Did Jesus have brothers and sisters?

The short answer

Yes, the Gospels say he did. Mark and Matthew name four brothers, James, Joses, Judah and Simon, and say he had sisters too. Some churches read these as cousins, or as Joseph’s children from an earlier marriage.

What the record says

When Jesus came home to teach, his neighbors in Nazareth listed his family by name:

“Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judah, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”

Mark 6:3

Matthew tells the same scene:

Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? Aren’t all of his sisters with us?

Matthew 13:55 to 56

Joses is a short form of Joseph. The sisters are never named, and we are not told how many there were.

John adds that for a time his brothers did not believe in him:

For even his brothers didn’t believe in him.

John 7:5

Many readers take these brothers and sisters as younger children of Mary and Joseph. Others, following long church tradition, read them as cousins or as Joseph’s children from before he married Mary. The Gospels do not settle the question.

How Son of Man tells it

Son of Man is a novel. It imagines the years the Gospels skip. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. In chapter six, The Brothers, the house in Nazareth is full: Miriam, James, Joseph, Simon, Martha, Jude and little Amos. A baby sister, Ruth, is born in chapter eight. James is ten and tired of living in his older brother’s shadow. When a neighbor boy says “your brother’s the smart one,” James comes home and hits him. Yeshua catches his wrist and will not hit back, and James shouts that he is not his father.

“No,” Yeshua said. “I’m not your father.”

That evening he sits beside James in the yard and shows him how to cut with the grain.