Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ta00est@unccvax.uncc.edu (elizabeth s tallant) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Jesus' siblings (was Re: Mary) Message-ID: Date: 9 Jun 90 02:38:11 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of NC at Charlotte Lines: 69 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [Elizabeth Tallant referred to a passage where Jesus is told that his mother and sister were looking for him. Donald Hosek commented that at least one verse of this passage was not in the oldest manuscripts (though it turns out that this verse is redundant, so removing it doesn't change anything. In all fairness, Donald cited other arguments.) --clh] If this passsage is not in the oldest manuscripts, then please tell us why it is found in the King James Version, the American Standard Version, and the Living Bible Paraphrase. > James and Judas and also his sisters"). Well, one possibility is > that these are spiritual siblings, which fits in well with the > above passage. As for as being spiritual siblings, all of the disciples were Jesus' brothers, and women such as Mary Magdeline (pardon the spelling) were Jesus' sisters. Yet, the Bible differentiates between all of these people and Jesus' biological siblings. >Another thing to consider is a linguistic artifact... --- stuff deleted---- > mentioning). Hebrew, Aramaic and every other semitic language that I've looked at has words for "son", "daughter", "mother", > "father", "uncle", "aunt", "brother", "sister" and I believe also > "grandmother" and "grandfather" (but don't quote me on those last > two... for some reason, no matter what language it is, I have the > hardest time with words for various relations). Note that there > are _no_ words for cousins and the like. Idiomatically, one uses > On the contrary, Arabic (which is a very ancient language) makes distinctions between first cousins and brothers and sisters. Furthermore, at least in areas directly north of Palestine, there is no word for cousins which are farther removed than FIRST cousins. In other words, a first cousin is called a cousin but a second or third cousin is not called a cousin. > written in Aramaic or some other semitic language. The use of the > Greek words for brother and sister in the gospels is more likely > an artifact of the translation than anything else. > Wasn't John the Babtist called the cousin of Jesus? If he was, then wouldn't there be a distinction between brothers and cousins? Furthermore, just because some Semantic languages do not have words for cousins does not in any way, shape, or form rule out the probability that brother means brother and sister means sister. All that this finding does is include the possibility that brother could have been used to mean cousin. > Don Hosek "When I was younger, I would throw Elizabeth [As to why KJ, ASV, and LB have the verse in question: These three editions are less likely than most to omit verses because they are not in older manuscripts. In the case of KJ, some of the manuscripts involved had not been found then. ASV and LB tend to stick closer to the KJ tradition than some other translations. (LB is not at any rate an independent witness to the text, since it is a paraphrase, which does not claim any independent scholarship.) At any rate, TEV and RSV both give the verse in the text, and footnote the fact that some manuscripts don't have it. This implies that there is enough uncertainty that we shouldn't be surprised to see different translators adopting different views. --clh]