Jennifer Henkel Supporter Bible/History Middle School Teacher, Lover of the OT!

We are not told anything in Scripture about Mary's immediate family. All we know is that Mary lived in Nazareth, and she was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph (Luke 1:26-27). She had a cousin named Elizabeth, an elderly woman who was married to a priest and lived "in a Judean town" (Luke 1:39). 

After Jesus is born, Joseph and Mary have a normal married life, and Mary gives birth to at least four sons and several daughters (Matthew 13:55).

Additional information about Mary's family is pure conjecture and mythology; none of it is Biblical. The Bible says very little about the human mother of Jesus, I believe, for good reason. Scripture wants us to focus on Jesus, not his human mother. 

In fact, the last recorded words of Mary are found in John 2:5, where, at the wedding at Cana, she tells the servants,"Do whatever he [Jesus] tells you." A wise admonition that we can follow!

November 11 2013 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Melody Sutter-fisher Supporter Minister - Evangelist - Heart for the Homeless

It seems the answer to her having no brothers is arrived at by deductive reasoning as told by an answer found on the website Gracethrufaith. As far as sisters are concerned, I have found no mention of any anywhere. Here is what I have gleaned from gracethrufaith.

It was in support of Dr. Scofield's (author of the Scofield Bible) position that because of a blood curse on the Davidic royal line (Jer. 22:30), the Lord’s claim to the Throne of David could only have come through Mary, a descendant of David’s, and then only if she had no brothers.

According to Numbers 36:8 this would give her the right of inheritance as long as she married within the tribe of Judah. (Joseph was of both the tribe of Judah and the cursed royal line.) Conceiving the Lord without the participation of her betrothed husband sidestepped the blood curse because her son would have none of Joseph’s blood. When Mary and Joseph were wed, Jesus became Joseph’s son and heir, the only man in the last 2600 years to have a legal right to the Throne of David.

Further evidence that Mary had no brothers is that after the crucifixion she became the responsibility of the apostle John, not a brother as would have been Jewish custom had she had any. Knowing she had nowhere to go, the Lord saw to this from the cross (John 19:26-27). Also, the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible indicates that it was Jewish custom for a son-in-law to be adopted when the father of the bride had no son, as was the case with Mary’s father. Some say this is why Joseph is called a son of Heli (Mary’s father) in Luke’s genealogy of the Lord (Luke 3:23).

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