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The greater portion of the Christian church affirms the perpetual virginity of Mary. It is claimed that Jesus was her only child and that the conception and birth of him did not destroy her virginity. Is this confirmed by the Evangelists?
It is not. Matthew and Mark say: “Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us?” (Matt. xiii, 55, 56; Mark vi, 3). Luke (viii, 19) and John (vii, 3) both declare that he had brothers.
To maintain this dogma it is affirmed that by “brethren and sisters” is meant cousins. Dr. Farrar, who in regard to this as in regard to most disputed points, assumes a non-committal or conciliatory attitude, concedes that “the natural supposition that, after the miraculous conception of our Lord, Joseph and Mary lived together in the married state, and that James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon, with daughters, whose names are not recorded, were subsequently born to them,” is “in accordance certainly with the prima facie evidence of the Gospels” (Life of Christ, p. 51).