Topic:  Did Jesus have siblings?

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: November 29, 2003

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question:   My devotional says that Jesus had siblings, even though I know that He didn't have any siblings. what would I say of someone said that Jesus had siblings how could I defend the truth? thanks

Answer: 

Dear Elizabeth,

Thanks very much for writing to CatholicQandA.org, and thanks for your question. The fact that you’re praying and using a devotional guide is really wonderful; not many folks under 18, as you are, can be said to have responded so well to God’s invitation to be in relationship to the Divine One.

Actually, not just your devotional, but the Bible itself, says that Jesus had siblings. For example, you can look at Mark 6:3 though that’s not the only place in the New Testament which says that Jesus had siblings. Some brothers of the Lord are named while some women are called “his sisters” though the Scripture doesn’t record any names for them (this omission is an evidence of the patriarchal bias found in virtually all cultures of that time).

As your question implies, we Catholics believe that Mary was ever-virgin, so apart from her only Son, Jesus, she did not have any other biological children. You’re right on the money about our Catholic belief.

So, how do we reconcile this pretty apparent discrepancy? Ultimately, of course, neither I nor anybody else can finally answer your question – that answer will have to wait until heaven!

But Catholic thinkers have suggested a couple of ways to deal with this conundrum.

The option I prefer is the following (but it’s just my preference; you’re free to come to your own conclusions).

The single largest “killer” of women at the time of Jesus’ life was child-birth. Giving birth to a baby was (and still is in many ways) extremely hazardous to the health of the woman; to be a mother takes tremendous courage and should always be looked on with awe and respect. 2000 years ago the percentage of women who died giving birth was very high.

So, the idea that Saint Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus and betrothed husband of Mary, may have had a wife prior to Mary is perfectly possible. Perhaps Joseph and this wife had children and perhaps she died giving birth to a son or daughter. All of this is very plausible – but the Bible does not tell us anything specifically in this regard; it’s speculation on my part. Anyway…

Since Joseph was a man who had a responsibility to provide for his children and since he was “busy” with his carpenter shop, he would, no doubt, have needed to find a suitable woman to marry who could take care of his children. No more suitable mother than Mary could ever be found!

So, perhaps Joseph became engaged and betrothed to Mary while his children from the former marriage – the children whose mother may have died in child-birth – were much in need of a mother.

We know that Mary became pregnant of the Holy Spirit and gave birth to her only Son, Jesus.

But we also know that the compassion and goodness of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was so deep and so profound that she would have been a magnificent mother to Joseph’s children from the other marriage. And surely those children – like us! – would have considered Mary to be their mother. Frankly, I cannot imagine that Mary would have ever discriminated against her step-children; she would have treated them with the love with which she treats us; those children would have grown up understanding themselves to be Jesus’ sisters and brothers – even though they would not have biologically been the daughters or sons of Mary.

The fact that Saint Joseph does not appear in the Bible after the 12th year of Jesus’ life, suggests that he may have been “older” when he married Mary. Therefore, the possibility that he had been married before and that he may have had children from that prior marriage are not contradicted by Scripture.

So, that’s one option for a Catholic understanding of the Bible’s references to the brothers and sisters of Jesus.

A second option would be to understand the word, in Greek, which we translate as brother, sister, sibling to represent the kind of spiritual connectedness which all believers have with the Lord. Saint Paul tells us repeatedly that we are brothers and sisters in the Lord. When we read those phrases, we don’t have any problem understanding that this is a spiritual, not a biological, relationship. Perhaps the Gospel writers mean something similar when they mention the siblings of Jesus.

And a third option could be found by looking at the probable family structure of the ancient Jewish communities in which Jesus grew up. People did not travel much at all. They tended to be born, live, marry, work, and die in pretty much the same villages and towns in which all their relatives were.

Often what we Americans think of as the “nuclear family” was indistinguishable, in those times 2000 years ago, from what we would today call the “extended family.” Families lived and worked the same small plots of ground, often sharing a household.

Children were frequently cared for by an older woman – perhaps a grandmother or unmarried aunt – and there was little differentiation among brothers, sisters, cousins, and the like. All the children were viewed as simply being part of “the family of so-and-so.”

Villagers and fellow townspeople probably made virtually no effort to distinguish whose child was whose. The children were just seen as being “brothers and sisters” of the clan that lived in a particular house or of the clan whose patriarch was a carpenter or a farmer or so forth.

In the Scripture passages which mention the siblings of Jesus, the townspeople are the ones who usually identify these men and women as the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Those townspeople had probably seen Jesus growing up with these boys and girls, and the townsfolk would naturally have assumed that they were all related as brothers and sisters. Mary, whom we are told kept all the miraculous events in her heart, treasuring them, would not have corrected her neighbors by explaining that these other children were only cousins or step-sisters/brothers to her only Son, Jesus.

So, there you go. Three options, each of which is consistent with Catholic teaching and none of which discounts the testimony of Sacred Scripture. Keep learning about the Bible and about our faith; it’s a wonderful journey!

One last comment. The Truth doesn’t usually need us to defend it. Rather, we are called simply to witness to the Truth – with our lives mostly. As the fox, I believe, tells the Little Prince, “words are often the source of misunderstanding.” Since God is the Truth (and the Way and the Life), all we really need to do is testify with the brightness of our smile, the depth of our compassion, the determination of our work for justice, and the devotion of our prayer to God’s goodness and truth in our lives. God will, in most cases, take care of the rest!

Blessings to you!
Father Phillip