Real Bible People: Brothers by Another Mother

Carpenters and Farmers, plus an Author

Jesus and His Step-Brothers

We know that James was the oldest step-brother of Jesus. Here we'll take a brief look at the three younger step-brothers: Joseph (also known as Joses), Simon (also known as Simeon), and Judas (also known as Jude). After that we'll take a more in-depth look at Jude. Joses was definitely the second-oldest, and Jude was probably the youngest of the four.

Joseph son of Joseph as a boy was no doubt called by the diminutive Joses, to differentiate him from Joseph Senior, his father. Simeon is the Aramaic pronunciation for the Greek Simon, and the Aramaic version is what he probably heard as a youth.  Jude's real name was Judas, but it has become a custom of the church to call him Jude to differentiate him from Judas of Kerioth, who betrayed Jesus. As early as the first century, he was sometimes identified as Juda.

     (I may have used the above image already, to portray Jesus and his disciples. But it's such a great photo! )

Six Small-Town Construction Workers?

A teknon worked in wood, stone, and masonry

Let's dial back the calendar a bit, to AD 17, when Jesus was about 20 years old and his stepfather Joseph was still alive. He and his family were living in the village of Nazareth, which had a population of 200 or 250 souls. Joseph Senior was a carpenter (construction worker), and he trained his sons in this trade. But how many carpenters do you need for a town of 200 people?

We might say that a new house in Nazareth was built, say, once a year. Building a new house could easily use the talents of six able carpenters, but what do they do for the rest of the year? Small maintenance jobs would be available, but this would barely keep one carpenter busy. How did this large family keep their income coming in?

The answer is in the bigger picture. Galilee was in a big construction phase, led by its Ethnarch, King Herod Antipas. He was busy building cities and towns in the Greek style, with stadiums and race tracks. If he kept his people busy at these tasks, he would please his Roman overlords.

About six miles away from Nazareth was the substantial new city of Sepphoris, which was in an active building phase. The efforts of six skilled construction workers would be welcome there. And at only a six-mile walk, the men of Joseph's family could commute to work and sleep at home!

After the resurrection of Jesus, James the eldest son took up residence in Jerusalem, leaving Joseph's small-town construction business to be inherited by Joses, the second-oldest. Did this mean that the two youngest men would be unemployed between construction jobs? Part of the answer is below.

Six Dry-Land Farmers?

Dry-land farming near Nazareth

Somewhere near Nazareth, the family of Joseph owned a plot of farmland, about 29 acres in size. (Next week I'll go over how it is that we know this.) This was not likely to be an irrigated farm, but was instead a dry-farming operation, dependent on the early and latter rains falling on the fertile soil of Galilee.

The bulk of the work of running the farm fell into two periods: planting, and harvesting. Before planting, there were oxen available to be rented, to loosen and turn over the soil with plows. There were of course other Nazareth families who owned farmland. Planting season and harvesting season were community efforts, when everyone pitched in to help his neighbor. There was also weeding to do, If the farm-owners were careful not to pull up the new grain along with the weeds.

One of Jesus' most famous stories was the Parable of the Four Soils. Jesus didn't learn this story by  watching other people work the farmland. He was a farmer also, and observed for himself what happened when seeds that were sown fell on the road, or on rocky soil, or among thorns, or in fertile earth.

After the resurrection of Jesus, the three youngest of his stepbrothers returned to Galilee. If Joses was occupied by the family construction business inherited from his father, Simeon and Jude must have tended to the family farm to keep the groceries rolling in. One historian reports that "James and Jude were farmers." We know from other historians that Jude especially was tied to the 29-acre family farm, and next week I'll show how we know that.

Four Preachers and a Prophet?

Jesus' brothers went on missionary trips

A prophet, a teacher, and three preachers: We all know the story of Jesus, and how he gained great renown as a prophet and miracle-worker. From the two letters of James in the Bible (one of them at Acts 15) we can tell that he was a skilled teacher. Then from early church history we learn that the three younger brothers returned to Galilee and were preaching the Gospel there.

Based in Galilee, they made missionary trips to Syria and Babylonia and Egypt telling the story of Jesus and how, from the genealogy of Jesus, it could be shown that Jesus was indeed the Messiah foretold by ancient scripture. Some of the trips were extensive, and they brought their wives along. Their expenses were paid by the Jewish Christians in the early church to whom they brought their message.

All four of these men had been to Egypt as youths, and had contacts there, in addition to the contacts they made with pilgrims that came to the Jewish festivals in Jerusalem from Egypt, Syria, and Babylonia. The employment of the younger three as part-time carpenters and farmers afforded them the time to travel and spread the word of the Gospel. All indications seem to be that the eldest, James, stuck closely to the Jewish Christian mother church in Jerusalem.

In the AD 50's, many of the 12 apostles departed on long missionary journeys, and James put together a council of 12 elders to help him govern the church. The apostles John, Matthias, Matthew-Levi, and Philip appear on this list of 12, along with Joses and Jude, two of the stepbrothers of Jesus.

Jude, the Farmer, Scholar and Preacher

Jude was a farmer, missionary and preacher

The most formidable and skillful preacher of the brothers was Jude, whose book in the Bible is actually a seven-minute powerful and evocative sermon. Jude was an avid reader who acquired a wide vocabulary that augmented his sermons, in which he used not only distinctive words, but word play, synonymous and antithetical parallels, and rich sound structures using repetition, rhyme, and alternating sounds.

In addition, Jude was a student of end-times literature, especially that which was followed by the Essene Jews in Qumran. His sermon in the Bible is modelled after the pesher style of prophetic discourse, in which ancient scripture is re-applied to the situations of the writer's current time. Several pesher writings are among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran, but Jude has written the only pesher prophecy written in Greek.

Next week we'll look at four surprising relatives of Jesus, about whom you have likely never heard.