Well since you are not sure......allow me to say it plainly and simply to you.....
When you read Matthew 13:55-56.......
"Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? 56Aren't all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?"
"Brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas means BLOOD relatives of Jesus. They were His 1/2 brothers with Mary and Joseph being their parents."
You and the RCC in an attemp to keep Mary a "Perpetual Virgin" refer to these people as cousins or something else.
I said and it is really, really easy to verify.......
“There is no separate word for cousin, half-brothers/sisters, or step-brothers/sisters in Hebrew or Aramaic.
They were not His cousins or His brethren in the faith! They were his blood BROTHER relatives.
Once again, you ignored the question asked of you. You tend to do that when it clearly shows your position is not supported from Scripture.
You stated “The word used in the Greek New Testament for "brothers" is
adelphoi, which means
"from the womb" and literally means brothers who are born from the same mother.”
I then simply asked you to name the brothers (plural) of Joseph when in Acts 7:13 we read
“And at the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh.” The Greek word
adelphoi is used here for brothers. A request you ignored, as so many others.
Joseph of course we know had 11 brothers, all sons of Jacob. But only one of them shared a mother with him. Both he and Benjamin were children of Rachel. This passage is referring to all of his brothers that are sons of Jacob, and there are 4 different biological mothers in the group. We see the term
adelphoi used for the brothers of Joseph as well in the Greek Old Testament. In Genesis 42:3 we even read that “ten” of Joseph’s brothers (
adelphoi) went to Egypt to buy grain. The only one that didn’t accompany them was the one who shared a biological mother with Joseph – Benjamin. None of the others did. But they are still his
adelphoi even though they were not born of the same womb. It’s quite evident that your claim that usage of the term
adelphoi in Scripture to denote only brothers with the same biological mother is false.
But the story of Joseph and his brothers does open another can of worms doesn’t it? You have stated that Catholic teaching is that these “brothers” of Jesus are really cousins. That is actually not correct. Catholic teaching is that Mary is ever-virgin. The exact identify of these brothers is not formal Catholic teaching but rather falls in the realm of theological opinion.
There is of course another opinion about the identity of these brothers, and you provide insight into that when you cite Matthew 13:55 –
"Isn't this the carpenter's son?” From the perspective of those asking the question, Jesus is the biological son of Joseph. And the other theological opinion is that Joseph was a widower when he married Mary, and these are children from a previous marriage, and just like the eleven “brothers” of Joseph, the community would have viewed them as being “brothers” (
adelphoi) to Christ This understanding professes that Mary was a consecrated virgin when she married Joseph who agreed to provide for her care.
There is actually nothing in Scripture that contradicts this view. And there is one quite strong indication it is true. When the angel approaches Mary, she and Joseph are betrothed, which is not the same thing as our understanding of engagement. They were legally married; they simply weren’t living together yet and the marriage had not been consummated. This is why Joseph was going to have to divorce her. But when Mary is told by the angel that she was going to conceive and bear a son, she questions the angel about how that was going to happen.
That would not be a normal response. Mary was quite familiar with the stories of other women who had been told by an angel or prophet they would bear a child (Sarah, Hannah, the Shunnamite woman), and none of them ever questioned how it was going to happen. They simply assumed they would conceive a child naturally with their husband. The angel speaks to Mary of a future event; if Mary had been planning in the future to consummate her marriage with Joseph she would have reached the same very normal conclusion that she and Joseph were going to have a son. But instead she questions how this is going to happen, which only makes sense if there were no plans for any children in her future.
I don’t hold to either theory over the other in particular, and in reality they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
But so far, we’ve shown how the word “
adelphoi” in Scripture is used to identify nephews, cousins, and half-brothers who are not born from the same womb. Why you continue to insist the word is limited to the definition you prefer when Scripture contradicts that view, I have no clue.