Nazareth names four of Jesus’ brothers. The second is Joses in the Textus Receptus and Joseph in the usual critical text. Other witnesses offer John or mixed forms. The man is not made or unmade by one ending, but Matthew’s list still calls for a name.
“Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?” — Matthew 13:55
Why the copies wandered
Joses is a shortened form related to Joseph. Both names were common, and the difference in Greek can be small. Mark 6:3 clearly reads Joses in the parallel list. That gives critics a ready account of the received Matthew: a copyist remembered Mark and changed Joseph to Joses.
The traffic need not run only that way. Joseph was the familiar name of Jesus’ legal father, and it was far more common to a copyist’s eye. A rare or shortened Joses could be expanded into Joseph. The appearance of John in some witnesses shows the looseness that can enter a list once the first form is unsettled.
The received reading also has a striking local fit. Matthew has already named Joseph in the infancy narrative and then ceased to mention him. Nazareth now distinguishes the brother Joses from the household’s former head. That does not prove the reading, but it removes any claim that the shorter name is senseless or artificial.
The point of the list
The townspeople are not honoring Jesus. They reduce him to what they think they know: a carpenter’s son, Mary’s child, the brother of familiar men, and kin to sisters still living among them. Their list is meant to close the question of his authority. “Whence then hath this man all these things?”
Matthew uses their knowledge to expose their unbelief. The incarnation was not a disguise. The Son truly entered a family, learned a trade in a known town, and lived among neighbors who could name his relations. Their familiarity should have made them careful witnesses; instead it became an excuse to despise him.
Neither Joses nor Joseph changes that doctrine. Yet the broad transmission of Joses, its agreement with Mark, and the ordinary pull toward the more familiar Joseph support the received form. Parallel agreement is not automatically scribal agreement. Two evangelists may name the same brother alike because that was his name.
The list also prevents the claim that “brothers” must mean distant spiritual kin. Sisters are mentioned immediately afterward, and the townspeople appeal to a known household. The perpetual-virginity debate should not determine the spelling, but the narrative setting should determine the ordinary force of the relations.
Joses appears again as a name connected with another Mary near the crucifixion. Common names can identify different people in one Gospel, just as several Simons and Marys do. A copyist tempted toward Joseph may be reaching for familiarity, not trying to merge identities.
The town’s offense remains the tragic center. They possess correct family data and draw the wrong conclusion about the Son. Familiarity without faith can catalogue every human relation and still miss the Father who revealed him.
Sources and further reading
- Matthew 1:16–25; 13:53–58; Mark 6:1–6.
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, note on Matthew 13:55.
- Frederick H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament.