The New Testament names four brothers of Jesus (James, Joseph (Joses), Judas and Simon) as well as mentioning, but not naming, sisters. The most notable is James, whom Paul calls "the brother of our Lord."
Some scholars argue that Jesus' relatives held positions of special honor in the Early Christian Church. Christians of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox traditions, as well as some Anglicans and some followers of Lutheranism, reject the idea that Jesus had blood siblings, as their churches hold the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.
In the third century blood relatives of Jesus, without explicit reference to "brothers", were called the desposyni, from the Greek δεσπόσυνοι, plural of δεσπόσυνος, meaning "of or belonging to the master or lord". The term was used by Sextus Julius Africanus, a writer of the early 3rd century.
Read more about Brothers Of Jesus: Jesus' Brothers and Sisters, As Church Leaders, Degree of Consanguinuity Between Jesus and His Brothers, Family Trees and Pedigrees, Interpersonal Relationship With Jesus in The New Testament, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words brothers and/or jesus:
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Do not put the LORD your God to the test...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 6:16.
Scripture cited by Jesus when tempted in the wilderness.