The Gospel accounts describe the reaction to Jesus’ min­istry in his hometown of Nazareth and lays out the natural family of our Lord in detail:

“ls not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” (Matthew 13:55-56, New American Standard).

Joseph presumably was deceased at this point. Thus out of respect, Joseph is not referred to directly except as “the carpenter.” Jesus’ mother and his four brothers are men­tioned. The most famous of these was the eldest brother “James.” He name actually is “Jacob”; by convention it is always rendered “James” in English. Then three more broth­ers are named; Joseph, Simon, and Judas along with “sis­ters.” The family’s subsequent history within the earliest stages of the church is a subject in its own right. Happily, despite their early doubts John 7:5) we find our Lord’s family supportive of his ministry and part of the fellowship of be­lievers after his resurrection. From that time forward they are with the core of believers listed in Acts 1:14. Passing over other family such as a wife and children in these passages would not have happened had there indeed been a wider family. Again, in the Gospel of Matthew 19:12, we have our Lord’s own words on the subject of his voluntary abstinence from earthly marriage – his marriage would be one in heaven.

Artist image of Judas, “brother of our Lord,” by El Greco, 1610- 1614, Museo de El Greco, Toledo. This Judas is the grandfather of the two men mentioned in the report of Hegesippus.

Eusebius, the Church historian writing in the 320’s AD in his Ecclesiastical Histories, Chapter 20, records that the Roman Emperor Domatian (81-96 AD) tried to locate the family of Jesus; that is, the descendants of his four brothers and at least two sisters. Rome had just finished a long, brutal, expensive, and nearly unsuccessful war against the Jews (66-73 AD). As prophesied by our Lord, this war left Herod’s once proud temple in Jerusalem destroyed without a stone-upon-stone. Jerusalem had been salted out of spite. For Rome the issue of interest might have been to learn whether these relatives of our Lord might emerge as possible claimants to the throne of David and Messianic prom­ises. Hence, they could potentially become the rallying point for yet one more costly war. Domatian’s investigators found two direct male descendants who were “the grandchildren of Judas, called the brother of the Lord, according to the flesh.” This would be the youngest brother. These two were living in Israel employed as farmers. They showed the Ro­mans their heavily calloused hands and the Romans sur­veyed their 39-acre farm on less than prime land. As these two descendants clearly posed no threat to Rome, they were left in peace. Eusebius takes this record from the now lost earlier account by a writer named Hegesippus.

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