The Fifth Word about the Brothers of the Lord

Abstract

This article is a response to A. P. Lebedev’s study “The Brothers of the Lord” (1905), which is more than a hundred years old. Such a belated appeal to the famous scientific work is explained by the fact that the problem that interested the venerable scientist has very limited and stable solutions that have been reproduced for centuries — from the IV to the XIX century and further, to the present day. The article discusses three classical versions of the origin of the brothers of the Lord (the children of Mary the Virgin, the children of Joseph the Betrothed from his first marriage, the cousins of the Savior). The fourth version of A. P. Lebedev with a special variant of cousin relationship is critically analyzed. The author suggests a fifth version, according to which the list of ‘brothers’ in the Gospels consists of brothers (by Joseph) and cousins of the Lord.