Scripture does say Jesus had brothers (and sisters). However, Scripture clearly shows they were not uterine brothers. The "brothers" listed identify a different Mary as their mother. Mary
the wife of Cleophas (Clopas) is called their mother in
Matthew 27:56. This Mary is stated to be the mother of James and Joses and is also present at the Cross per St. John's Gospel (
John 19:25). Ergo, when James, Joseph, Simon and Judas are called Jesus’ “brothers” in
Matthew 13:55, this cannot mean uterine siblings based on the fact that St. Matthew names a different Mary as their mother later in his Gospel. (St. Matthew abbreviates this list by naming the oldest two.)
Additionally, Scripture does not call Jesus "a" son of Mary. Rather, He is called THE son of Mary.
In Jewish antiquity, "brother" had a much wider meaning than we modern Westerners use. You cannot impose a 21st century Western nuclear family structure with our own use of “brother” to that of Jewish culture in antiquity. The term had a much broader use in antiquity. Ancient Hebrew culture was tribal. They did not organized themselves into nuclear 'family units' like we do in the modern West. When you impose a Western notion of family (e.g. nuclear family unit) onto an ancient Eastern text, it makes for an extremely poor hermeneutic, and hopelessly skews the correct interpretation of these passages.
Here is the reality of ancient Hebrew culture...
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The units comprising the village mispahah, or kinship group, were the families of early Israel. Because these families were agriculturists, their identity and survival were integrally connected with their material world - more specifically, with their arable land, their implements for working the land and processing its products, and their domiciles - as well as with the human and also animal components of the domestic group. In many ways, the term
family household is more useful in dealing with early Israelite families (although that would not be the case for the monarchical period and later, when domestic unites were more varied in their spatial aspects and economic functions).
Combining family, with its kingship meanings, and household, a more flexible term including both coresident and economic functions, has descriptive merit.
The family household thus included a set of related people as well as residential buildings, outbuildings, tools, equipment, fields, livestock, and orchards; it sometimes also included household members who were not kin, such as "sojourners", war captives and servants." -
Families in Ancient Israel: The Family in Early Israel, Carol Meyers, pgs. 13-14
In describing early archaeological excavation of homes in Israel...
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These dwelling clusters constitute evidence for a family unit in early Israel larger than that of the nuclear family (or conjugal couple with unmarried offspring). Each pillared house in a cluster may represent the living space of a nuclear family or parts thereof, but the shared courtyard space and common house walls of the linked buildings indicate a larger family grouping. Early Israelite dwelling unites were thus complex arrangements of several buildings and housed what we might call extended families. Furthermore, thee compound dwelling unites were not isolated buildings within a settlement of single-family homes." - Ibid, pg. 16
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The family was never so 'nuclear' as it is in the modern West." -
Families in Ancient Israel: Marriage, Divorce and Family in Second Temple Judaism, John J. Collins, pg. 106
Source
Once again, Jesus most certainly had brothers (and sisters). However, Scripture is clear they were not uterine brothers. Mary and Joseph's marriage was not ordinary in that its teleological end was not procreation, but rather to point to the Kingdom of God. Since they were in the presence of the Most High as the parents of the Incarnate Son of God, their life of continence, like that of their Son's, points to the heavenly Kingdom, as opposed to an earthly and carnal one.
It is important to think about this through the lens of the Incarnation.
'
This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut.'" (
Ezekiel 44:1–2)
In Ezekiel 44:1-2, the prophet was given a vision of the holiness of “the gate” of the temple, which would be fulfilled in the perpetual virginity of Mary. No Christian would deny that in the New Testament Jesus is revealed to be the fulfillment of the temple. In John 2:19, when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” the Jews thought he was speaking of the enormous stone edifice that stood in Jerusalem. But, as John tells us two verses later, he was actually speaking of his own body. So if Christ is the prophetic temple of Ezekiel 44 into which God himself has entered for our salvation, who or what is this prophetic gate that is the conduit for God to enter into his temple? Mary is the natural fulfillment. She is the gate through which not just a spiritual presence of God has passed but God in the flesh. How much more would the New Testament gate remain forever closed? The verse says that the door is already shut. And the only reason for it being shut is because the Lord has entered by it; And because of this reason It shall remain shut. Mary is ever virgin. The reason why Mary is virgin is because Jesus was born through her. And because of that reason she will remain a virgin for ever (i.e., her womb will be shut, no one else will enter or exit it).
