18. NOTE ON THE BRETHREN OF THE LORD

The actual blood-relationship of our Lord to those persons who in the New Testament are called "His brethren," and are usually mentioned in connection with His mother, is a truth of great importance. It bars the way against that doctrine of Paganism which has ever corrupted the nominal Church more powerfully, perhaps, or, at least, more persistently, than any other. And just as it was vehemently assailed in the early centuries of our era, so now it is either ignored or opposed by many, because the causes which first rendered it distasteful are once more working actively among us.

For Mariolatry is gaining ground in those countries which have hitherto been termed Protestant; while that which it really represents, namely, the worship of the female principle in nature, has of late found favour with many Secularists—such as Strauss, Comte, and John Stuart Mill—and prevails extensively among Spiritualists and Theosophists.

Now this wide-spread error, which may, ultimately, prove a bond of union to men of very diverse opinions, is at once deprived of all the support which it pretends to draw from Christianity if the Lord's brethren can be shown to be the veritable sons of His mother. For the universal Heathen goddess of many names, with which men have ever sought to identify her, was the mother of a divine son, and yet a virgin. Hence the importance of the question.

But to an unprejudiced mind there could be no question at all. Were we without interest in the controversy, we should, upon reading of the Lord's

"mother and His brethren," instinctively understand the brethren to be related to Him in the flesh in the same literal sense in which His mother was. And if any feeling within us forbids so obvious a conclusion, it certainly does not spring from the Scriptures, which contain nothing that could possibly suggest it.

On the contrary, the simple command to Joseph, "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife,"¹ is sufficient to show that the usual conjugal relations subsisted between the pair after our Lord's birth. And the plain narration, that Joseph "took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn Son,"² affords conclusive evidence that Matthew, at least, had no wish to guard against the legitimate meaning of his words.

Again; the significant but much neglected fact that, in Scripture, Mary is never called a virgin after the birth of her firstborn Son, is in itself fatal to the purely Heathen doctrine of her perpetual virginity.

And lastly; it cannot have been without design that, in a Psalm repeatedly applied to Christ in the New Testament, and immediately preceding a verse both the clauses of which are cited by inspired writers as referring to Him,³ we should find the words;—

"I am become a stranger unto My brethren,

And an alien unto My mother's children."

It is unnecessary to say more: the Bible certainly assumes the brethren of the Lord to be the actual sons of His mother, upon whom—with two memorable excep-

Matt. i. 20.

Matt. i. 24, 25.

Psa. lxix. 9. Compare John ii. 17 and Rom. xv. 3.

Psa. lxix. 8.

tions, of which we shall speak presently—it always represents them as being in attendance. So carefully did He Who knows the end from the beginning anticipate the attempt to identify the Saviour's earthly parent with Isis the ever-virgin mother of Horus—just as also, in the plans of the Tabernacle and the Temple, He directed that the Holy of holies should be set in the West, and so at once distinguished His worshippers from the multitudinous votaries of nature and the sun, who turned towards the East.

But in this case, as in many others, human corruption quickly made the Word of God of none effect. In very early times the wish to assimilate Christianity to Paganism by furnishing it with a virgin-goddess, together with the prevailing tendency to asceticism, resulted in a theory that Joseph was a widower when he espoused Mary, and that the "brethren" were his sons by his first wife.

The origin of this theory is betrayed by the sentiments of its supporters. Not a particle of evidence can be adduced in its favour: for there is no historical mention of a previous marriage of Joseph, nor do the fictitious elder half-brothers appear in the few incidents of the Lord's birth and childhood which are revealed to us. Even Jerome taunts those who believe in it with "following the Apocryphal writings, and inventing a wretched little woman, Melcha, or Escha."

But, in order to Paganise Christianity, it was not enough to dispose of these brethren: it was also necessary to show that Mary could have had no other children besides her Firstborn. Accordingly, about the middle of the second century, the Protevangelium Jacobi represented Joseph as being, at the time of his second marriage, a very old man with adult children. Unfortunately, however, for the reputation of that work, it allowed him no daughters, although the New Testament mentions the Lord's sisters¹ as well as His brothers. But the idea of Joseph's extreme age became very popular in Apocryphal writings, and is worked out from them, with grotesque extravagance, in the Coventry Miracle Plays which are preserved in the British Museum. And while the doctrine of Mary's virginity was being thus disseminated, the name of Theotocus, or Mother of God, was also assigned to her and led to the natural inference that the Godhead of Christ as well as His human body proceeded from her and, therefore, that she must herself have been a goddess.

Towards the close of the fourth century, a number of female devotees, who had migrated from Thrace to Arabia, gave out that they were priestesses of Mary, and commenced an idolatrous worship which, by the form it assumed, seems to point to an identification of her with Ceres. On appointed festival days they conveyed about in chariots—such as the Pagans used in their religious processions—certain cakes, or wafers, consecrated to her and called collyrides, from which they derived their own name of Collyridians. After presenting these cakes as offerings, they then ate them. The ceremony was, perhaps, an adaptation of the harvest festival of Ceres, known as the Thesmophoria; or, possibly, of the mied, or round wafer used in the worship of Mithras.² This last is the prototype of the

¹ Matt. xiii. 56.

² From the Paganised Christian point of view this would, of course, be a transfer of the Lord's Supper to the worship of Mary.

host, and the origin of the Roman Catholic term missa, the mass.

Of course so open a deification of the Lord's human mother was not carried on without considerable opposition. It was, however, defended with fanatical violence by Epiphanius, Bishop of the Cyprian Salamis, who invented a name for the opponents of his idolatry, calling them Antidicomarianites or "Adversaries of Mary."

Among those who objected to the new goddess was one Helvidius, a lawyer of Rome. This man, shocked by Jerome's extravagant praises of celibacy, undertook to confute the obnoxious views, and, in the course of his argument, maintained that, after the birth of the Lord, Mary had become a wife and the mother of children.

To this statement Jerome, who was greatly the superior of Helvidius in learning and dialectics, and who either disliked or distrusted the theory of Joseph's previous marriage, replied that the brethren of the Lord were not the sons of His mother, but merely His cousins. The spirit in which he put forth this opinion may be gathered from his boast that he claimed virginity, not for Mary only, but also for Joseph. The argument by which he supported it is a worthless tissue of errors, and may be stated as follows:—

In the list of the Twelve there are two apostles bearing the name of James. And we also read of James the Lord's brother.

This last must, however, have been one of the Twelve, or, otherwise, there would have been three persons of the same name.

And in such a case how could one of them be called

"James the less," a term which implies that there was but one other?

Moreover, in writing to the Galatians Paul narrates, "But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother,"¹ thus classing the latter with the Twelve.

This argument, the basis of Jerome's whole theory, may be disposed of without much trouble.

For such an expression as "James the less" is not to be found in the original of the New Testament: the apostle is called "James the little"—ὁ μικρός.²

And the words of Paul may be rendered, "I saw no other apostle—that is, no other save Peter who has just been mentioned—but only James, the Lord's brother. Moreover, even if we admit that this James was an apostle, it by no means follows that he was one of the Twelve. For the title was conferred upon others also, as for instance upon Barnabas.³ Indeed in one passage Paul appears to distinguish between "the Twelve" and "all the apostles."⁴

Such, then, was the false foundation upon which Jerome was content to build the subjoined theory.

Since James the Lord's brother is mentioned after the death of James the son of Zebedee, he must be identified with James the son of Alphæus.

Now the latter had a brother named Joses, and, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark,⁵ there is record of a Mary the mother of James and Joses being present at the crucifixion. She must, therefore, have been the wife of Alphæus.

¹ Gal. i. 19.

² Mark xv. 40.

³ Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40.

³ See Acts xiv. 4, 11.

⁴ 1 Cor. xv. 5, 7.

But in the fourth Gospel, in place of the mother of James and Joses we read of a Mary of Clopas, the sister of the Lord's mother, standing by the cross.¹ This must, therefore, be the same as the wife of Alphæus,² who is thus proved to be the sister of the Lord's mother.

Hence her children were His cousins, and they are called His brethren merely because that term is often applied to any near relations.

This elaborate superstructure is as worthless as its foundation, and a single fact will suffice to prove our assertion. James the Lord's brother could not have been the son of Alphæus, for the latter was one of the Twelve; whereas of the Lord's brethren we are told, without reserve, that they did not believe on Him.³ But although there is no necessity for further discussion, we will, nevertheless, add one or two remarks which will help the reader to a still clearer view of the standing of Jerome as a teacher.

And, first, Mary the wife of Clopas is not to be identified with the sister of the Lord's mother. For the passage in John should be read as follows:—"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene." Not three only, but four women are mentioned, and they are arranged in couples, just as the apostles are in lists of the Twelve.⁴ And by so understanding the passage, we avoid an absurdity: for, according to Jerome, both the Lord's mother and

¹ John xix. 25.

² The two names Clopas and Alphæus might be identified, since both forms could be derived from the same Aramaean original. Jerome was not, however, aware of this fact.

³ John vii. 5. Matt. x. 2-4; Luke vi. 14-16.

her sister must have borne the same name of Mary. Indeed, some supporters of his theory are bold enough to affirm that the Jews frequently gave the same name to sisters; but, so far as we are aware, they offer no evidence of the prevalence of so irrational a custom.

The argument from the names James and Joses is also valueless; since there were but few names in common use among the Jews at that time, as indeed we might gather from the frequent recurrence of certain appellations in the New Testament. Hence it is probable that many women in Judea might have been called mothers of James and Joses.

Lastly; the assertion that "cousins" may be styled "brothers" is scarcely true, in an absolute sense at least. The instances adduced by Jerome¹ occur in affectionate or rhetorical appeals: he is unable to cite any from plain matter of fact history such as that of the Gospels. His theory is rendered still more improbable by the mention of the Lord's sisters, and there is yet another difficulty. If the "brethren" were the cousins of the Lord, why are they found in continual attendance upon His mother while their own parent was still alive? It could not have been from any feeling of veneration on account of her Son; for in Him they did not believe.

Such, then, is Jerome's attempted explanation, the most remarkable fact in connection with which is that learned men should ever have admitted so faulty and preposterous a theory within the range of their theology. Its author was less tenacious of it than some of his disciples; and in the Epistle to Hedibia, which belongs to his later years, he evinces a complete change of

¹ Gen. xiii. 8; xxix. 15.

mind by disowning the identification of the mother of James and Joses with the sister of Mary. Since this is the citadel of his position, it is clear that he must have discovered its untenableness, and so have deliberately abandoned it.

Bishop Lightfoot, in the essay appended to his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, decides peremptorily against Jerome; but, after wavering between the literal theory and that of the half-brothers, finally inclines, like Hilary of Poitiers, to the latter for the subjoined reason. He conceives it to be impossible that our Lord, when on the cross, "would have snapped asunder the most sacred ties of natural affection" by commending His mother to the care of John if she had had four sons of her own living at the time.

But while it is always dangerous to substitute our own theories for the plain and literal sense of Scripture, there is in this case no reason whatever for such a course. Provided we be content to waive tradition and hold to revelation, the alleged difficulty may be very easily removed.

In the single passage of the Gospels in which our Lord's brethren appear without their mother,¹ they display a strong spirit of opposition, and we are told that they did not believe on Him. Hence the reason why the mother is no longer with them: she had kept the sayings of Jesus in her heart, and, therefore, had faith to follow Him to the cross; she had once attempted to interfere with His actions, and had learnt her lesson from the rebuke which she received.²

¹ John vii. 3, 9.

² Thus our latest glimpse of the brethren, before the crucifixion,

But if the brethren were unbelievers, and were even then angry with the Lord because He refused to seek popularity, what must have been their feelings as they saw His ministry becoming more and more opposed to the prejudices of their nation, and perceived that the consequent hatred to His person was increasing every day? Is it not more than probable that their growing dislike to Him, now heightened by the fear of family disgrace, would alienate them from His mother who persisted in her faith? And thus, neglected by her own sons in her time of deepest trouble, she would be in sore need of temporary protection, which the Lord graciously provided.

So far there is surely no difficulty; but at this point tradition steps in and adds a story, opposed to all reasonable inference from Scripture, that Mary remained under the protection of the apostle John for the rest of her life. There can be no doubt that this is a pure fiction devised to support the theory of her virginity; for the Bible plainly indicates that she returned to her sons after their conversion.¹

The tender heart of the Lord yearned for His brethren in the flesh, and, accordingly, after He had appeared in His resurrected body to Peter, to the Twelve, and to the five hundred brethren, He presented Himself to his brother James. Who can doubt the effect of the glorious sight? The eyes of James were opened, and he beheld no longer the carpenter's son of Nazareth, the executed malefactor, but the Conreveals them separated for the first time from their mother and casting reproaches upon the Lord; whereas at the cross the mother is seen deserted by her sons. It is impossible to deny the significance of such a fact.

¹ Acts i. 14.

queror of Death, the Lord of all power, the only begotten Son of the Father. By his testimony, or, it may be, by special revelations to themselves, the other brethren were also converted before the Lord left the confines of earth.

We can readily understand how such a change of mind would affect them in regard to their neglected mother, who seems to have been at once removed from the temporary protection of John to the loving care of her own family. And so it happens that in the list of those who continued in prayer in the upper room, waiting for the promised power from on high, we find the mother of Jesus and His now believing brethren again united.¹

VIII.

THE RETURN OF THE JEWS TO PALESTINE.

SUCH, then, is the outline of God's dealings with the Jews, as it was revealed to Daniel. For four hundred and eighty-three years His Spirit strove with them in their own land, and, at the close of that appointed time, Messiah the Prince appeared, and they rejected Him. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. Then He also rejected them, and cast them out to endure the curse uttered by Moses.

Anon they will return, and place themselves under the protection of the last head of the Fourth Gentile Empire. And when he makes his covenant with them, then may the world and Satan know that but seven short years remain for the indulgence of unbridled sin. At that time the great body of the nation will be in

¹ Acts i. 14.

THE RETURN OF THE JEWS TO PALESTINE.

unbelief, and will, therefore, share in the madness of the world, and wonder after and worship the Beast. And of the small number who do fear Jehovah, few, if any, will know the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, however they may recognise Him as their Messiah and King; for, according to Zechariah, neither the house of David, nor the inhabitants of Jerusalem, will find out the fountain that is opened for sin and for uncleanness, until they have actually beheld the face of Him Whom they pierced.¹

That they will rebuild the Temple is implied, as we have already seen, in the eighth and ninth chapters of Daniel, and so it is also in the sixty-sixth of Isaiah. But the latter passage reveals to us the spirit in which the restored exiles will undertake the work, and the Lord's indignant rejection of that which is done by proud and self-willed sinners, who choose their own ways, and know nothing of the broken and contrite heart in which alone He delights.

At the same time there is a recognition of some few who will tremble at the word of the Lord, and whose brethren will hate them and cast them out for His name's sake, while they hypocritically say;—"Let the Lord be glorified." These afflicted ones are strengthened for their brief trial by the significant words;—"But He shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed."²

When the Temple has been thus erected by the unsuspecting Jews, all will be ready for the fearful scenes which are to close the dispensation, and which are especially foretold in the sermon on the Mount of Olives, and in some of the chapters of the Apocalypse.

¹ Zech. xii. 9—xiii. 1.

² Isa. lxvi. 6.

And with a brief comment on the first of these prophecies, or rather, on that part of it which concerns our subject, we will conclude what we have to say respecting Hebrew predictions.

IX.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.

CAREFUL readers will have noticed considerable variation in the reports of this memorable discourse as given by Matthew and Luke. Such differences are, however, perplexing only at first view: to those who can search out their meaning, they are not merely intelligible, but deeply instructive; for we have but to keep in mind the main object of each Evangelist, and all will be clear. Now Matthew wrote his Gospel especially for Jews, and to set forth the Lord Jesus as their King; while Luke points out Christ as the Son of man, and is the Evangelist of all converts who, being in Christ, are neither Jews nor Greeks.

Many traces of these diverse aims may be discovered. For instance, the object of the genealogy in Matthew is to prove our Lord's title to the crown of Israel. It, therefore, first shows Him to be a genuine son of Abraham, the father of the nation; and then gives His official pedigree, exhibiting the successive heirs to the crown from David to Christ. But Luke, in placing Him before us as the Son of man, unfolds His natural descent, and that, too, from Adam, the common parent of all men.¹

¹ This consideration, together with two others, will be found to explain all the apparent discrepancies in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke, which, it must be remembered, are both

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 239

Again: our Lord's description of the evil spirit going out of a man is in Matthew concluded with the special application, "Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation." For, as the context itself shows, it is there to be taken as a prophecy of the Jewish people. But Luke gives an entirely different context, expressly said to be pedigrees of Joseph. See Matt. i. 16, and Luke iii. 23. The other two points are—(1) that, if a man's direct line became extinct, the Jews were accustomed to enter his heir upon the record as his son; and (2) that they were in the habit of abbreviating genealogies by the simple process of striking out names; so that a man would often appear as the son of an ancestor who had died a century or more before he was born.

Keeping these facts in mind, we will glance at the lists of the two Evangelists, which, although they agree from Abraham to David, are entirely different from David to Jeconiah. The reason is, however, very simple. David was succeeded by Solomon, whose line occupied the throne until it became extinct in the childless Jeconiah (Jer. xxii. 30). Then the right of the succession passed over to the family of Nathan—another Son of David, from whom our Lord was actually descended—and Salathiel, the son of Neri, became heir to the throne, and, according to Jewish custom, was transferred to the royal genealogical tables as "the son of Jeconiah." After Jeconiah the lists appear to coincide for four generations: for each of them has Salathiel and Zorobabel; Rhesa (בְּרִשָּׁה=the prince) is merely a title of Zorobabel, which seems to have slipped into the text from the margin; Joanna is omitted by Matthew, according to the practice mentioned above; and Abiud and Juda are identical. Abiud had two sons, Eliakim and Joseph. The line of the former ceased with Eleazer, and, consequently, Matthat, of the house of Joseph, became heir to the crown. Matthat had two sons, Jacob and Heli. Jacob died without issue—or, at least, without male issue; for it is very probable that Mary was his daughter—and so Joseph, the son of his younger brother, Heli, became his heir, and was placed on the official genealogy as "the son of Jacob."

It may easily be proved that names are omitted from the record by Matthew in order to square the numbers, and this is a sufficient explanation of the fact that he only mentions twenty-eight generations from David to Christ, while Luke has forty-two. If Mary was Joseph's cousin, married by him, according to Jewish custom, because he was his uncle's heir, the genealogies will of course belong to her as much as to her husband.

and omits the concluding words, because in his Gospel the warning is written for general and individual application.

It is just so with regard to the prophecy on the Mount of Olives. Whatever may be our historical exegesis, the fact remains that the Lord has spoken through the two Evangelists with special reference to two distinct bodies of His people respectively. Matthew writes to convince Jews, and for those unready believers who will have to share much the same fate as Jews by continuing on the earth during the last Week. Therefore, he follows the usual line of Jewish prophecy—that is, he notices very briefly the course of events till the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; and then, passing over the long interval in silence, concentrates our attention upon the last Seven Years, when God will again resume His dealings with His people and their holy city. And, consequently, his warnings and directions apply, not to the siege by Titus, but to the far graver woes of the future, when all nations shall be gathered against Jerusalem to battle.¹

On the other hand, Luke is writing for believers, who might indeed be concerned in the siege by Titus, but who ought to be standing before the Son of man when Antichrist is revealed, and, consequently, require to know but little of the last Week.

In his Gospel the question put to our Lord is simply, When shall this Temple, upon which we are now gazing, be destroyed; and what shall be the signs accompanying its destruction? Therefore his report of the answer enters into particulars of the times

¹ Zech. xiv. 2.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.

immediately following the ascension, and speaks of the temptations, persecutions, and sorrows, which believers would then have to endure; nor does he forget to note that the synagogue would be a principal cause of their trouble.¹ He also gives them a sign by which they might know when to leave Jerusalem, and so escape the horrors of her supreme agony.² Then he

¹ Luke xxi. 12. Compare Matt. xxiv. 9.

² Luke xxi. 20, 21. The sign was, "When ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that her desolation is at hand"; and most clearly was it set before them at the critical time, as we may learn from Josephus (Bell. Jud. ii. cap. xix.). For Cestius Gallus surrounded the city in the autumn of A.D. 66, and on the sixth day succeeded in undermining the Temple, had all but taken it, and so alarmed the Jews that a large number of them were preparing to open their gates. At this crisis he suddenly recalled his soldiers from the place, and retired, as Josephus says, "without any reason in the world." "Had he," the historian remarks, "but continued the siege a little longer, he had certainly taken the city; but it was, I suppose, owing to the aversion God had already to the city and the Sanctuary, that he was hindered from putting an end to the war that very day." This may have been one reason, but there was also another, and the Christians recognized the sign which the Lord had given them: they had seen Jerusalem compassed with armies. And with the signal for flight came also its opportunity. In ordinary circumstances the insurgents at Jerusalem would never have permitted the departure of a numerous body of Christians; but the retreat of Cestius so raised their courage, and inflamed them with such ardour, that they poured out of the gates of the city, pursued their enemies vigorously for more than forty miles on the road to Cæsarea, slew five or six thousand of them, and had almost effected a capture of the whole Roman army. While Jerusalem was thus emptied of its leading spirits, the Christians seem to have quietly fled in the opposite direction, towards the Jordan, and so made good their escape.

It is worthy of notice that, while the sign promised in Luke was so plainly given before the legions of Titus closed in upon the devoted city, the same cannot be said of that which is mentioned in Matthew. For the idea that the Roman eagles, and not the image of the Beast, are "the Abomination of Desolation," is untenable; and if it were not so, the Roman eagles never stood in the Holy Place—that is, in the Temple.

describes the days of vengeance in which she should be destroyed, and adds that from thenceforth she should be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. The close of this long period should be announced by signs in the sun and in the moon, and by convulsions of nature and distress of nations upon the earth; and then the Son of Man should come with power and great glory.

Nothing could be clearer, or more easy of comprehension, than the grand utterance of the Lord as thus presented to us; but since we are considering the future of the Jewish nation, we are just now more nearly concerned with the account given by Matthew.

X.