Who are the "brothers" of Jesus?

The Gospels clearly speak of the brothers of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we Catholics believe and affirm that our Lady is always a virgin, She only had one child, Jesus, and she had no sexual intercourse either before or after childbirth, always remaining virgin.

How then can we explain this reality of the brothers of Jesus?

Let's check the scriptures.

Matthew chapter  13:55

“13:55 Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?”

We have four names of brothers of Jesus. James and Joseph, Simon  and Judas

Let's get the most important of all, James because we know the names of his father and his mother.

James brother of Jesus, who is this man? Well if we check the Saint Paul's letter to the Galatians in chapter 1: 18-19, Saint Paul says that he went to Jerusalem and there he did not find any other apostle except Cephas, who is, Peter and James brother of the Lord.

Galatians Chapter 1 18-19

“1:18* Then after three years* I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. 19 But I did not see any other of the apostles, only James the brother of the Lord.”

We know then that this James who is named as brother of the Lord, is an apostle, but if we check the list of the 12 apostles, who is this James?

There are two James, James the greater, and James the Lessor. James the greater is the son of Zebedee, brother of St. John, well, so he is not the brother of Jesus. The other James, the lessor, nicknamed the lessor, is the son of Alphaeus, this you can clearly see is in the lists of various apostles,

Matthew chapter 10: 2-4, Mark chapter 3:16: 19, Luke chapter 6: 13-16, all three lists bring two James, one son of Zebedee, the other son of Alphaeus, we already identify that he is not the son of Joseph.

So some people might say:

No, but Mary was Joseph's widow and married another guy and had children with another man. But the fact is that we know who the mother of James is and the mother of James is not the mother of Jesus. And we see at the foot of the cross, if we check the texts of the Gospel that speak about Mary, we will see that she was accompanied by three other women, who were these women?

Mathew chapter 27:55-56

“27:55 There were many women there, looking on from a distance,* who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him.56 Among them were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

We see three women together with our Lady. One of them unnamed, who is the mother of the sons of Zebedee, we see that in the chapter 15:40 of St. Mark, that probably the mother of the sons of Zebedee was called Salome, the fact is that St. Mark speaks in this same verse that Mary the mother of James, the younger and Joseph (Joses), was there at the foot of the cross
.

“40* There were also women looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome.”

The Gospels thus attest that there was a Mary who was the mother of James the Lessor and Joseph, but this Mary was not the mother of Jesus. So who was she? Could the so-called "brothers" of Jesus really be "cousins" of him? This is deduced from the reading of the Gospel of St. John: "At the cross of Jesus stood his mother and the sister of his mother, Mary of Cleopas, and Mary Magdala" (19:25).

“19:25*  Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala.”

St. John clearly states that there was, at the foot of the cross, a sister of Mary Most Holy, that is, an aunt of Jesus; but this Mary is here presented as the wife of Cleophas, while in the other Gospel she is taken as the wife of Alphaeus. We can conjecture that Cleopas and Alphaeus were the same people, with a Greek and a Jewish name, or that this Mary, the aunt of Jesus, had married twice, one with Alphaeus, conceiving James, because of all the lists, only James is called a son of Alpheus, the others are called the son of Mary, And  another with Cleophas, with whom she had other children.

So far, it has been clearly stated that "James, brother of the Lord," had another father and mother. And that this mother was, in fact, Jesus' aunt. In biblical language, we easily perceive that brother, in fact, means any male relationship that has a blood connection. It is the Semitic language, as is also seen in the Old Testament. Abraham was called Lot's brother; however, when one finds the genealogy, Lot is discovered to be his nephew, the son of his brother.

The biblical texts are, therefore, in perfect harmony with the Catholic Tradition and the faith of the Church of two thousand years.

To conclude, we need to understand something that is very important to us Catholics:

our certainty about our Lady's virginity does not stem from the Bible but stems from our faith and from the 2000-year-old church tradition.

What happens is that our tradition, in the 2000 year church faith, is in perfect condition harmony with the sacred scripture. But the purpose here is not to base our Lady's perpetual virginity on the bible, but to show that the bible does not absolutely enter into any contradiction with our faith ABOUT our Lady's virginity, so there are very clear ways of harmonizing the two things, because after all, the brothers of Jesus have another father and another mother.


Source: https://padrepauloricardo.org/episodios/quem-sao-os-irmaos-de-jesus