THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE THAT JESUS HAD NO BIOLOGICAL BROTHERS AND SISTERS IS NONSENSE

The Catholic Church teaches that Mary is the Mother of God because she is the Mother of Jesus Christ who was God. In addition it teaches that she never had other children and that Jesus was conceived without sex meaning that she was a life-long virgin and still is of course.

Geoffrey Ashe says that there was no trace of the notion that Mary had no other children till Helvidius voiced the view that she had in 383 CE (The Virgin, page 64).  And she had a very small profile in the early Church and its tradition. In those days, it was about scripture, the apostles and Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is not surprising then that nobody cared if Jesus really had brothers or not. But Helvidius being the first only means he is the first we know of. There could have been a large segment of the Church that had the same view as he had and held it from the very beginning of the Church.

Christianity was a prudish religion and would have been too disgusted to even want to remember that Mary had been a normal mother. Tradition unanimously says that even sex in marriage is sinful and says it is only not a sin when nature forces it to happen. And since Jesus never existed the tradition of the virgin birth would have started easily enough. If he had existed he would have had a normal birth and it might have got in the way of progress towards invention of the Virgin Conception.

I wish to mention this argument without comment: "Christians believe Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, called James the brother of Christ and yet they say Jesus’ mother only had Jesus. They also believe Paul called James the brother of the Lord and ignore the fact that he would have meant brother because he was writing to people to whom brother meant blood brother. That is what they would have taken him to mean then. Brother here means brother not relation!"

In a booklet called Treasures from God’s Storehouse Catholics say,

“James the Less whose mother was near the cross (Matthew 27:56, Mark 15:40 and John 19:25) was the Apostle James mentioned in Matthew 10:3. This is the same James who is one of Christ’s “brethren”, but he was a son of Mary and Cleophas (or Alphaeus), and only a relative of Christ’s. This proves the brethren of Matthew 13:55 were not blood brothers.”

The Christian answer to this as the booklet has it is,

“The Bible doesn’t say that the James of Mt 10:3, the son of Alphaeus (the Hebrew equivalent of Cleophas), is the same James as is mentioned in Matthew 27, even though Catholic scholars like to call James the son of Alphaeus “James the less”, thus linking him to the James of Mark 15. The only time James is designated as “the less” is in Mark 15, and there is absolutely no textual proof that the Apostle James, the son of Alphaeus, was ever called “the less”."

My comment is that the James described as the brother of Jesus is not the son of Alphaeus.  Catholics deliberately misidentify him.  Matthew 13:55 says that Jesus was the brother of James and Joseph and Simon and Judas so Rome argues that this just means cousin or simply relative. But this is based on a lie, the lie that the two Jameses are the one person.

The booklet says,

" Let us examine the women at the cross. Look at the lists given in the Bible. We know Mary Magdalene is mentioned in all three accounts. We know there were more than three women from Mt 27. Of course Salome might have been the name for either the women mentioned in Matthew or John. Mary, the mother of Jesus is mentioned in John 19. She seems to be missing from Matthew and Mark. But is she? If you want to cross-reference “Mary the mother of James and Joses” in Matthew 27 and Mark 15, just turn to Matthew 13:55. There we are told that James and Joses were the brethren of Christ, the sons of Mary. Were they His brothers? It is very probable, for how can we think that only John would record the presence of Jesus’ mother at the cross? If she is mentioned by Matthew and Mark (and in Luke 24:10), she is the mother of James and Joses who were true half-brothers of Jesus” (page 44).

The Church says that “James who has the mother Mary and the brother Joseph has his mother called Mary the mother of James and Joseph in Mark 15:40. It says that it is obvious from this that this woman is not the mother of Jesus for Mark would have called her the mother of Jesus. So there are two James who had brothers called Joseph. So many names were used over and over again in those days that this was common.”

The reply to this is that Mark thought of Jesus as important but as a man sent by God. He doesn’t assign any unique importance to Jesus. He could have called Jesus’ mother the mother of James and Joseph. Also, since Jesus was hated at the time people might have been calling her that to identify her.

The gospels say that Jesus had at least two sisters. The word sister is used eight times for sisters by blood and seven times for a sister that is related by the blood of Calvary (ibid, page 44). It is never used for cousins which Catholics want these girls to be.  The girls were literal sisters of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus was told that his mother and his brothers were looking for him he pointed to the crowd around him and said that the crowd was his mother and brothers for anybody who does the will of God is that (Mark 3:31-35). What he meant was that if you did God’s will you were so close to Jesus that you were virtually his brother and mother. That would make no sense if the brothers were cousins for he is using the closest blood ties to illustrate what he means. His assertion would be silly if he meant that if you were extremely close to him you would be his cousin and his mother for cousin is not emotionally or bloodily close enough to be compared to mother.

It is said that Jesus seems to be rejecting his natural family. Others say he is not but merely saying that they and whoever else obeys the will of God is his true family. But somebody shouted that those who were related to him were blessed and he responded that it is those who obey the will of God that are blessed. This can imply rejection. Indeed it does for Mark never suggests that this family were holy and supportive of Jesus. Jesus did reject natural family ties in favour of spiritual. The Roman Catholic reasoning, "Mary was holy for she was Jesus' natural mother", is clearly rejected. She was nothing special and so we should not be obsessed with making her a wonderful sacrificing lifelong virgin.

The silly propagandist booklet, Why Be a Catholic? tells us, “Given that the relations of Jesus and indeed Jesus himself would have spoken Aramaic and the Greek of the gospels has an Aramaic background we should never assume that “brother” can only have its narrower Greek meaning” (page 17). So it is admitted here that the gospels use the narrow meaning for they are in Greek but the Aramaic is used an excuse for getting around this! It doesn’t work for even if the Aramaic was looser the author of Matthew took it to mean real brother. That was how he translated it and that is what he was saying it was. It is what the gospel says that has authority not some assumption about what the Aramaic might have meant. So the Catholics are willing to accuse God of mistranslating when he wrote the gospel through Matthew before they would admit their doctrine about Mary is wrong!

Mary did have other children. This tells us what to make of apparitions like Garabandal and Medjugorje where the Madonna appears with a flat chest and calls herself a virgin.

Our conclusion is that Jesus was, according to the gospels, the oldest of Mary’s children. After she had him she had at least two girls and she was the mother of James and a few other boys.

Mary was not a Virgin all her life. This has been proven over and over again and the deceitful Roman Catholic Church plods on regardless and just curses those who tell the truth. It bullies them and says they are blasphemers.

NOTE: In this study, the brothers and sisters and many other gospel characters vanish from history almost like Jesus did.  Jesus' existence is not the only problematic thing we find in the gospels.  Were they as much an invention as him?

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME, Michael de Semlyen, Dorchester House Publications, Bucks, 1993
BORN FUNDAMENTALIST, BORN-AGAIN CATHOLIC, David B Currie, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
MAKING SAINTS, Kenneth K Woodward, Chatto & Windus, London, 1991
OBJECTIONS TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Ed by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable, London, 1964
POPE FICTION, Patrick Madrid, Basilica Press, San Diego, California, 1999
REASON AND BELIEF, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
SERMONS OF ST ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, Tan Books, Illinois, 1982
THE MARIAN CONSPIRACY, Graham Phillips, Pan Books, London, 2001
THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg, BD, APCK, Dublin, 1928
THE VIRGIN, Geoffrey Ashe, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. London, 1976
WHY BE A CATHOLIC? Fr David Jones OP, Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, London, 1996
 



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