Joseph Barsabas surnamed Justus in Act 1:23, is for many reasons quite a gratuitous conjecture. Levi (Matthew) is called of Alphaeus, Mar 2:14 : was he another son of Alphaeus, or is the father of Matthew a different person of the same name? <\/p>\n But further, after this disposal of the names individually, we may ask, If three out of the four of Christ’s brothers were among His called and consecrated, how could they come with His mother desiring to speak with Him; how could they as a party be always named as distinct from the apostles; and especially, how could it be said of them at a period so far advanced in our Lord’s ministry, that they did not believe on Him? For it is declared of them: ,-for neither were His brothers believing on Him. Joh 7:5. They certainly could not be His apostles and yet be unbelievers in Himself or in His divine mission. Jerome indeed holds that James was a believer, and his theory allowed him to single out James; but the brethren are plainly spoken of as a body. Nor would this alleged faith of James serve Jerome’s purpose, or warrant James’ enrolment among the twelve; for the brethren, even after they did believe, are described as a party quite distinct from the apostles, Act 1:14, 1Co 9:5. It is remarkable, too, that our Lord’s reply to His brothers is the same as that to His mother, Joh 2:4, My time is not yet come,-as if He had detected in them a similar spirit to hers at the marriage, when, the wine being done, she ventured to suggest His immediate interposition. The force of this argument from the unbelief of the brothers has been sometimes set aside, as by Ellicott after Grotius, Lardner, and Hug, who assert that the verb may be used in an emphatic sense, as if it meant, did not fully believe on Him. The context is against such a view; for whatever their impressions and anticipations about Him and His miracles, they wanted faith in Him, and spoke either in selfish or satirical rebuke: Depart hence, and go to Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. Ellicott refers, in vindication of his statement, to Joh 6:64, There are some of you–that believe not; but there the assertion is an absolute one,-and in proof we are told in the 66th verse, that many of them went back, and walked no more with Him. The 67th verse, by the question, Will ye also go away? does not, as Ellicott alleges, imply any doubt, for it was only a testing challenge proposed to draw out the noble response of Peter for himself and his colleagues. See Meyer, Lcke, in loc. Further, to say, in opposition to what has been advanced, that two at least of the were among the apostles, assumes the correctness of the theory that they were cousins, but the phrase seems to include the domestic party as a whole; and there was no need, as Pott and Monod imagine, for inserting in order to get this sense. The exegesis of Lange on this passage is quite untenable, and is no better, as Alford calls it, than finessing. He says that the unbelief of the Lord’s brother is parallel to (auf eine linie mit) the unbelief of Peter, Mat 16:23, and of Thomas, Joh 20:25. The evangelist does not, he adds, speak of unbelief in the ordinary sense, which rejected the Messiahship of Jesus; but of that want of trust, compliance, and obedience, which made it difficult for His disciples, apostles, and even also His mother, to find themselves reconciled to His life of suffering and to His concealment of Himself. Now the phrase introducing the statement is , for neither did His brethren believe on Him,-the relative bringing a previous party into view, that is, the Jews, who sought to slay Him,-the worst form of unbelief; or if be taken absolutely, not even, it still brings out a very strong assertion of unbelief. The unbelief ascribed to Peter and Thomas, on the occasions to which Lange refers, was a momentary stagger,-the first at the idea of the Master enduring the sufferings which Himself had predicted, and the other was a refusal to admit without proof the identity of the apparition which the ten had seen with Him who had been crucified. The phrase has but one meaning in the narrative portion of John, as in Joh 2:11; Joh 2:23, Joh 4:39, Joh 7:31; Joh 7:39, Joh 9:36, Joh 10:42, etc.; and that simple and natural meaning does not bear out the ingenious exegesis by which Ellicott and Lange would exculpate the Lord’s brethren. Nay more, the evangelist records the saying in Joh 6:69, We believe and are sure that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God,-and this is said of the apostles as a body; but when he says a few verses farther on, Joh 7:5, Neither did His brothers believe on Him, the contrast is surely one of full significance. In fine, the distinctly, and one would almost say tauntingly, exclude themselves from the wider party when they name them . They went up to the feast separately from Jesus and the apostles. Other shifts have been resorted to in order to take its natural significance of fraternal unbelief from the passage. While Chrysostom (on Joh 7:5) distinctly places James among the brethren-the James of Galatians, Gal 1:19; Grotius and Paulus imagine that the same persons are not always represented by the , some of whom believed, and some did not. Pott and Gabler conjecture more wildly that the were brothers of James who was only a cousin, and not comprehended therefore in this position of unbelief. But why should James the Lord’s brother be put into a different category from the Lord’s brothers, one of whom is called James? It may be added in a word, that the unbelief of the Lord’s brothers so incidentally stated, becomes a proof of the veracity of the evangelists. They hesitate not to say that His nearest kindred opposed Him, and they did not deem the unlikely fact to be derogatory to His character. Their unbelief proves, at the same time, that there was no inner compact, no domestic league, to help forward His claims. He did not first win over His family, so as to enjoy their interested assistance as agitators and heralds. The result then is, that the theory which holds that these brothers of our Lord were His first cousins seems very untenable, as is shown by this array of objections viewed singly and in their reciprocal connection. <\/p>\n The tractate of Jerome, who first argued out at length the hypothesis of cousinhood, and of the identity of James the Lord’s brother with James son of Alphaeus, was an earnest vindication against Helvidius of the – of the blessed Virgin as a dogma not to be questioned without presumption or impugned without blasphemy. So much is his soul stirred by the daring outrage, that he begins with invoking the assistance of the Holy Spirit; and of the Son that His mother may be defended ab omni concubitus suspicione; and of the Father, too, that the mother of His Son may be shown to be virgo post partum quae fuit mater antequam nupta. What he defended was to him a momentous article, the virginity of Mary after the Lord’s birth being as surely held and revered as her virginity prior to it. He professes to be guided solely by Scripture: Non campum rhetorici desideramus eloquii, non dialecticorum tendiculas, nec Aristotelis spineta conquirimus. He shows no little ingenuity in his interpretation of various phrases; is especially exultant on the meaning of donec or usque in the clause donec peperit filium, and of primogenitus in connection with the Hebrew priesthood and the destruction of the first-born in Egypt; cries out on Helvidius, who thought that Mary the mother of Jesus is she who is called mother of James and Joses among the women at the cross; then develops his theory of cousins-brothers, and thinks that he has obtained a decided victory by a cornuta interrogatio, when he winds up a paragraph by affirming that in the same way as Joseph was called His father, they were called His brothers. He next passes into a eulogy on virginity, not forgetting, however, that the saints in the Old Testament had wives, nay, that some had a plurality of them; but proceeds to a very spirited picture of the woes of married life,-the wife painting before the mirror, and busied in dusting, knitting, and dressing, infants screaming, children kissed, cooks here and dressmakers there, accounts to be made up, correction of servants, scenes of revelry,-Responde quaeso inter ista ubi sit Dei cogitatio? Any house otherwise ordered, must, he adds in his celibate wit, be rara avis. At length he ventures to go so deeply into the privacies of the matter that we forbear to follow him. His tone towards his opponent is one of utter contempt and savage humour: he brands him as hominem rusticanum and vix primis quoque imbutum literis,-cries on one occasion, doleamne an rideam, nescio; upbraids his style,-vitia sermonis, quibus omnis liber tuus scatet; salutes him as imperitissime hominum; accuses him of a love of notoriety madder and incomparably more flagitious in result than his who set fire to Diana’s temple at Ephesus, for he had done a similar outrage to the temple of the Lord, and had desecrated the sanctuary of the Spirit; compares his eloquence to a camel’s dance,-risimus in te proverbium, camelum vidimus saltitantem; and ends by assuring him that his censure would be his (Jerome’s) highest glory, since he would in that case suffer the same canina facundia as did the mother of the Lord. This sternness of rebuke and outpouring of scorn and indignation on the subject, are an index to that general state of feeling which Helvidius was so luckless and daring as to offend, solus in universo mundo; and yet he was all the while so obscure an individual that his respondent, living in the same city with him, knows nothing of him, and cannot tell whether he be fair or dark of visage,-albus aterve sis, nescio-quis te, oro, ante hanc blasphemiam noverat, quis dupondii supputabat? It is at the same time to be borne in mind, that Jerome, in the midst of this fury, claims no support from the ecclesiastical writers before him, quotes no one in his favour, appeals to no father of an earlier century, even while he admits that Tertullian held his opponent’s views, and curtly dismisses him as not belonging to the church. <\/p>\n The general purpose of his treatise was to prove the perpetual virginity, and to root up and scatter to the winds the argument against it, that Mary had other sons besides her First-born. Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, are appealed to by him as holding the general opinion, haec eadem sentientes; but he does not aver that they held his special hypothesis that the brothers were cousins, though certainly he does not intimate that he and they differed on the point. Jerome refers to this treatise ten years afterwards in an epistle to Pammachius, and vindicates the doctrine of virgo perpetua mater et virgo, by bringing such strange analogies in proof as-Christ’s sepulchre wherein was never man yet laid; His entrance into the chamber, the doors being shut; and the prophetic utterance about the gate, No man shall enter in by it, because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it; therefore it shall be shut. Eze 44:2. <\/p>\n Now, Jerome’s object being to prove Mary virgin post as well as ante partum, it was quite enough for his purpose to show that the brethren of Joseph were not her true and proper sons. Ambrose, ten years afterwards, contents himself with this simpler declaration: Potuerunt autem fratres esse ex Joseph non ex Maria. Quod quidem si quis diligentius prosequatur inveniet. Nos ea persequenda non putavimus, quoniam fraternum nomen liquet pluribus esse commune.Jerome, however, in his zeal, and from the impulses of an ardent and impetuous temperament, deliberately preferred a theory in conflict with the well-known tradition on the subject, which he scouted as being taken from the deliramenta Apocryphorum. He was thus well aware of the alternative; for in his note on Mat 12:49, he says: quidam fratres Domini de alia uxore Joseph filios suspicantur;-again, in De Viris Illustribus: Jacobus qui appellatur frater Domini, ut nonulli existimant, Joseph ex alia uxore, ut autem mihi videtur, Mariae sororis matris Domini cujus Joannes in libro suo meminit, filius.So Pelagius and Isidore Hispalensis, who says, Jacobus Alphaei sororis matris Domini filius.-Tom. v. p. 153, ed. Migne. The view of Jerome, which was a comparative novelty among the Western churches, was not at first adopted by his great contemporary Augustine. In his note on Gal 1:19, he says: Jacobus Domini frater vel ex filiis Joseph de alia uxore vel ex cognatione Mariae matris ejus debet intelligi. These words indicate no fixed opinion; but otherwise he appears to maintain a view not unlike that of Jerome. Thus, in a spiritualistic interpretation of the second verse of Psalms 127, he describes the brethren as cognati consanguinitate.Again, Non mirum est dictos esse fratres Domini ex materno genere quoscumque cognatos, cum etiam ex cognatione Joseph dici potuerint fratres ejus ab illis qui illum patrem Domini esse arbitrantur.Further: Unde fratres Domini? Num enim Maria iterum peperit? Absit. Inde coepit dignitas virginum. Cognati Mariae fratres Domini, de quolibet gradu cognati.He does not in these places call them cousins, though he repeats in some of them the stock argument about the brotherhood of Abraham and Lot, Laban and Jacob. He is content with the more general terms, consanguinei et cognati,-their cognatio, however, being derived through Mary, not through Joseph. The same opinion had, however, some few advocates in the Eastern church. Chrysostom, on Gal 1:19, calls James son of Clopas , thus identifying Clopas with Alphaeus and regarding James as an apostle. But Chrysostom is far from being consistent with himself; since, as he identifies (on Mat 27:25) with the Lord’s mother, he must have held either that James was full brother, or at least step-brother. In other places he does not place James among the twelve at all, as on 1Co 15:7, but calls him an unbeliever with the rest of the Lord’s brethren, and says that they bore this name as Joseph was the reputed husband of Mary (on Mat 1:25). Theodoret says explicitly that James was brother,-not, however, , , , (on Gal 1:19). But this view did not obtain wide currency in the East. <\/p>\n The theory of mere cousinhood thus won its way into the Western churches, and became the common one among ourselves. Professor Lightfoot has said that Jerome did not hold his theory staunchly and consistently, and that in his comment on this verse he speaks like one who has committed himself to a theory of which he has misgivings. Certainly Jerome did not hold his view at a future period so tenaciously, or with so keen and impatient an opposition to others, as he did at its first promulgation. Thus in the Epistle to Hedibia he says: There are four Maries: the mother of our Lord; another her aunt, Mary of Clopas; a third, the mother of James and Joses; and a fourth, Mary Magdalene; though others contend that Mary mother of James and Joses was the Virgin’s aunt. (See Latin on p. 64.) Again, on this verse, he refers to his treatise written when he was a young man, and then, curtly dismissing it, advances a new argument, that James was called the Lord’s brother propter egregios mores et incomparabilem fidem sapientiamque non mediam, and that for the same reason the other apostles also were called fratres Domini. But where do they get this distinctive appellation? The first of these quotations is virtually an abandonment of his whole theory, at least of its principal proof, and the second is the occupation of entirely new ground; but there is no preference indicated for the other hypothesis, that of step-brothers, as Professor Lightfoot would infer. Lastly, in his commentary on Isa 17:6, Jerome formally admits fourteen apostles: duodecim qui electi sunt et tertium decimum Jacobum qui appellatur frater Domini et Paulum. . . . <\/p>\n This theory of Jerome, whose adherence to it did not grow with his years, does not however appear to be the absolute novelty which some would assert it to be. The opinion of Clement is somewhat doubtful, and we can only guess at it from extracts, some of which may not be genuine. Cassiodorus quotes from his Hypotyposeis thus: Jude, who wrote the catholic epistle, being one of the sons of Joseph and the Lord’s brother, a man of deep piety, though he knew his relationship to the Lord, yet did not say he was His brother; for this is true, he was His brother, being Joseph’s son. It is hard to say whether the last explanatory words are those of Clement, or are inserted by the Ostrogothic statesman Cassiodorus, his Latin translator, who may not have held the theory of Jerome. <\/p>\n But Eusebius, speaking of the Lord’s brother, gives other extracts from Clement of quite a different character: Peter, James, and John, after the ascension of the Saviour, were not ambitious of honour; . . . but chose James the Just Bishop of Jerusalem. James the Just was therefore a different person from the three apostolical electors; and if the first James is the son of Zebedee, the last is James son of Alphaeus. For the historian adds another illustrative quotation: The Lord after the resurrection imparted the gnosis to James the Just, and John, and Peter. These delivered it to the rest of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles to the seventy, of whom Barnabas was one. Now there were two Jameses-one the Just, who was thrown from a battlement of the temple, and the other who was beheaded. These extracts from Clement favour the theory of Jerome; for James the Just, as seen in this statement, which admits two persons only of the name of James, cannot be a son of Joseph, but must be the son of Alphaeus, and not a half-brother, though he may be a cousin. There is no room to doubt the genuineness of the epithet in the beginning of the second excerpt, in order to make the triad the same in the first and second quotations; for it is in connection with James the Just that the second quotation is made, and it is introduced by the words . <\/p>\n Nor, on the other hand, was the opinion of Helvidius so great a novelty as Jerome represents it. Victorinus of Petavium is said to have taken the word brethren in its natural sense, but Jerome denies it. Tertullian, who was claimed by Helvidius, is rudely thrown out of court by Jerome because he did not belong to the catholic church. In discussing the reality of the incarnation, Tertullian seems to employ mater et fratres in their ordinary sense, evidently regarding that sense as essential to his argument: Et Christum quidam virgo enixa est, semel nuptura post partum, ut uterque titulus sanctitatis in Christi censu dispungeretur, per matrem et virginem et univiram.Again, in his treatise against Marcion, and on the assertion, inquiunt, ipse (Christus) contestatur se non esse natum, dicendo quae mihi mater et qui mihi fratres? among other elements of reply, he asks: Dic mihi, omnibus natis mater adivit? omnibus natis adgenerantur et fratres? non licet patres magis et sorores habere vel et neminem? . . . et vere mater et fratres ejus foris stabant,-si ergo matrem et fratres eos fecit qui non erant, quomodo negavit eos qui erant?Tertullian thus took mater and fratres in their natural sense, and the opinion is strengthened by Jerome’s treatment of him. Helvidius had quoted Tertullian as being in his favour, and Jerome does not deny it, but tartly says: nihil amplius dico quam ecclesiae hominem non fuisse. Now Tertullian does not regard his view as an uncommon one, and the likelihood is that it was widely held; for if so pronounced an ascetic as he was did espouse it, it must have been by the compulsion of undeniable evidence. Still we do not find any express testimonies on the subject in other quarters; nor do we know any sufficient grounds for Neander’s assertion, that many teachers of the church had in the preceding period maintained, that by the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament were to be understood the later-born sons of Mary-spter geborne Shne der Maria. Vol. iii. p. 458, Engl. Trans. <\/p>\n The other theory which Jerome scouted, maintains equally with his that the were not relations in near blood or uterine brothers, but were children of Joseph by a former marriage. This hypothesis seems to have been, if not originated, yet perpetuated by the grammatical necessity of giving its natural meaning on the one hand, and the theological necessity, on the other hand, of maintaining the postnuptial virginity of Mary. Cousinhood would suffice for the dogma, but not for the philology. Brothers, in the position which they repeatedly occupy in the Gospels, could not well be relatives so distant as cousins; but they might be earlier children of Joseph, yet related in no degree of blood to Jesus as the son of Mary. Indeed, had they been the children of Mary herself, they were only through her related to Jesus, who in fatherhood was separated by an infinite distance from them. This view is presented by Theophylact in a peculiar form-to wit, that they were the children of Joseph by a levirate marriage with the widow of his brother Clopas who had died childless. But was Joseph husband of the widow of Clopas and of Mary mother of Jesus at one and the same time? and if this widow were the Mary wife of Clopas supposed by so many to be the sister of the Virgin, what then would be the nature of such a marital connection? Or was Mary widow of Clopas dead before he espoused the Virgin Mary? Or are the two women, unrelated in blood, called sisters because married to two brothers? There is no proof that such a connection would warrant a designation of sisterhood. <\/p>\n Now, first for the theory of step-brotherhood, there is no explicit evidence in Scripture – no hint or allusion as to Joseph’s age or previous history. Nor are the ever called the sons of Joseph, as if to identify them more particularly with him; nor are they ever associated with him, save remotely in the exclamation of the Nazarenes. Nor, indeed, are they called the children of Mary,-through her they are always associated with Jesus. Dr. Mill, however, says that the theory imparts a meaning to the Nazarenes’ wondering enumeration of those (now elder) brethren, which on the other supposition is senseless. This is mere hypothesis. No question of comparative age has anything to do with the sceptical amazement at Nazareth. The ground of wonder was, how one member of a family still among themselves, and with whom they were or had been so familiar, could start into such sudden pre-eminence,-displaying such wisdom and putting forth such unearthly power. As for the tone of authority ascribed by Dr. Mill to the , we find it not; the phrases, desiring to speak with Him, and in a spirit of unbelief urging Him to go up to the feast, are certainly no proof either of it or of superior age on which they might presume. For any appeal on this point to Mar 3:21 cannot be sustained: , v . Now the persons called here , (different, certainly, from (Mar 4:10)), who wished to seize Him under the impression that He was beside Himself, could not be exclusively the who are formally mentioned in a subsequent part of the same chapter, Mar 3:31. Meyer, indeed, and many others identify them. Nor can the phrase mean, those sent by Him, or the apostles; nor can it denote the Pharisees;-a most absurd conjecture. Nor does it characterize a wider circle of disciples (Lichtenstein, Lebens-geschich. d. Herrn. p. 216). Least of all were they guest-friends who were with Him in some house of entertainment (Strauss). Nor is it necessary, with Lange, to include among them the apostles. The persons called were relations of Jesus, either of near or remote kinship. Bernhardy, p. 256; Susann. 5.33; Fritzsche, in loc. The phrase is plainly the nominative to , and cannot be the nominative to , as if they had told Him that the multitude was mad against Him. The argument of Hilary and Epiphanius, that if the brothers had been sons of Mary herself, her dying son would have commended her to one of them rather than to John, is just as strong against the supposition that the brothers, though not her own children, were Joseph’s. Lange’s theory, that Joseph had undertaken the charge of his brother Clopas’ children after their father’s death, so that the brothers were only fosterbrethren, is no less a hypothesis unsupported in Scripture than the opposite one of Schneckenburger, that Joseph dying at an early period, Mary became domiciled in the house of her sister, wife of Clopas or Alphaeus, so that his children, brought up under the same roof with Jesus, might be called His brothers. Quite as baseless is the statement of Greswell, that while the brothers were full brothers, the sisters of our Lord were probably only His cousins, because they are said to be living in Nazareth, while the brothers are supposed to have their abode in Capernaum. But the notices in the Gospels are too indistinct to warrant the opinion of such a separation of abode; and as the brothers were married (1Co 9:5), why might not the sisters be married and settled in Nazareth? <\/p>\n If, then, the ordinary meaning of the term is not to be retained, or rather, if it is allowed to but inconsistently refused to in the same connection-an inconsistency which would be tolerated in the biography of no other person; if mere cousinhood cannot be satisfactorily vindicated,-if it is opposed to the natural sense, and rests on a series of unproven and contradictory hypotheses; and if the other theory of mere affinity, unsupported by any statements or allusions in the evangelical narrative, was yet the current opinion among the fathers,-we may now inquire as well into their statement and defence of it, as into the source whence they got it. If they had it from tradition, was that tradition at all trustworthy? If Scripture is silent on some historical points, these points may be found in some old tradition which details minuter or more private circumstances of which inspiration has taken no cognisance. But if the general character of that tradition be utterly fabulous and fantastic; if its staple be absurd exaggeration and puerile legend; if its documents are forgeries composed in furtherance of error, pious frauds or fictions ascribed in authorship to apostles or evangelists; and if some fragments are coarse and prurient as well as mendacious,-then, as we cannot separate the true from the false, the reality from the caricature, we must reject the entire mass of it as unworthy of credit, unless when any portion may be confirmed by collateral evidence. No one can deny, indeed, that there must have been a real tradition as to many of those points in the first century and in Palestine. The first two chapters of Luke, with the exception of the exordium, are so Hebraistic in tone and style, so minute in domestic matters and so full and so characteristic in individual utterances, that they must have been furnished from traditions or from documents sacredly preserved in the holy family. The relationship of the must also have been known to the churches in Galilee and Judaea; and had it been handed down to us on assured authority, we should have accepted it without hesitation. But we have no such reliable record, nay, none earlier than the second century. One class of documents very minute and circumstantial in detail as to the family of Nazareth is utterly unworthy of credit, and many of them were composed in defence of serious error. The Clementine Homilies and Recognitions-dating somewhere in the second century-support a peculiar form of Ebionitism; the Gospel according to Peter was Doketic in its doctrines and aims,-so much so, that Serapion was obliged to denounce it; the Protevangelium of James is a semi-Gnostic travesty of many parts of the sacred narrative, and might be almost pressed into the service of the immaculate conception of Mary; the Gospel of St. Thomas was Doketic also in its tendencies,-filled with silly prodigies done by the boy Jesus from His very cradle; the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Twelve Apostles, was translated into Greek and Latin by Jerome: some fragments, however, which have been preserved show that it has little connection with our canonical Matthew, but was the work of early Jewish converts, manufactured from some older narrative-perhaps from one of the products of the many, , who, according to Luke, had taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of the things most surely believed. If the tradition be uniform on any point, it deserves attention, though one must still inquire whether any impressions or opinions might help to create and sustain such a belief, and what is its real value and authority; for its authors, instead of being independent witnesses, may be all of them only repeating and copying without investigation what a predecessor had originated and diffused. Besides, if we find the brothers called simply sons of Joseph, it is open for us to question who their mother was. Might not the phrase, sons of Joseph, mean children by her who is so familiarly known as his wife in the sacred narrative? We should maintain this inference in any other case, if no other mother be distinctly stated; and the canonical Gospels are silent as to any earlier conjugal relation of Joseph. <\/p>\n We may observe in passing, that it is remarkable that in the genuine Gospels Joseph is not mentioned by name as father of Jesus, though it must have been the current belief on the part of all who were ignorant of the supernatural conception, or did not credit it. Mary indeed says, Thy father and I; but how else could she have alluded to the relation? The contemptuous exclamation was, Is not this the carpenter’s son? or, Is not this the carpenter? and then His mother Mary is named in the same connection. Probably Joseph was dead by that time, though his age cannot be certainly inferred from any period assigned to his death. The sinister purpose of Strauss is apparent in his explanation: Joseph had either died early, or had nothing to do with the subsequent ministry of his son. But it is not improbable that, on dogmatic grounds, the person who was not to be supposed to be the real father of Jesus was removed from the traditions about him. Yet we cannot but be struck with the fact, that while the inspired Gospels have so little about Joseph, many of the apocryphal Gospels are full of him, and give him a primary place, in the same way as they abound with romance about the unrecorded infancy and early years of Jesus. Such legends must be discarded; and though they are so closely interwoven, it is hard to discover in them any thread or basis of genuine tradition. To proceed: <\/p>\n Origen is quite explicit in his belief that the brethren were children of Joseph by a former wife. In his note on Mat 13:55, he states this opinion, says it was held by some though not by all, and adopts it as his own. And I think it reasonable, that as Jesus was the first-fruit of purity and chastity among men, so Mary was among women; for it is not seemly to ascribe the first-fruit of virginity to any other woman than her. Again, on Joh 2:12, They were, he says, Joseph’s children , by a predeceased wife. In the first quotation he ascribes this opinion to some only, ,-a minority perhaps is naturally designated by the term. But what opinion was in that case held by the majority? Was it not very probably that of uterine brotherhood rather than that of cousinhood? for the last upheld the perpetual virginity equally with the view which Origen espoused. If he took the same side, chiefly or solely, as he says the persons referred to did, to preserve the honour of Mary in virginity throughout, and because of his own belief in the same dogma, is it rash to infer that the other opinion, because it denied it or set it aside, was rejected by him? Origen traces the opinion held by the some, and advocated by himself, only to the Gospel of Peter, as it is called, or the book of James, and does not claim for it a clear uninterrupted tradition. He could have no great respect for those uncanonical books, and he does not allude to any remoter relationship. Nor does he hold his opinion consistently or firmly, for in one place he assigns a wholly different reason, and in another place he affirms that James was called the Lord’s brother not so much , as -not so much on account of blood-relationship as on account of his character and discourse. Contra Celsum, 1.35, ed. Spencer. Origen had plainly made no investigation into the matter, perhaps shrunk from it on account of his belief in the perpetual virginity, and was ready to adopt any opinion of the origin of the name that did not come into conflict with this belief. <\/p>\n Epiphanius wrote a treatise on the subject against the Antidikomarianites, who, as their name implies, refused certain honours to the blessed Virgin,-a sect, he says, who from hatred to the Virgin or desire to obscure her glory, or from being blinded with envy or ignorance, and wishing to defile the minds of others, dared to say that the holy Virgin, after the birth of Christ, cohabited with her husband Joseph. At one point of the treatise he incorporates an address which he had formerly written against the sect, and dedicated . The pastoral abounds in wailings, censures, and expressions of astonishment at the audacity, profanity, and ignorance of these heretics. Who ever, he exclaims, used the name of the holy Mary, and, when asked, did not immediately add, the virgin? But we still use the same epithet, though with reference specially to the miraculous conception. James, he adds, is called the Lord’s brother, ,-and Mary only appeared as the wife of Joseph, . Joseph, he goes on to say, was fourscore or upwards when the Virgin was espoused to him, his son James being then about fifty; and his other sons were Simon, Joses, and Jude, and his daughters, Mary and Salome,-these two names, he strangely avers, being warranted by Scripture- . In the Historia Josephi they are called Asia and Lydia. His conclusion is: , . He then resorts to another style of argument taken from ; one of them being, that as the queenly lioness, after a gestation of six-and-twenty months, produces a perfect animal which by its birth makes physically impossible that of any second cub, so the mother of the Lion of Judah could be a mother only once. Joseph was old- -at the birth of Jesus with all its prodigies; and though he had been younger, he would not have dared to approach his wife afterwards- . His argument in a word is virtually this, that the cohabitation of Joseph with Mary was on his part a physical and ethical impossibility. Besides, he maintains that as Jesus was of the Father in the highest sense, , and really alone in this relation-; so it was and must have been also on earth between Him and His mother. And not to dwell upon it, the good father thought that he was holding an even balance when he proceeds in his next section to oppose the Collyridians,-a sect which offered to the Virgin divine honours and such kind of meat-offering as was often presented to Ceres. The theory of Epiphanius is quite clear in its premises, but he finds difficulty in defending it out of the simple evangelical narrative, and is obliged to guard it by proofs taken from apocryphal legend and ascetic theology. Nay, he has doubts of the Virgin’s death; such is his extravagant opinion of her glorification. <\/p>\n Hilary of Poitiers holds a similar view; and so does Hilary the deacon or Ambrosiaster, on Gal 1:19, one of his arguments being, that if these were His true brothers, Joseph was His true father-si enim hi viri fratres ejus, et Joseph erit verus pater; while those who hold the opposite view, that is, of their being veri fratres, are branded with insanity and impiety. Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Basil the Great, also maintained that Mary is called the mother of James and Joses as being only their step-mother. <\/p>\n Now, as all these fathers held the perpetual virginity, they were therefore shut up to deny the obvious sense of . The theory of Joseph’s previous marriage suited their views, and they adopted it. It was already in existence, and they cannot be accused of originating it to serve their purpose. The theory of cousinhood was equally valid to their argument, but they make no reference to it. Either they did not know it, or they rejected it as not fitting in to the sacred narrative, or as not coming up to what they felt must be the sense of the term . <\/p>\n The apocryphal sources of these beliefs are well known. The Protevangelium of James enters fully into the matter: recounts the prodigies attending the Virgin’s birth, she being the predicted daughter of Joachim and Anna; describes the wonders of her infancy, she being brought up in the temple and fed by an angel; tells how, when she was twelve years of age, all the widowers among the people were called together by the advice of an angel, each to bring a rod in his hand,-that Joseph, throwing his hatchet down as soon as he heard the proclamation, snatched up his rod,-that the rods were received by the high priest, who, having gone into the temple and prayed over them, returned them to their owners,-that on the reception of his rod by Joseph a dove flew out of it and alighted on his head, and that by this gracious omen he was pointed out as the husband of Mary. But Joseph refused, saying, I am an old man with children; and he was also ashamed from so great disparity of years to have Mary registered as his wife. The other incidents need not be recounted. The pseudo-Matthew’s Gospel is very similar, mentioning in chap. xxiii. Joseph’s four sons and his two daughters. In Codex B, Tischendorf’s edition, p. 104, Anna, mother of the Virgin, is said on Joseph’s death to have married Cleophas, by whom she had a second daughter, named also Mary, who became the wife of Alphaeus, and was mother of James and Philip, and who on the decease of Cleophas married a third time, her husband being Salome, by whom she had a third daughter, named also Mary, who was espoused to Zebedee, and became mother of James and John. It is needless to refer to the other legends, unequalled in absurdity and puerility. <\/p>\n The Apostolical Constitutions do not give a decided testimony; but they uniformly assert that the brother of our Lord was not James the apostle, and reckon, with the addition of Paul, fourteen apostles. James is severed alike from apostles, deacons, and the seventy disciples. They speak in one place of the mother of our Lord and His sisters (3:6);-James more than once calls himself . 8:35, etc. Constitut. Apostolicae, pp. 65, 79, 228, ed. Ueltzen. As the perpetual virginity is not insisted on in these writings, perhaps these extracts favour the idea that sisters and brothers are taken in their natural and obvious meaning. The Clementine Homilies and Recognitions give James the chief place among the apostles, as (Hom. 11.35); which may either mean, one who ordinarily went by that appellation, or one so called without any natural right to the name,-called a brother as he was one, or called a brother though not really one. As James, however, was universally known by the title, the clause may be thought to express real brotherhood. Recognit. 1.66, etc. <\/p>\n The testimony of Hegesippus has been variously understood. One excerpt preserved by Eusebius runs thus: There were yet living of the family of our Lord the grandchildren of Jude called the brother of the Lord according to the flesh. Eusebius calls this same Jude the brother of our Saviour according to the flesh, as being of the family of David. The participle is doubtful in meaning; it may refer to a reputed brotherhood, or it may mean simply that such was the common and real designation. Whatever be the meaning of -real or reputed brother-it cannot mean cousin. Hegesippus supplies no hint that he did not believe the brotherhood to be a full and not simply a step-brotherhood. Again, Eusebius (Hist. Ecc 2:23) inserts a long extract from Hegesippus which gives a graphic account of James’ death, and in which he says the church was committed, along with the apostles, to James the brother of the Lord, who, as there were many of the name, was surnamed the Just by all from the Lord’s time to our own. In a subsequent excerpt from Josephus, the same appellation is given to James, the brother of him who is called Christ. The meaning of another extract from Hegesippus has been keenly disputed. He says: After James the Just had been martyred, as also the Lord was on the same charge (or for the same doctrine), his uncle’s son, Symeon son of Clopas, is next appointed bishop, whom all put forward as second, being a cousin of the Lord. The meaning is, not that Symeon was another son of his uncle, or another cousin in addition to James, as Mill and others contend, but that the second bishop was Symeon, son of Christ’s or James’ paternal uncle Clopas; that is, James is brother, but Symeon is only cousin of the Lord. Hegesippus in another place calls him . Euseb. Hist. Ecc 3:32. Hug, Schneckenburger, and Lange suppose him to be the Apostle Simon the Canaanite, who in the two lists of Luke is mentioned immediately after James Alphaei. See Bleek, Einleit. p. 544. Hegesippus thus calls Symeon second bishop and cousin of the Lord, and he carefully distinguishes between the relationship of Symeon and James; for though Symeon was a cousin, he never calls him the Lord’s brother. Eusebius himself does not speak distinctly on the subject when he says, James called the Lord’s brother, because also He () was called the son of Joseph, Joseph being thus regarded as the father of Christ. He does not seem to mean that James was called the son of Joseph, but that Jesus was so called. There is, however, another reading, and the words do not clearly assert what James’ natural connection with Christ was. If he was Christ’s brother as Joseph was His father, then there was no relationship in blood, and he might only be a cousin; or if refer to James, then James was a real as Jesus was a reputed son of Joseph; and if a real son of Joseph, why not by Mary? Eusebius (Comment. on Isa 17:6), in a mystical interpretation of the gleaning of grapes and shaking of the olive-tree, two, three berries left on the top of the uppermost bough, four, five on the outmost branches, makes out from the addition of those numbers that James was a supplementary apostle as Paul was, counting fourteen apostles in all. But the apocryphal theory of step-brotherhood was current in that age, and Eusebius may be supposed to have held it, as he does not formally disavow it. Cyril of Jerusalem distinguishes James from the apostles, calls him , and the first bishop -of this diocese. Catechesis, 14.11, p. 199; Opera, ed. Milles, Oxon. 1703. Hippolytus may be passed over; and the Papias who is sometimes referred to, is, as Prof. Lightfoot has shown, not the bishop of Hierapolis. The extract sometimes taken from this Papias of the eleventh century may be found in Routh’s Reliq. Sac. vol. i. p. 16. <\/p>\n If, then, the theory of step-brethren or cousins be surrounded with difficulties, and rest on many unproved hypotheses; if the one theory can be made the means of impugning the other; if the first has its origin in apocryphal books filled with silly legend and fable, and the second has no true basis in the evangelical narrative; if both have been held from the earliest times avowedly to conserve the ecclesiastical dogma of the perpetual virginity; and if there be nothing in Scripture or sound theology to upset the belief that gives our Lord’s brothers the natural relationship which the epithet implies,-what should hinder us from taking in the same sense as ? <\/p>\n There are indeed objections, but none of them are of any serious moment. One objection that weighs with many is thus stated by Jeremy Taylor: Jesus came into the world without doing violence to the virginal and pure body of His mother; He did also leave her virginity entire, to be as a seal that none might open the gate of that sanctuary. Life of Christ, 3. Bishop Bull also asserts, It cannot with decency be imagined that the most holy vessel which was thus once consecrated to be a receptacle of the Deity, should afterwards be desecrated and profaned by human use. Bishop Pearson adds, Though whatever should have followed after could have no reflective tendency upon the first-fruit of her womb, yet the peculiar eminency and unparalleled privilege of that mother . . . have persuaded the church of God to believe that she still continued in the same virginity. Spanheim holds it as admodum probabile sanctum hoc organum ad tam eximium conceptum et partum a Deo selectum non fuisse temeratum ab homine. Dubia Evang. i. p. 225. Mill himself admits, They hold themselves free to include this doctrine as a matter of pious persuasion, but by no means of the same gravity or indispensable necessity as the belief of the immaculate conception. Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, p. 269. So also some Lutheran confessions, Artic. Smalcald. p. i. art. 4, and in the Formula Concordiae. Numerous persons of opposite views on many other points, as Zwingli and Olshausen, Lardner and Addison Alexander of Princeton, agree on this theme. Both Taylor and Pearson quote Eze 44:2, the first as an argument, and the second as an illustration of the dogma under review. The words of the prophet are: Then said the Lord unto me, This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut. But these utterances have no connection with the subject in any way. Still I suppose that every one feels somewhat the force of the sentiments contained in the previous extracts. They may be superstitions, but they are natural even to those who by force of evidence are not able to make the perpetual virginity an article of faith. It is not, however, a belief basing itself on Scripture even by one remote inference. That Jesus should be born of a virgin, fulfilled prophecy; still, whether virginity was essential to immaculate conception is open to question, for the mere suspension of male instrumentality would not remove the sinfulness of the mother. But divine agency wrought out its purpose in its own way, and the child of the Virgin was a holy thing. The supernatural origin of the babe did not depend for its reality on her virginity, but very much for its visible proof and manifestation. A second-born child might, for anything we know, be born by immediate divine power, but the absence of human intervention would not so palpably present itself. Jesus, virgin-born, was thus set apart in unique and awful solemnity from all mankind,-as born pure, not purified,-divine, not deified,-the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. <\/p>\n That the Virgin had no other children is the impression of many who do not believe in the perpetual virginity. Thus Lange says: We must not forget that Mary was the wife of Joseph. She was according to a ratified engagement dependent upon her husband’s will. . . . As a wife, Mary was subject to wifely obligations; but as a mother, she had fulfilled her destiny with the birth of Christ. . . . And even for the very sake of nature’s refinement, we cannot but imagine that this organism which had born the Prince of the new AEon would be too proudly or too sacredly disposed to lend itself, after bringing forth the life of Christ, to the production of mere common births for the sphere of the old AEon. Life of Christ, vol. 1.425, English Trans. But the theory of natural brotherhood throws no shadow over the glories of Mary, ever blessed and pre-eminent in honour. It does not in any way lessen the dignity of her who was so highly favoured of the Lord and blessed among women. For though one may shrink from calling her -Deipara,-an unwarranted epithet that draws after it veneration and worship,-yet her glories, which are without parallel and beyond imagination, and which are hers and hers alone, are never to be veiled. For she was the elected mother of a child whose Father was God,-her son the onlybegotten of the Father; through her parthenic maternity the mystery of mysteries realized-God manifest in flesh; her offspring the normal Man, and the Redeemer of a fallen race by His atoning blood,-the Man of Sorrows and the Lord of all worlds,-crowned with thorns, and now wearing on His brow the diadem of universal dominion,-the object of praise to saints, to angels, and to the universe; for of that universe He is the Head, in that very nature of which, through and in Mary the mother-maid, He became a partaker. <\/p>\n It is therefore unfair on the part of Mill to allege against the natural and obvious interpretation of the term , that it aims at no less than the error of the grosser section of the Ebionites, who held that Jesus was in the same manner her son as all the rest are supposed to have been. The two beliefs have no natural alliance. Equally futile is it in the same author to tell us that Helvidius was the disciple of an Arian Auxentius, and that Bonosus is said to have impugned the Divine Sonship. Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, pp. 221, 274. For whatever errors may have been held along with the theory of natural relationship, and whatever the character of such as may have espoused it, it stands out from all such adventitious elements of connection. One may hold it and hold at the same time the supreme divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ with most perfect consistency. It does not concern the cardinal doctrine of His divinity, nor the equally precious doctrine of His true and sinless humanity. It impugns not His immaculate conception, or His supernatural birth, He being in a sense peculiar to Himself the seed of the woman, the child of a virgin-Immanuel, God with us. It refers only to possibilities after the incarnation which do not in any way affect its divineness and reality. It leaves her first-born in the solitary glory of the God-man. Jesus indeed passed among the Jews as the ordinary son of Joseph and Mary, yet this belief was very erroneous; but the ground of the error does not apply to this theory. The first chapter of Matthew tells the mystery of the incarnation, and the event is at once taken out of the category of all ordinary births; but if Mary had other children, no such wonder surrounded them, and no mistake could be made about them. The Jewish misconception as to the parentage of Jesus could not be made regarding subsequent members of His family, whose birth neither enhances nor lessens the honour and the mystery of His primogeniture. It was a human nature which He assumed; they were persons born into the world. Neither, then, in theology nor in piety, in creed nor in worship, can this obvious theory of natural relationship be charged with pernicious consequences. It is vain to ask, Why, if there were births subsequent to that of Jesus, are they not recorded? The inspired narrative keeps steadily to its one primary object and theme-the life of the blessed Saviour, first-born son of Mary and the Son of God. <\/p>\n Another objection against the natural interpretation of is the repetition of names in the family of Mary and in the company of the apostles;-James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, brothers,-and two Jameses, two Simons, two Judes, among the apostles. Or, identifying Clopas and Alphaeus, there would be James and Joses as cousins; and if the , Luk 6:16, Act 1:13, be rendered Jude brother of James, there would be two sets of four brothers having the same names. It is not necessary, however, to render the Greek phrase by brother of James, and the sons of Alphaeus are only James and Joses. But surely the same names are found among cousins every day, and would be more frequent in a country where a few favourite names are continually repeated. There are in the New Testament nine Simons, four Judes, four or five Josephs; and in Josephus there are twenty-one Simons, seventeen named Joses, and sixteen Judes. Smith’s Dict. Bible Antiq., art. Brother. <\/p>\n A crowning objection against the view we favour is, that Jesus upon the cross commended His mother to the care of the beloved disciple. This objection, says Lightfoot, has been hurled at the Helvidian view with great force, and, as it seems to me, with fatal effect; and Mill has also put it in a very strong form. Hilary adopts the same argument, as also Ambrose, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and Jerome. That is to say, if Mary had children or sons of her own, her first-born would not have handed her over to a stranger. The objection has never appeared to us to be of very great force; for we know nothing of the circumstances of the brothers, and there may have been personal and domestic reasons why they could not receive the beloved charge. They might not, for a variety of reasons, be able to give Mary such a home as John could provide for her. As we cannot tell, it is useless to argue. We are wholly ignorant also of their peculiar temperament, and their want or their possession of those elements of character which would fit them to tend their aged and widowed parent. Especially do we know, however, that up to a recent period they were unbelievers in her divine first-born; and though He who did not forget His mother in His dying moments foreknew all that was to happen, still their unbelief might disqualify them for giving her the comfort and spiritual nursing which she required, to heal the wounds inflicted by that sword which was piercing her heart as she contemplated the shame and agony of the adored Sufferer on the cross. Every attention was needed for His mother at that very moment, and He seized that very moment to commend her to John, who had been to Him more than a brother, and would on that account be to her more than a son. John was standing by, and so was His mother; so that perhaps his ministrations to her had already commenced. The close vicinity of the two persons whom He most loved on earth suggested the words, Woman, behold thy son, who will supply, as far as possible, my place; Son, behold thy mother: be what I have been to her. And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. The brothers might not be there, or might be unfitted, as poor and unbelieving Galileans, for doing what John did,-for immediate obedience to such a command. Nay, if the commendation of His mother to John in the words, Behold thy mother, be a proof that Jesus had no brothers, might it not prove, on the other hand, that John had no mother? Besides, if James were either a cousin or half-brother, and therefore a blood-relation, why in that case pass over him? So that the objection would tell against the theory of cousinhood, though not so strongly as against that of brotherhood. Wieseler, indeed, contends that Salome was a sister of Mary, so that the sons of Zebedee were cousins of our Lord, and that as Salome was present at the crucifixion, John might designate her as the sister of Mary, just as he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. No conclusive argument can thus be drawn from this last scene of Christ’s life as to the relation of the to Himself. Far from us, at the same time, be the thought of Strauss, that the esoteric tendency of the fourth Gospel sets aside the real brothers of Jesus as unbelieving, in order to enable the writer to transfer under the very cross the place of the true son of Mary, the spiritual brother of Jesus, to the favourite disciple. <\/p>\n Nor has Renan’s opinion anything in its favour. He imagines that the Virgin’s sister, named Mary also, was wife of Alphaeus; that her children, cousins-german of Jesus, espoused His cause, while His own brothers opposed Him; and that the evangelist, hearing the four sons of Clopas called brethren of the Lord, has placed their names by mistake in Mat 13:55, Mar 6:3, instead of the names of the real brothers who have always remained obscure. Vie de Jsus, p. 25, 11th ed. The statement is only a piece of gratuitous wildness, devoid even of critical ingenuity. It has no basis,-is but a malignant dream. <\/p>\n But apart from these theories as to relationship, it seems plain, for many reasons, that James the Lord’s brother was not one of the twelve, though he is virtually called an apostle according to our exegesis of the verse. The name apostle was given by Jesus specially to the twelve, Luk 6:13; but it is not confined to them. In 2Co 8:23 certain persons are called , and in Php 2:25 Epaphroditus is called . In these instances the word is used in its original or common signification, and is not implicated in the present discussion. But the title (see under Gal 1:1) is given to Barnabas, though Act 13:2-3 is not an account of his consecration to the office, but of his solemn designation to certain missionary work. In Act 14:4; Act 14:14, he is called an apostle, in the first instance more generally: , that is, Paul and Barnabas; and in the second, the words are . Compare 1Co 4:9; 1Co 9:5; Gal 2:9. Besides, why should it be said in 1Co 15:5; 1Co 15:7 that Jesus appeared to the twelve, and then to all the apostles, if the two are quite identical in number? Paul also vindicates himself and his fellowlabourers, though we might have been burdensome to you , 1Th 2:6 -Silas being in all probability the person so referred to by the honourable appellation (Act 17:4). In none of these cases, however, is any person like Barnabas or Silas called an apostle directly and by himself, but only in connection with one or other of the avowed apostles. Again, in Rom 16:7 Andronicus and Junia are thus characterized: ,-rendered in our version, who are of note among the apostles. The meaning may either be, highly esteemed in the apostolic circle (Reiche, Meyer, Fritzsche, De Wette), or, highly esteemed among the apostles, reckoned in some way as belonging to them. Such is the more natural view, and it is taken by the Greek fathers, by Calvin, Tholuck, Olshausen, Alford. On the stricter meaning of the term , see under Eph 4:11. We cannot, however, agree with Chrysostom, that the phrase all the apostles, in 1Co 15:5-7, included such persons as the seventy disciples; nor with Calvin, that it comprehends discipulos etiam quibus evangelii praedicandi munus injunxerat; since some distinction is apparently preserved between ordinary preachers and those who in a secondary sense only are named apostles. For, as it is pointed out by Professor Lightfoot, Timothy and Apollos are excluded from the rank of apostles, and the others not of the twelve so named may have seen the risen Saviour. Eusebius speaks of very many apostles-. The Lord’s brother, then, was not of the primary twelve. He is placed, 1Co 15:7, by himself as having seen Christ; or rather, Cephas is mentioned, and then the twelve, of which Cephas was one; James is mentioned, and then all the apostles, of which James was one. One cannot omit the beautiful legend founded apparently on this appearance: The Lord after His resurrection went to James and appeared to him, for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he had seen Him risen from the dead. Then He said, Bring hither a table and bread. Then He took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to James the Just, and said to him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man has risen from the dead. This scene is taken by Jerome from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which he translated into Greek and Latin. De Viris Illustr. ii. Some for biberat calicem Domini read Dominus, and render before the Lord drank the cup, or suffered. The Greek has , which is also the more difficult reading. The other reading, Domini, would imply that the Lord’s brother had been present at the Lord’s Supper. The writer of the legend did not, however, regard him as one of the twelve. <\/p>\n James appears as the head of the church in Jerusalem, and is called simply James in Act 12:17 and in Act 15:13. Such was his influence, that his opinion was adopted and embodied in the circular sent to the churches in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia. Act 15:13. Paul, on going up to the capital to visit Peter, saw James also, as we are told in Gal 1:19; and on his arrival at Jerusalem many years afterwards, he at once went in with us unto James- ,-a formal interview. Act 21:18. In Gal 2:9, too, we read, James, and Cephas, and John, who were reputed to be pillars,-most naturally the same James, the Lord’s brother, referred to in the first chapter; and again in the same chapter reference is thus made-certain came from James. James was thus an apostle, though not one of the twelve. <\/p>\n The original apostles were, according to their commission, under the necessity of itinerating; but the continuous residence of James in the metropolis must have helped to advance him to his high position. Lange, indeed, objects, that on such a supposition the real apostles vanish from the field, and quite correctly so far as the book of Acts is concerned. For the assertion is true of the majority, or of eight of them; and a new apostle like James-he of Tarsus-fills the scene. Another of Lange’s objections is, the utter untenableness of an apocryphal apostolate by the side of that instituted by Christ. But his further inference, that the elevation of James to a quasi-apostolate lifts Jude and Simon, too, to a similar position, is without foundation as to the last. The apostleship of Paul, however, is so far of the same class; only he became through his formal call equal to the twelve in rank,-his grand argument in that paragraph of the epistle out of one statement of which the previous pages have sprung. Jude and James were not regarded as primary apostles, and could not claim such a standing, though they received the general name. True, the book of Acts is silent about James Alphaei, and introduces without any explanation another James. But if this James had been the son of Alphaeus, he would probably have been so designated, as, indeed, he is everywhere else. One may reply, indeed, that the paternal epithet is omitted because by this time James son of Zebedee had been slain, and there remained but one of the name. Still, it would be strange that he is not formally called an apostle, when there is nothing said to identify him. A James unidentified is naturally taken to be a different person from one who is always marked by a patronymic. And to how few of the apostles is there any reference made at all in the Acts! Luke’s habit is not to identify formally or distinguish persons in the course of his narrative. It is therefore worse than useless on the part of De Wette to insinuate that Luke has exchanged the two Jameses in the course of his history, or forgotten to distinguish them. The apostles at the period of Paul’s visit were probably absent from Jerusalem on missionary work. Peter and John happened to be there; but James was the recognised or stationary head. The difficulty, too, is lessened, if, with Stier, Wieseler, and Davidson, we take the James whose opinion prevailed in the council, and who is mentioned in Gal 2:9, to be the apostle, son of Alphaeus; but the view does not harmonize with the uniform patristic tradition. <\/p>\n The relation which James bore to Christ must also have invested him with peculiar honour in the eyes of the Jewish church. Nor was his character less awful and impressive; he was surnamed the Just. According to Hegesippus, he was holy from his mother’s womb, and lived the life of a Nazarite,-neither shaved, nor bathed, nor anointed himself; wore linen garments; was permitted once a year to enter the holy of holies; and was so given to prayer, that his knees had become callous like a camel’s. Euseb. Hist. Ecc 2:23. Much of this, of course, is mere legend. Yet, though he was a believer, he was zealous of the law,-a representative of Jewish piety, and of that peculiar type of it which naturally prevailed in the mother church in Jerusalem, still the scene of the temple service, and the centre of all sacred Jewish associations. In his epistle the same elements of character are exhibited. The new dispensation is to him , but . He was a stranger to all the practical difficulties which had met Paul and Peter who had to go and form churches among the uncircumcised; for his circle was either of Jews or circumcised proselytes. He was the natural head of the many thousands of Jews who believed, and who were all zealous of the law (Act 21:20); and he was able to guide the extreme party, for they had confidence in his own fervent observance of the customs. <\/p>\n Such was his great influence even in distant places, that when certain came from him to Antioch, Peter dissembled, and even Barnabas succumbed. His shadow overawed them into a momentary relapse and inconsistency. His martyrdom, recorded by Hegesippus, and by Josephus in a paragraph the genuineness of which has been questioned, was supposed by many to have brought on the siege of Vespasian as a judgment on the city. St. James is glorified in the Clementines as lord, and bishop of bishops. In the Chronicon Paschale he is called apostle and patriarch of Jerusalem, and is said to have been enthroned by Peter on his departure for Rome (vol. 1.460, ed. Dindorf). So strangely do opinions grow into extremes, that Victorinus the Rhetorician, a man mentioned cautiously by Jerome, but extolled by Augustine, denies James to be an apostle, affirms him to be in haeresi, and reckons him the author of those Judaistic errors which had crept into the Galatian churches. His interpretation is: I saw James the Lord’s brother (habitus secundum carnem); as if Paul meant thereby to affirm, You cannot now say, Thou deniest James, and therefore rejectest the doctrine we follow, because thou hast not seen him. But I did see him, the first promulgator of your opinions-ita nihil apud me valuit. The Symmachians make James, he adds, a supernumerary apostle, quasi duodecimum, and all who add the observance of Judaism to the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ follow him as master. <\/p>\n On a question so difficult, critics, as may be supposed, are much divided. Against the theory put forward in the previous pages are Baronius, Semler, Pott, Schneckenburger, Guericke, Steiger, Olshausen, Lange, Hug, Friedlieb, Lichtenstein, and Arnaud; on the other side are De Wette, Rothe, Herder, Neander, Stier, Niedner, Winer, Meyer, Ewald, Gresswell, Wieseler in a paper Ueber die Brder des Herrn, Stud. und Kritik. 1 Heft, 1842; Blom, Disputatio de , Lugduni Bata 5.1839; Schaff, das Verhltniss des Jacobus Bruders des Herrns zu Jacobus Alphaei auf Neue exegetisch und historisch untersucht, Berlin 1843. In a later work (Church History, 95, 1854), Dr. Schaff has modified his view of some of the proofs adduced by him, saying that he had made rather too little of the dogmatic argument against the supposition that Mary had other children, and of the old theory that the brothers were sons of Joseph by a former marriage (vol. ii. p. 35, English transl.). See also an essay of Laurent, Die Brder Jesu, in his Neutestamentliche Studien, Gotha 1866. <\/p>\n Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians (Eadie), Pradis CD-ROM:Commentary\/Chapter Gal 2:1-10 through Commentary\/Chapter 3, Book Version: 5.1.50 <\/p>\n Gal 1:19. Apostles . . . James the Lord’s brother. He was not one of the twelve, but was a very prominent man in the church at Jerusalem, and the term is applied to him in a sort of honorary manner. Regarding such a use of the word, Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary says the following: “The term came to be used more widely than at first, restricted to its reference to the twelve and Paul. This is confirmed by Paul’s reference to James, the Lord’s brother, as an apostle (Gal 1:19).” Thayer agrees with this thought, for after giving the definition of the Greek word for apostle, he adds by way of explanation, “In a broader sense the name is transferred to other eminent Christian teachers.”<\/p>\n Gal 1:19. But I saw no other of the Apostles but only James. The other Apostles were probably absent on a mission to the scattered churches of the provinces (comp. Act 9:31). The James here spoken of is not James the elder, the son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of St. John, who was still living at that time (he was beheaded in 44 as the first martyr among the Apostles, Act 12:2), but the same who, after the departure of Peter from Palestine (Act 12:17), presided over the congregation of Jerusalem (Act 15:13; Act 22:18), and is frequently called brother of the Lord, as here, or simply James (so in the Acts and Galatians 2), or by the fathers Bishop of Jerusalem, also James the Just. Josephus, the Jewish historian, mentions him under the name of James the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ, and reports his martyrdom A. D. 62 (Antiq. xx. 9, 1). According to Hegesippus he died later, about A. D. 69. The exceptive words but only, (or, if not, save, unless it be) do not necessarily imply that this James was one of the twelve Apostles, and identical with James the younger (who is called James the son of Alphus); but it intimates rather, in connection with what precedes, and with his characteristic title here given, that he was, like Barnabas (Act 14:14; comp. Act 9:27), an Apostle only in the wider sense, who, owing to his character, position, and relationship to the Lord, enjoyed apostolical authority. The sense then is: the only other man of prominence and authority I saw was James. [1]<\/p>\n [1] The question depends philologically upon the connection of the Greek particle . If connected with the whole sentence (I saw no other Apostle save James). it includes James among the Apostles; if connected only with I saw (but I saw James), it excludes him. The latter is the force of the particle in Gal 2:16; Mat 12:4; Luk 4:26-27; Rev 21:27. (See Wieselers Com.)<\/p>\n The brother of the Lord. To distinguish him from the two Apostles of that name. Brother is not cousin (for which Paul has the proper Greek term, Col 4:10), but either a uterine brother, i.e., a younger son of Joseph and Mary (which is the most natural view; comp. the words till and first born in Mat 1:25, and Luk 2:7); or a son of Joseph from a previous marriage, and hence a step-son of Mary and a step-brother of Jesus. Comp. on the brothers of the Lord (James, Joses, Simon, and Judas), Mat 1:25; Mat 12:46; Mat 13:55; Mar 6:3; Joh 2:12; Joh 7:3-10; Act 1:14. The cousin-theory of the Roman church (dating from Jerome and Augustine at the close of the fourth century) is exegetically untenable, and was suggested chiefly by a doctrinal and ascetic bias in favor of the perpetual virginity of Mary and Joseph, The following reasons are conclusive against it and in favor of a closer relationship: (1.) the natural meaning of the term brother, of which there is no exception in the New Testament, and scarcely in the Old; (2.) the fact that these brothers and sisters appear in the Gospels constantly in close connection with the holy family; (3.) they are represented as unbelieving before the resurrection (Joh 7:5), which excludes them from the Twelve; (4.) they are always distinguished from the Twelve (Joh 2:17; Joh 7:3-10; Act 1:14; 1Co 9:5). The old Greek fathers also (Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, etc.), clearly distinguish James the brother of the Lord from the two Apostles of that name.<\/p>\n But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. <\/p>\n But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. 19. “Other of the apostles I saw not, but James, the brother of the Lord.” The A. V. would lead to the conclusion that James was one of the Apostles, in the same sense as Peter was an Apostle, i.e. one of … Continue reading “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Galatians 1:19”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible <\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: The Greek Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"