The Lord's Brethren

The Lord's Brethren Before beginning a study of the Word of God regarding the Lord’s brethren, let us first look at the historical background which made an issue of who was the Lord’s family. This question is far from new; in fact, it had become a flaming issue by 300 A.D. when Christianity west of the Euphrates River divided into two camps over the issue. The one camp was in Antioch in the country now called Turkey where Aramaic was the language spoken. The other school had its home base in Alexandria, Egypt, where Greek was the scholar’s language. The leader in the Greek school was Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. Born into a non-Christian family, he became a Christian later in his life. In his early non-Christian days, he believed in Isis, Osiris, Horus and other such Egyptian gods. Undoubtedly this early learning influenced his thinking when he became a Christian. As Bishop of Alexandria, he proposed a new doctrine, namely, that Mary was the mother of God. This idea appealed to the newly-converted Christians because their former gods had mothers, fathers, sisters and some of them had wives and even concubines. Thus the doctrine of Mary’s being the mother of God fit in comfortably with their previously held beliefs. Heading the Antioch camp was Nestorius, a graduate of the school at Antioch and chaplain to the emperor in Constantinople. Nestorius, along with Christendom east of the River Euphrates, believed that Mary was the mother of Jesus our Lord but definitely not the mother of God. Nestorius considered Cyril’s doctrine of Mary’s being the mother of God a dangerous heresy. Thus the divergent doctrines on Mary not only stirred religious controversy in the Roman Empire, but also caused a struggle over power to determine which city— Constantinople or Alexandria—was the most prominent and influential in matters of church doctrine. The Alexandrian Bishop pointed out that none of the original twelve apostles had ever gone to Constantinople or to Alexandria. But since P