and Ambrose), and has recently been ably advocated by Bishop Lightfoot (l.c.), followed by Dr.
Plumptre (in the introduction to his Com. on the Ep. of James).
(3) The cousin-theory regards the brethren as more distant relatives, namely, as children of
Mary, the wife of Alphaeus and sister of the Virgin Mary, and identifies James, the brother of the
Lord, with James the son of Alphaeus and James the Little, thus making him (as well as also Simon
and Jude) an apostle. The exceptive εἰ μή, Gal. 1:19 (but I saw only James), does not prove this,
but rather excludes James from the apostles proper (comp. εἰ μήin Gal. 2:16; Luke 4:26, 27).
This theory was first advanced by Jerome in 383, in a youthful polemic tract against
Helvidius, without any traditional support,^338 but with the professed dogmatic and ascetic aim to
save the virginity of both Mary and Joseph, and to reduce their marriage relation to a merely nominal
and barren connection. In his later writings, however, after his residence in Palestine, he treats the
question with less confidence (see Lightfoot, p. 253). By his authority and the still greater weight
of St. Augustin, who at first (394) wavered between the second and third theories, but afterwards
adopted that of Jerome, it became the established theory of the Latin church and was embodied in
the Western services, which acknowledge only two saints by the name of James. But it is the least
tenable of all and must be abandoned, chiefly for the following reasons:
(a) It contradicts the natural meaning of the word "brother," when the New Testament has
the proper term for cousin Col. 4:10, comp. also συγγενήςLuke 2:44; 21:16; Mark 6:4, etc.), and
the obvious sense of the passages where the brothers and sisters of Jesus appear as members of the
holy family.
(b) It assumes that two sisters had the same name, Mary, which is extremely improbable.
(c) It assumes the identity of Clopas and Alphaeus, which is equally doubtful; for Ἀλφαῖοςis
a Hebrew name (חלפי), while Κλωπᾶς, like Κλεόπας, Luke 24:18, is an abbreviation of the Greek
Κλεόπατρος, as Antipas is contracted from Antipatros.(d) It is absolutely irreconcilable with the
fact that the brethren of Jesus, James among them, were before the resurrection unbelievers, John
7:5, and consequently none of them could have been an apostle, as this theory assumes of two or
three.
Renan’s theory.—I notice, in conclusion, an original combination of the second and third
theories by Renan, who discusses the question of the brothers and cousins of Jesus in an appendix
to his Les évangiles, 537–540. He assumes four Jameses, and distinguishes the son of Alphaeus
from the son of Clopas. He holds that Joseph was twice married, and that Jesus had several older
brothers and cousins as follows:- Children of Joseph from the first marriage, and older brothers of Jesus:
a. James, the brother of the Lord, or Just, or Obliam. his is the one mentioned Matt. 13:55;
Mark 6:3; Gal. 1:19; 2:9, 12; 1 Cor. 15:7; Acts 12:17, etc.; James 1:1Jude 1:1, and in
Josephus and Hegesippus.
b. Jude, mentioned Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Jude 1:1; Hegesippus in Eusebius’ Hist. Eccl.
III. 19, 20, 32. From him were descended those two grandsons, bishops of different
(^338) The passage quoted from Papias Maria Cleophae sive Alphaei uxor, quae fuit mater Jacobi episcopi et apostoli,"is taken
from Jerome and belongs not to the sub-apostolic Papias of Hierapolis (as has been supposed even by Mill and Wordsworth),
but to a mediaeval Papias, the writer of an Elementarium or Dictionary in the 11th century. See Lightfoot, p. 265 sq.
A.D. 1-100.