The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was rather numerous.  Jesus had brothers and sisters,[1] of whom he seems to have been the eldest.[2] All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages who were named as his brothers, and among whom one, at least—­James—­had acquired great importance in the earliest years of the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german.  Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary,[3] who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person[4]), and was the mother of several sons who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus.  These cousins-german who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers opposed him,[5] took the title of “brothers of the Lord."[6] The real brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his death.[7] Even then they do not appear to have equaled in importance their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose character seems to have had more originality.  Their names were so little known, that when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented themselves to him.

[Footnote 1:  Matt. xii. 46, and following, xiii. 55, and following; Mark iii. 31, and following, vi. 3; Luke viii. 19, and following; John ii. 12, vii. 3, 5, 10; Acts i. 14.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. i. 25.]

[Footnote 3:  That these two sisters should bear the same name is a singular fact.  There is probably some error arising from the habit of giving the name of Mary indiscriminately to Galilean women.]

[Footnote 4:  They are not etymologically identical. [Greek:  Alphaios] is the transcription of the Syro-Chaldean name Halphai; [Greek:  Klopas] or [Greek:  Kleopas] is a shortened form of [Greek:  Kleopatros].  But there might have been an artificial substitution of one for the other, just as Joseph was called “Hegissippus,” the Eliakim “Alcimus,” &c.]

[Footnote 5:  John vii. 3, and following.]

[Footnote 6:  In fact, the four personages who are named (Matt. xiii. 55, Mark vi. 3) as sons of Mary, mother of Jesus, Jacob, Joseph or Joses, Simon, and Jude, are found again a little later as sons of Mary and Cleophas. (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; Gal. i. 19; Epist.  James i. 1; Epist.  Jude 1; Euseb., Chron. ad ann.  R. DCCCX.; Hist.  Eccl., iii. 11, 32; Constit.  Apost., vii. 46.) The hypothesis we offer alone removes the immense difficulty which is found in supposing two sisters having each three or four sons bearing the same names, and in admitting that James and Simon, the first two bishops of Jerusalem, designated as brothers of the Lord, may have been real brothers of Jesus, who had begun by being hostile to him and then were converted.  The evangelist, hearing these four sons of Cleophas