New Testament Authors

When I go to Bible Books Explorer and peruse the authors of the New Testament I see listed:

James (brother of Jesus)

Judas (brother of Jesus).

When I use the Catholic filter I receive the same results. Is there a way to remove the brother of Jesus when using the Catholic filter in the Bible Books Explorer? Or at least add an asterisk explaining that Catholics do not believe Jesus had any brothers.

I do recognize there are some writings that Joseph had sons from a previous marriage but that would be another asterisk.

I understand it may be difficult to do but just wondering....

Kevin

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Comments

MJ. Smith

I would not be happy with the proposed change. There needs to be consistency in all the Verbum tagging -- tracing back all uses and finding another descriptor would be time consuming. Catholic Bibles include the term "brother of Jesus" e.g.

[quote][Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.”]*

New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Mt 12:47.

The term is familiar to Catholics - taken from the NABRE front material to the book of James:

[quote]This designation most probably refers to the third New Testament personage named James, a relative of Jesus who is usually called “brother of the Lord” (see Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3). He was the leader of the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem whom Paul acknowledged as one of the “pillars” (Gal 2:9). In Acts he appears as the authorized spokesman for the Jewish Christian position in the early Church (Acts 12:17; 15:13–21).

New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Jas.

John W Gillis

an asterisk explaining that Catholics do not believe Jesus had any brothers

But this is not an accurate statement. It is an article of faith that Mary is Ever-Virgin, but that is not the same thing as saying that Jesus had (or has) no brothers. There are a couple long-competing theories as to the specific character of the biological relationship between Jesus and James & Jude, which we don't need to get into here, but the bottom line is that "brother of the Lord" is a Biblical term to refer to those two men (even if it is perhaps a Hebraism), and Catholics should be comfortable with it.

I get that it is annoying to see the term deployed needlessly as an apparent assertion of what I like to call the Protestant Doctrine of the Lost Virginity of Mary, but censoring it or applying Facebook-style "misinformation" warning asterisks does not strike me as a winning response.