Sir, - Vincent Browne's interviewee Father Jerome Murphy O'Connor (The Irish Times, January 13th) thinks that the "brothers of the Lord" mentioned in the Gospels were sons of St Joseph by a previous marriage. This opinion is by no means universally held.
A fellow-Dominican of Father Murphy O'Connor, Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, a respected biblical scholar, founder of the Ecole Biblique where Father Murphy O'Connor teaches, wrote thus: "It is very probable, if we unite Scripture and Tradition and follow the historical tradition of Hegesippus, that the brethern of the Lord were not the sons of St Joseph."
Stronger still is the word of St Jerome, father and doctor of the Church especially versed in sacred Scripture: "We, however, as we wrote in our treaties against Helvidius, understand the brothers of the Lord to be not the sons of Joseph, but cousins of the Saviour, sons of Mary the aunt of Our Lord, of whom it is said that she was the mother of James the Less and Jude, who, as we read elsewhere in the Gospel, were called brothers of the Lord. That cousins sometimes were called brothers the whole Scripture bears witness."
These texts are given in my book Joseph, Son of David (pp 63-65). Note that nowhere in the Gospels are these "brothers of the Lord" spoken of as sons of Joseph. When Joseph went to Bethlehem for the census, his sons should have accompanied him; there is no mention of them; none elsewhere in the context of the Holy Family.- Yours, etc.,
Michael O'Carroll, C.S. Sp., Blackrock College, Blackrock, Co Dublin.