In earlier times this account of the Lord’s brethren, so far as it was the badge of a party, seems to have been held in conjunction with Ebionite views respecting the conception and person of Christ. For, though not necessarily affecting the belief in the miraculous Incarnation, it was yet a natural accompaniment of the denial thereof. The motive of these latter impugners of the perpetual virginity was very different. They endeavoured to stem the current which had set strongly in the direction of celibacy; and, if their theory was faulty, they still deserve the sympathy due to men who in defiance of public opinion refused to bow their necks to an extravagant and tyrannous superstition.
We have thus arrived at the point of time when Jerome’s answer to Helvidius created a new epoch in the history of this controversy. And the following inferences are, if I mistake not, fairly deducible from the evidence produced. First : there is not the slightest indication that the Hieronymian solution ever occurred to any individual or sect or church, until it was put forward by Jerome himself. If it had been otherwise, writers like Origen, the two Hilaries, and Epiphanius, who discuss the question, could not have failed to notice it. Secondly : the Epiphanian account has the highest claims to the sanction of tradition, whether the value of this sanction be great or small. Thirdly : this solution seems especially to represent the Palestinian view.
In the year 382 (or 383) Jerome published his treatise; and the effect of it is visible at once.
AMBROSE in the year 392 wrote a work De Institutione Virginis , in which he especially refutes the impugners of the perpetual virginity of the Lord’s mother. In a passage which is perhaps intentionally obscure he speaks to this effect: ‘The term brothers has a wide application; it is used of members of the same family, the same race, the same country. Witness the Lord’s own words I will declare thy name to my brethren (Psa 22:22). St. Paul too says: I could wish to be accursed for my brethren (Rom 9:3). Doubtless they might be called brothers as sons of Joseph, not of Mary. And if any one will go into the question carefully, he will find this to be the true account. For myself I do not intend to enter upon this question: it is of no importance to decide what particular relationship is implied; it is sufficient for my purpose that the term “brethren" is used in an extended sense (i.e. of others besides sons of the same mother).’ From this I infer that St. Ambrose had heard of, though possibly not read, Jerome’s tract, in which he discourses on the wide meaning of the term: that, if he had read it, he did not feel inclined to abandon the view with which he was familiar in favour of the novel hypothesis put forward by Jerome: and lastly, that seeing the importance of cooperation against a common enemy he was anxious not to raise dissensions among the champions of the perpetual virginity by the discussion of details.
PELAGIUS, who commented on St. Paul a few years after Jerome, adopts his theory and even his language, unless his text has been tampered with here (Gal i. 19).
At the same time Jerome’s hypothesis found a much more weighty advocate in ST. AUGUSTINE. In his commentary on the Galatians indeed (i. 19), written about 394 while he was still a presbyter, he offers the alternative of the Hieronymian and Epiphanian accounts. But in his later works he consistently maintains the view put forward by Jerome in the treatise against Helvidius ( In Joh. Evang. x , III. 2. p. 368, ib. xxviii, III. 2. p. 508; Enarr. in Ps. cxxvii, IV. 2. p. 1443; Contr. Faust. xxii. 35, VIII p. 383; comp. Quaest XVII in Matth. , III. 2. p. 285).
Thus supported, it won its way to general acceptance in the Latin Church; and the WESTERN SERVICES recognize only one James besides the son of Zebedee, thus identifying the Lord’s brother with the son of Alphaeus.
In the East also it met with a certain amount of success, but this was only temporary. CHRYSOSTOM wrote both before and after Jerome’s treatise had become generally known, and his expositions of the New Testament mark a period of transition. In his Homilies on the earlier books he takes the Epiphanian view: St. James, he says, was at one time an unbeliever with the rest of the Lord’s brethren (on Matt. i. 25, VII. p. 77; John vii. 5, VIII. p. 284; see also on I Cor. ix. 4, x. p. 181 E); the resurrection was the turning-point in their career; they were called the Lord’s brethren, as Joseph himself was reputed the husband of Mary (on Matt. i. 25, l.c.). Hitherto he betrays no knowledge of the Hieronymian account.
But in his exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians (i. 19) he not only speaks of James the Lord’s brother as if he were an apostle (which proves nothing), but also calls him the son of Clopas. Thus he would appear meanwhile to have accepted the hypothesis of Jerome and to have completed it by the identification of Clopas with Alphaeus. And THEODORET, who for the most part closely follows Chrysostom, distinctly repudiates the older view: ‘He was not, as some have supposed, a son of Joseph, the offspring of a former marriage, but was son of Clopas and cousin of the Lord; for his mother was the sister of the Lord’s mother.’
But with these exceptions the Epiphanian view maintained its ground in the East. It is found again in CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA for instance ( Glaphyr. in Gen. lib. vii. p. 221), and seems to have been held by later Greek writers almost, if not quite, universally. In THEOPHYLACT indeed (on Matt. xiii. 55, Gal. i. 19) we find an attempt to unite the two accounts. James, argues the writer, was the Lord’s reputed brother as the son of Joseph and the Lord’s cousin as the son of Clopas; the one was his natural, and the other his legal father; Clopas having died childless, Joseph had raised up seed to his brother by his widow according to the law of the levirate. This novel suggestion however found but little favour, and the Eastern Churches continued to distinguish between James the Lord’s brother and James the son of Alphaeus. The GREEK, SYRIAN, and COPTIC CALENDARS assign a separate day to each.
The table following gives a conspectus of the patristic and early authorities.
! Table of positions of early authorities
A. Sons of Joseph and Mary : Tertullian; Helvidius; Bonosus; Jovinianus (?); Antidicomarianites.
B. Sons of Joseph by a former wife : Gospel of Peter; Protevangelium etc.; Clement of Alex; Origen; Eusebius; Hilary of Poitiers; Ambrosiaster; Gregory of Nyssa; Epiphanius; Ambrose; [Chrysostom]; Cyril of Alex.; Eastern Services (Greek, Syrian, and Coptic); Later Greek Writers.
C. Sons of the Virgin’s Sister : Jerome; Pelagius; Augustine; [Chrysostom]; Theodoret; Western Services; Later Latin Writers.
A. or B. ‘Brethren’ in a strict sense. James the Just not one of the Twelve : Early Versions; Clementine Homilies (?); Ascents of James; Hegesippus; Apost. Constitu.; Cyril of Jerusalem (?); Victorinus the Philosopher.
B. or C. Perpetual virginity of Mary : Basil; Catholic Writers Generally.
Uncertain : Hebrew Gospel; Victorinus Petavionensis.
Levirate : Theophylact.
The Jerusalem Syriac lectionary gives the passage John 19:25 not less than three times. In two of these places (pp. 387, 541, the exception being p. 445) a stop is put after ‘His mother’s sister,’ thus separating the words from ‘Mary of Cleophas’ and suggesting by punctuation the same interpretation which the Peshito fixes by inserting a conjunction.
A Jewish name ‘Alfius’ occurs in an inscription ALFIVS . IVDA . ARCON . ARCOSINAGOGVS (Insc. Gudii, p. cclxiii.5), and possibly this is the Latin substitute for Chalphai or Chalphi, as ‘AlfaioV is the Greek; Alfius being a not uncommon Latin name. One would be tempted to set down his namesake also, the ‘fenerator Alfius’ or ‘Alphius’ of Horace ( Epod. ii. 67, see Columella I.7.2), for a fellow-countryman, if his talk were not so pagan.
For these reasons the extract seemed to be manifestly spurious; but I might have saved myself the trouble of examining the Bodleian MS and writing these remarks, if I had known at the time, that the passage was written by a mediaeval namesake of the Bishop of Hierapolis, Papias the author of the ‘Elementarium,’ who lived in the 11th century. This seems to have been a standard work in its day, and was printed four times in the 15th century under the name of the Lexicon or Vocabulist. I have not had access to a printed copy, but there is a MS of the work (marked Kk. 4.1) in the Cambridge University Library, the knowledge of which I owe to Mr. Bradshaw, the librarian. The variations from the Bodleian extract are unimportant. It is strange that though Grabe actually mentions the later Papias the author of the Dictionary, and Routh copies his note, neither the one nor the other got on the right track. I made the discovery while the first edition of this work was passing through the press [1865].
In Cowper’s Syriac Miscell. p. 61, I find an extract, ‘Justin one of the authors who were in the days of Augustus and Tiberius and Gaius wrote in the third discourse: That Mary the Galilean, who was the mother of Christ who was crucified in Jerusalem, had not been with a husband. And Joseph did not repudiate her, but Joseph continued in holiness without a wife, he and his five sons by a former wife: and Mary continued without a husband.’ The editor assigns this passage to Justin Martyr; but not to mention the anachronism, the whole tenor of the passage and the immediate neighbourhood of similar extracts shows that it was intended for the testimony (unquestionably spurious) of some contemporary heathen writer to the facts of the Gospel.
I hold tw dikaiw therefore to be the genuine words of Clement, but I do not feel so sure that the closing explanation duo de gegonasin Iakwboi k.t.l. is not an addition of Eusebius. This I suppose to be Bunsen’s opinion, for he ends his fragment with the preceding words I. p. 321.
Compare the expressions in 1:12 eiV de kai outoV twn feromenwn adelfwn hn, and 3:7 tou Kuriou crhmatzwn adelfoV. He was a reputed brother of the Lord, because Joseph was His reputed father. See also Eusebius On the Star , ‘Joseph and Mary and Our Lord with them and the five sons of Hannah (Anna) the first wife of Joseph’ (p. 17, Wright’s Transl.). The account from which this passage is taken professes to be founded on a document dating AD 119.