HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Type: defensive rebuttal (off-timeline) · Assessment: sound — the standard objection to the Epiphanian (stepbrother) reading is that it leaves the brethren with “really no relationship” to Jesus, where the Helvidian keeps a blood tie — the Helvidian’s one intuitive advantage. It dissolves: the register of reputed / legal kinship is exactly the one Scripture uses of Joseph’s fatherhood — by Mary’s own lips (“thy father and I,” Luke 2:48) and by the Evangelist (“his parents,” Luke 2:41, 43), neither in any doubt of the virginal conception — so calling Joseph’s sons the Lord’s “brethren” is the same natural extension, not a strained equivocation. And it is not a modern apologetic device but the ancient rationale itself, stated firsthand by Eusebius and Chrysostom. Like the other defensive arguments, though, it defuses an objection without positively establishing the stepbrothers over Mary’s own sons · argued by J. B. Lightfoot, on the reputed-kinship usage of the Gospels and the fathers
Related arguments: the Epiphanian (stepbrother) reading — see also The Epiphanian reading on its merits · Memory or Marian construct?
Both kinship readings that preserve Mary’s perpetual virginity — the Hieronymian (cousins) and the Epiphanian (Joseph’s sons by a former wife) — deny that the “brethren of the Lord” were Jesus’ own uterine brothers. The Helvidian reading (Mary’s later children) is often urged to have, at least, the advantage of naturalness: it alone gives the brethren a real relationship to Jesus, a shared mother, so that “brother” carries its plainest sense. On the Epiphanian view the brethren share with Jesus neither mother nor blood at all — only a reputed, legal father in Joseph — and the objection is that this makes “brother of the Lord” a strained or merely honorific title, a weakness the Helvidian reading escapes.
J. B. Lightfoot, weighing the Epiphanian and Helvidian readings side by side, grants the point only to dissolve it:
The Epiphanian view assumes that the Lord’s brethren had really no relationship with Him; and so far the Helvidian has the advantage. But this advantage is rather seeming than real. It is very natural that those who called Joseph His father should call Joseph’s sons His brethren. And it must be remembered that this designation is given to Joseph not only by strangers from whom at all events the mystery of the Incarnation was veiled, but by the Lord’s mother herself who knew all (Luke 2:48). Even the Evangelist himself, about whose belief in the miraculous conception of Christ there can be no doubt, allows himself to speak of Joseph and Mary as ‘His father and mother’ and ‘His parents.’
— J. B. Lightfoot, The Brethren of the Lord, in the comparison of the two theories.1 The logic is a simple parity: whatever licenses calling Joseph the Lord’s “father” — a legal, reputed paternity, not a natural one — equally licenses calling Joseph’s sons the Lord’s “brethren.” If the one is no equivocation, neither is the other; the two designations stand or fall together, and the New Testament plainly accepts the first.
Scripture uses reputed-kinship language of Joseph — on the lips of those who knew the truth. The proof that “father” can be predicated of Joseph without implying natural generation is the Gospel text itself. Mary, who of all people knew the manner of the conception, says to the boy Jesus, “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” (Luke 2:48). Luke, who has just narrated the virginal conception at length, twice calls Joseph and Mary together Jesus’ “parents” (Luke 2:41: “his parents went to Jerusalem”; 2:43: “his parents knew not of it”), and in the earliest text of 2:33 speaks of “his father and his mother.” None of these usages is thought, by the writer or the mother, to deny the virgin birth; they name a real but legal and reputed relationship. Joseph’s sons, sharing that same reputed father and the same household, are “brethren” of Jesus in precisely the parallel sense.2
The move is the ancient rationale, not a later contrivance. Far from being read back into the fathers, the reputed-father⇒reputed-brother reasoning is the very ground the early church gives for the title. Eusebius explains James’ designation exactly so:
This James was called the brother of the Lord because he was known as a son of Joseph, and Joseph was supposed to be the father of Christ, because the Virgin, being betrothed to him, “was found with child by the Holy Ghost before they came together,” as the account of the holy Gospels shows.
— Eusebius, Church History ii.1.2.3 John Chrysostom, expounding Matthew 1:25, makes the same reply to the same question:
How then, one may say, are James and the others called His brethren? In the same kind of way as Joseph himself was supposed to be husband of Mary. For many were the veils provided, that the birth, being such as it was, might be for a time screened.
— Chrysostom, Homily 5 on Matthew.4 The earliest historical witness on the Lord’s kindred points the same way: Hegesippus (c. 175) speaks of the grandsons of “Judas who was called His brother according to the flesh” (H.E. iii.20), and Lightfoot reads that “called” as marking “the brotherhood of these brethren, like the fatherhood of Joseph, being reputed but not real.”5
What holds. As a rebuttal to the “no real relationship” charge, the argument is decisive on its own terms. The parity it rests on is exact: legal fatherhood and legal fraternity are the same kind of relation, and the New Testament unembarrassedly predicates the former of Joseph in the mouths of Mary and of Luke — witnesses who cannot be charged with ignorance of the virginal conception. Reputed / legal kinship is, moreover, an ordinary Jewish and human institution (a step-household’s children are “brothers” as a matter of course), so the Epiphanian “brother” needs no special pleading. And the case is strengthened, not merely illustrated, by the discovery that this is the actual patristic rationale for the title: Eusebius and Chrysostom articulate it firsthand, and Hegesippus’ “called” is naturally read the same way. The Helvidian reading’s supposed intuitive edge — that only it yields a “true” brother — therefore carries little weight against the Epiphanian: the objection dissolves.
What it does not do. The argument is a defusing move, like the reply to the shared-names objection, not a positive proof. It shows that the Epiphanian reading suffers no real disadvantage from the reputed-kinship of the brethren; it does not, by itself, show that the brethren were Joseph’s sons by a former wife rather than Mary’s own children. Two honest limits mark its reach. First, everything it establishes about Joseph’s reputed fatherhood is equally available to the Helvidian, for whom the brethren are both reputed brothers (through Joseph) and real ones (through Mary); the parallel neutralizes an objection without discriminating between the readings. Second, the patristic witnesses cited (Eusebius, Chrysostom, Hegesippus as Lightfoot reads him) presuppose the Epiphanian framework rather than proving it — their value here is to show that the reputed-brother usage was native and unstrained, which is what the rebuttal needs, not to settle the identity of the brethren, which is weighed elsewhere (see the antiquity of the stepbrother tradition and the Helvidian reading).
Sound. The objection that the Epiphanian reading makes “brother of the Lord” an empty or strained title is answered in full: Joseph’s own reputed fatherhood, used of him in Scripture by Mary and by the Evangelist with no thought of denying the virgin birth, licenses the parallel reputed fraternity of his sons, and this is the very rationale the earliest fathers give. As a rebuttal it holds, and it removes the Helvidian reading’s one intuitive advantage. But it is a defusing argument, neutral between establishing the Epiphanian view and merely clearing it of a charge, and does not by itself decide whether the brethren were Mary’s children or Joseph’s by a former wife: sound.
J. B. Lightfoot, “The Brethren of the Lord,” in St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London: Macmillan, 1865), in the comparison of the Epiphanian and Helvidian theories — “this advantage is rather seeming than real. It is very natural that those who called Joseph His father should call Joseph’s sons His brethren… this designation is given to Joseph… by the Lord’s mother herself who knew all (Luke 2:48).” Archived at philologos.org; also digitized at archive.org. ↩
Mary’s words, “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing,” Luke 2:48; the Evangelist’s “his parents,” Luke 2:41 and 2:43. Lightfoot notes that the earliest text reads “his father and his mother” at Luke 2:33 (ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ) and “his parents” (οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ) at 2:42–43, “the correct reading,” and that “later transcribers have taken offence and substituted ‘Joseph and Mary,’ ‘Joseph and His mother,’ in all three places” — the substitution preserved in the Textus Receptus and so in the King James Version at 2:33 and 2:43 (“Joseph and his mother”). The uncontested legs of the argument — Mary’s own “thy father and I” (2:48) and Luke’s “his parents” (2:41) — stand in every text; only the “his father and mother” of 2:33 turns on the critical reading. Lightfoot’s footnote in “The Brethren of the Lord.” ↩
Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica) ii.1.2, trans. A. C. McGiffert (NPNF 2nd ser. vol. 1) — “This James was called the brother of the Lord because he was known as a son of Joseph, and Joseph was supposed to be the father of Christ.” New Advent; text at The Church History of Eusebius, Book II. Lightfoot cites the same passage (H.E. ii.1) as Eusebius explaining “that this James was called the Lord’s brother, because Joseph was his reputed father.” ↩
John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 5 (on Matthew 1:25), trans. George Prevost (NPNF 1st ser. vol. 10) — “How then… are James and the others called His brethren? In the same kind of way as Joseph himself was supposed to be husband of Mary.” New Advent; text at Homily 5 on Matthew. Lightfoot notes that Chrysostom, in his earlier homilies, takes the Epiphanian view: the brethren “were called the Lord’s brethren, as Joseph himself was reputed the husband of Mary.” ↩
Hegesippus (c. 175), in the extant fragments preserved by Eusebius, Church History iii.20.1 — “there still survived… grandsons of Judas, who was called the brother of our Lord according to the flesh” (τοῦ κατὰ σάρκα λεγομένου αὐτοῦ ἀδελφοῦ). J. B. Lightfoot, “The Brethren of the Lord”: “the word ‘called’ seems to me to point to the Epiphanian rather than the Helvidian view, the brotherhood of these brethren, like the fatherhood of Joseph, being reputed but not real.” The reading is contested (Lightfoot himself treats it as a pointer, not a proof); the grandsons datum is weighed for its own sake at Jude’s named grandsons. ↩