Exactly. This is what “begging the question” actually means. We know these must have been cousins because Mary was ever-virgin, and because she was ever-virgin, they must have been cousins.
St. Paul barely wrote anything on Jesus’s life and ministry. He was all about the crucifixion and the post-resurrection symbolic stuff.
The best we have on Mary is basically Galatians 4:4:
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,”
Of course, like all things Biblical, there’s a zillion ways to interpret that last phrase both worldly and spiritual. On the more worldly side, many say it indicates that Mary had been properly married to Joseph, etc. Which to some would imply consummation.
To me, the important thing is what is not stated. Nowhere does Paul “Gee whiz guys, this is amazing! Mary was a virgin and stayed a virgin. This guy Jesus was born in a very special way!”
That would be telling except Paul doesn’t seem to care much about Jesus healing lepers, giving great parables and sermons, etc., either.
Given the tales of other gods/demi-gods being born from a virgin that were current at the time, there is no real reason to believe Mary was a virgin after marrying Joseph.
Remember, all these saints, angels, etc. plus Mary that some people pray to for holy favors and such are not gods! They’re um, um, well, not gods, that’s for sure. Because, because …, well they’re just not. Gotta go.
IN Zealot, Aslan suggests that mentioning Jesus as “son of Mary” is a deliberate slight by the former neighbors. He says that people were known by their father, and by saying “is not his mother Mary?” rather than mentioning his supposed father, they were emphasizing they knew that he at least was illegitimate. Presumably the whole village knew the gossip that already Mary was knocked up before Joseph married her - heck, he knew before he decided whether to marry her or not. It got left in the gospel because the original story was left un-“fixed” because second century redactors did not understand the significance of the snide remark.
No. If Mary were a widow, it wouldn’t be uncommon to refer to him as the son of Mary. Especially if Joseph were long dead. The point wasn’t to comment on his paternity, but to make clear which Jesus he was, and it was probably a common name. If Joseph was long-enough dead that there might be people around who hadn’t known him, it made perfect sense to refer to Jesus as Mary’s son.
Also, I don’t know how old the tradition is, but while a person is called by the father’s name to Torah, or when being named for the first time (albeit, father and mother’s name are both used in recent circles in liberal Judaism), it’s very long been traditional to use “son or daughter of [mother’s name]” when saying a prayer for a sick person. Don’t know why-- just pointing out there are times when the mother’s name is used.
And at any rate, even if Joseph had married Mary after she was already pregnant, it wouldn’t be the first shotgun wedding ever. People would probably still assume Joseph was Jesus’ father.
If there was a shotgun involved in their wedding, it would indeed have been the first shotgun wedding ever! 
You know what I did there.
OK. According to my Uncle, it was standard locution to refer to cousins as “uncle’s son,” “aunt’s daughter,” or whatever the specific relationship was, and that was a standardized practice. If you asked a native speaker of Aramaic, “What is the word for your father’s nephew?” the answer would be "Either ‘aunt’s son,’ or ‘uncle’s son,’ depending on whether the relationship was through a brother of sister. In other words, “father’s nephew” was not the standard term, but “aunt’s/uncle’s son/daughter” was. A native Aramaic speaker would NOT look at you when you asked that question, and say “Well, you just said it: ‘father’s nephew,’” because that was not the standard term.
So while there was not a single word, there was a standard locution.
If the gospel meant “cousins,” it would have said “Are not these the children of his aunts and uncles?” or “Are these not his uncles’ and aunts’ daughters and sons?” The exception would be if there were a reason to imply an especially close relation, but the relationship would already have to be established. And my uncle, who has read the gospels, is of the opinion that the opposite of a close relationship is implied.
He also says there is a word for “family” that could be fairly translated “relatives.” It would have been a choice to say “Is this not Jesus’ family/relatives?” Given that when, in Luke, the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth is described by a work that is translated as everything from “cousins” to “kinswomen,” but NEVER sisters, Greek clearly also has such a word available as well.
I think it is clear that we are meant to understand that these are Jesus literal brothers.
The only special pleading I would find remotely plausible is that these are Joseph’s children from a previous marriage. But since they still appear to be living at home when Jesus is in his 30s, and Joseph seems to be dead, I feel that is unlikely. The oldest my have possession of the home, and have his own wife and children there, and be taking care of Mary, since Jesus isn’t doing it, but that’s about the most I will believe. Albeit, a situation like that would explain why there’s little love for Jesus there.
Also, the reason I don’t doubt there is a real Aramaic story under there some place, is that the Greek gospelers screwed up an Aramaic idiom.
“The son of a carpenter” or better “Carpenter son of a carpenter,” was a phrase that meant “Only a very wise man can understand this.”
The phrase is in there not because Joseph was a literal carpenter, but because when Jesus shows up, reporting that he has a following outside Galilee, someone says “Only the son of a carpenter could explain that,” to mean he’s skeptical of the claim, and it got misunderstood, not being a Greek idiom, to be a reference to the profession of Joseph, once also pursued by Jesus.
Speaking strictly secular, rather than invoking divine interference … Nazareth at the time was a small village, from what I understand - maybe a few hundred people? Like any small town, everyone knew everyone else’s business. If it was discovered that some teenage girl was knocked up, most of the village would know - particularly if her prospective husband had also found out.
Also, from what little I’ve read about the situation - as I understood it, Jewish law at the time said that single women who became pregnant would be stoned as fornicators. This does not seem to have been widely enforced, considering that Joseph had the choices to “put her away” (send her somewhere else to live, dump he problem on some other household?) or as the voices in his head at night said and he later decided, to marry her anyway.
Another point Aslan made was to say that the actual word was “tektos”(?) which has been translated as carpenter but actually means more like construction worker or more generally, builder, day labourer, etc. - it also being unlikely in a village of several hundred people in Galilee that there’s enough wood and enough woodwork to keep a carpenter busy full time.
Another suggestion was that Jesus started off as a follower of John the Baptist (hence his baptism bit) but when he later eclipsed him, then Paul morphed him into the son of God, the writers of the gospels again jumped through hoops to explain the relationship.
Pretty much that is entirely 100% bogus.
“Urban Legends of the New Testament: 40 Common Misconceptions” covers this in depth. Pretty much the denotation and connotation was indeed, 'carpenter".
OK, that’s actually a decent argument which I hadn’t thought of before. I’m still not convinced, but this is a better argument to me than the “The text says ‘brothers’!” thing that I usually hear.
Another opinion to consider, yes-but there are others. Is there a reason to definitely put his scholarship and reasoning above others?
Becuase no scholar (other than Aslan, who is very controversial) accepts the Tektōn= day worker.
Read John Maces cite.
The expression as encountered in the Talmud is “nagar,” and it means “carpenter.” “Nagar ben nagar,” or “Carpenter who is the son of a carpenter” is an expression that is a euphemism for (don’t ask me why) “Torah scholar.” I’m pretty sure the expression is present in commentary older than the Talmud, although no references come to mind immediately (I’m pretty sure it’s NOT, for example, in Pirkei Avot).
At any rate, though, I am not a gambler, yet I’d still bet money it’s behind the idea that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters.
Which is the whole reason he gets represented as an old man. Even without the stupidity involved in reducing Mary’s value to a little bit of skin, or the levels of obsession which have led some theologians to claim that she stayed physically virgo intacta during and after the birth, most people find the notion of marriage with love and without sex extremely weird unless there is a medical problem.
Ouch!
That’s the Eastern Orthodox explanation (also the one in the Infancy Gospel of James) so yea, it might be the case. And that’s fascinating about what the idiom “son of a carpenter” means. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t a literal carpenter, but who knows, it might.
Well, within a religious perspective that weights scripture and early tradition equally strongly, this is actually a totally sensible perspective, since if scripture and tradition are equally true they can’t contradict each other.
It’s totally reasonable why a non-Christian might doubt early tradition, but there’s no reason why a non-Christian should think the Gospels are without error either, so in either case I don’t think there’s a strong reason for saying “the gospels are correct, early tradition is wrong”.
It’s true that the gospels are probably earlier than the traditions about Mary’s perpetual virginity, but they’re not that much older (we don’t know when the Protevangelium was written, but if you date it late at 200 AD and you date the Gospels early at 65 AD, it was no more than 135 years afterward, which by the standards of a lot of religious texts, and some secular texts from ancient history, isn’t horrible).
Funny, we were just talking about this last night. The Firebug came home with a handout from his Social Studies where they’re learning about culture. One aspect of culture that the handout briefly discussed was religion, and it distinguished between monotheistic and polytheistic religions.
The Firebug asked which category Christianity fell into.
My wife: “Monotheism.”
Me: “It’s complicated.”
I think a lot of stuff in the gospels is made up out of whole cloth; however, this one particular story (Jesus returning to Galilee with his disciples) I think has a strong possibility of being authentic, or at least being very, very old, because I think it has Aramaic roots. The reason I think it has Aramaic roots is the screwing up of the idiom. Also because it isn’t very flattering in that it admits to Jesus not working miracles in the presence of non-believers, but mainly because of the Aramaic strain.
The reason on the other had, that I think a lot of stories are made up, is that they conform the Septuagint readings of the Tanakh, even where the translation is very bad.