side.[7] That cousins in some parts of the world actually are
confused in common speech with brothers may be admitted; but to the
ordinary Greek reader "brothers" meant brothers, and "cousins"
something different. No one, not starting with the theories of St.
Jerome, let us say, on marriage and matter and the decencies of the
Incarnation, would ever dream from the Greek narrative of the
episode of the critical neighbours at Nazareth, who will not accept
Jesus as a prophet because they know his family--a delightfully
natural and absurd reason, with history written plain on the face of
it--that Jesus had no brothers, only cousins or half-brothers at
best. When History gives us brothers, and Dogma says they must be
cousins--in any other case the decision of the historian would be
clear, and so it is here.

We have then a household--a widow with five sons and at least two,
or very likely more, daughters. Jesus is admittedly her eldest son,
and is bred to be a carpenter; and a carpenter he undoubtedly was up
to, we are told, about thirty years of age (Luke 3:23). The dates of
his birth and death are not quite precisely determined, and people
have fancied he may have been rather older at the beginning of his
ministry. For our purposes it is not of much importance. The more
relevant question for us is: How came he to wait till he was at
least about thirty years old before he began to teach in public? One
suggested answer finds the impulse, or starting-point, of his
ministry in the appearance of John the Baptist. It is a simpler
inference from such data as we have that the claims of a widowed
mother with six or seven younger children, a poor woman with a
carpenter's little brood to bring up, may have had something to do
with his delay. In any case, the parables give us pictures of the
undeniable activities of the household.