Were Jesus' Brothers His.....Brothers? The Proto-Gospel of James

[00:00:00] Were Jesus brothers. His brothers. The Proto Gospel of James by Bart D. Ehrman, read by Sharon Roberts in the Gospels Conference a few weeks ago. New insights into the New Testament. C. New Insights into the New Testament a Biblical Conference for Nonscholars bartehrman.com Candida Moss gave a fascinating presentation on the historical Jesus actual family that is a major issue in the non canonical gospel I have been discussing just now in this thread the Proto Gospel of James. [00:00:44] This gospel was very popular in Eastern Greek speaking Christianity throughout the ages, down to modern times, and a version of it was produced with serious additions and changes in Latin that was even more influential in Western Christianity. A book now known as the Gospel of Pseudo Matthew. [00:01:09] In some times and places, these books were the main source of quote information, end quote, that people had for knowing about Jesus'birth and family, more so than the New Testament Gospels. [00:01:25] The idea that Joseph was an old man and Mary was a young girl comes from the proto Gospel, not the New Testament. The view that Jesus was born in a cave, proto Gospel the notion that at the Nativity there was an ox and a donkey pseudo Matthew. And there were lots of other stories familiar to Christians in the Middle Ages, not so familiar to people today, all from these books. For example, a spectacular account in Pseudo Matthew of Jesus as an infant en route to Egypt, helping out his very hungry mother Mary, who was eyeing with longing some fruit at the top of a palm tree. By ordering the tree to bend down and yield its produce to her, it does, and Jesus blesses the tree and guarantees that one of its branches will be taken to paradise. [00:02:27] The proto gospel was also responsible for the popularity of one particular view of Jesus brothers. [00:02:35] When I taught at Rutgers, probably three quarters or so of my students were Roman Catholic. [00:02:42] It ain't that way here in the south. Here in the south, with my Baptist non denominational Bible church and so on, evangelical students, the vast majority of them, the historical approach to the New Testament can be shocking and dismaying. Students here often get upset when they hear about contradictions in the New Testament and historical errors and so on. [00:03:10] At Rutgers, that wasn't a problem. These students were not, as a rule, committed to the infallibility of the Bible. [00:03:20] The one problem that arose in virtually every class I taught was one I had never expected before getting into this business. [00:03:30] It was when I mentioned something about Jesus quote brothers, end quote. Students got really upset when I told them that Jesus probably really did have brothers. This was a big issue for them. Why? [00:03:48] Because in the Roman Catholic tradition, jesus'mother not only conceived him and remained a virgin, and she not only gave birth to him and yet still was a virgin. Hymen intact, she was always a virgin to her dying day. [00:04:08] The quote, perpetual virginity of Mary, end quote, is a major teaching of the Church, and my Rutgers students all knew it. But what about the people in the New Testament who are called Jesus quote brothers? [00:04:24] If Jesus'mother never had children, well, who are they in the Catholic tradition? Usually they are not simply people close to Jesus brothers in a spiritual sense, as in quote brothers and sisters we are gathered here today, end quote. There are in fact two leading options for who these quote brothers, end quote, were. James, Joseph, Simon and Jude sisters are mentioned as well. This is in Mark Six. They are mentioned, but not named as well in John seven. And the first finds its first support in the proto Gospel. [00:05:10] Some of you noticed in the passages that I have quoted that Joseph refers to his quote sons, end quote. In other passages of the book, Joseph is explicitly said to be a very old widower who is given guardianship over the young virgin girl, twelve year old Mary. These sons, then, are obviously Joseph's children from his previous marriage. They are, in effect, half stepbrothers of Jesus, quote step in, quote, because Joseph is not actually Jesus'Father, which means Jesus isn't related to these brothers by blood. But that's just a further oddity. [00:05:56] This view is still held by some Catholics today, but it was roundly and robustly condemned by no less an authority than Jerome in the early fifth century. [00:06:09] And for a very solid reason. Jerome was a major advocate of an aesthetic lifestyle. A Christian should not, should decidedly not indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. No rich foods, no good wine and no sex, preferably no sex at all for this way of life. The Virgin Mary, of course, came to play an important role. The mother of the Son of God never had sex, and she was especially blessed of God. [00:06:45] So if you too want to be especially blessed of God but for Jerome, it was not enough that Mary never had sex. It was important that Jesus'adoptive father Joseph also never had sex. [00:07:03] And that meant that the so called brothers of Jesus could not be sons of Joseph from his previous marriage. [00:07:11] Who were they then? [00:07:14] Jerome was a highly learned man, one of the great scholars of Christian antiquity, and among other things, he was one of the few people in the Latin Western church who could actually read Greek. Jerome insisted that the Greek word for quote brother end quote, actually could and often did mean quote cousin, end quote. [00:07:39] Jesus'brothers, then, were not Joseph's sons. They were Jesus'cousins. Why? Because Joseph, like Mary, was a virgin his entire life, and you should be, too. [00:07:53] It was precisely because Jerome condemned the proto gospel of James for advancing the view that Joseph had children from a previous marriage that it was virtually disused in Western Christianity. We don't have any complete manuscripts of it in Latin. The manuscripts are all in Eastern languages, especially Greek. It was only when someone, about 500 years after the proto Gospel was first written in the early 7th century, created his own version in Latin, Pseudomathew, that the great legends of this great book came again to be disseminated in the West.