Was Mary a perpetual Virgin? Did Jesus have brothers and sisters ?

Jesus was the eldest child of Mary. He had 4 brothers and 2 sisters. Mark (6:3) names the brothers as James, Joseph, Judas and Simon. He also mentions 2 sisters but does not name them. Early Christian tradition names them as Mary and Salome.

The early christians under the leadership of Paul and later Augustine were taught that human sexuality was degrading and unholy at worst, and a necessary evil to be struggled against. (T: 73-76) [More about this when we will discuss Paul’s theology/philosophy]. So Mary was made a perpetual virgin who never had any sexual relations to keep her at an elevated position. 

The Western Catholic Church explained these siblings of Jesus as “cousin brothers and sisters” while the Eastern Church claimed that these were the children of Joseph by a previous marriage. In fact the Western theologians made Joseph a “lifelong virgin” as well since the average catholic would be scandalized and shocked to hear that Joseph and Mary had a normal sex life as a married couple.

St. Joseph

It is probable that Joseph was much older than Mary. After the birth of Jesus, Joseph disappears from the scene. The gospels mention Jesus’ “mother and brothers” a number of times but not Joseph. As per the Torah or the Law of Moses, if a person died childless, the oldest surviving unmarried brother was obliged to marry his diseased brother’s widow and bear a child in his name.

If Joseph died childless, the possibility was that his brother Clophas married Mary and had the 6 children. Tabor (p 77-79) analyses a number of passages in the bible to show that Clophas could be the father of Jesus’ siblings.

According to Tabor, what is certain is the following: Joseph was not the father of Jesus; Mary’s pregnancy by an unnamed man was ‘illegitimate’ by societal norms; Jesus had 4 half-brothers and 2 half- sisters, all children of Mary, but from a different father – Joseph or his brother Clophas.