> From: Ajig Alcalde <ajig@max.ph.net>
> Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996
> Subject: ADELPHOI?
> To: CIN Ask Father (Q&A on Catholic Faith)
>
> Dear Fr. Mateo,
>
> In all the discussions about Jesus' brothers (ADELPHOI),
> it's been a Catholic position that ADELPHOI can be
> understood to mean more than 'blood brother'. It can mean
> relatives, cousin, kinsman, etc. What about the Greek word
> used for sisters, as in Jesus' brothers and sisters? Can
> this Greek word translated as 'sisters' also mean female
> kinsmen? Is that usage as common as the extended sense of
> ADELPHOI?
>
> In Christ,
> Ajig Alcalde (Catholic)
> ajig@mail.ph.net
Dear Ajig,
It is not "a Catholic position" that Greek words of the adelph-
family have a wider range of meaning than blood or uterine
brother/sisterhood. The meaning of these words is a fact of
Greek lexicography; it is not a religious matter. Their meaning
is much broader than English "brother/sister".
The adelph- words with feminine endings can refer to women.
Menander (dramatist of 4th/3rd century B.C. Athens) in a fragment
of his play "The Farmer", line 12, uses "adelphe" to mean
"half-sister". In The Oxyrynchian papyrus IV, 744 a man Hilarion
calls his wife Alis "adelphei". In the collection "Royal
Correspondence of the Hellenistic Period", Text 36, pp. 156-163,
King Antiochus III calls his wife and queen, Laodice, his
"adelphe", though she is known to be his cousin.
Mary, the wife of Clopas, is called Our Lady's "adelphe" in John
19:25. It is wholly unlikely that two daughters of the same
parents should have the same name. Our Lady and "the other Mary"
(Matthew 27:61, 28:1) were relatives but not uterine sisters.
The feminine "adelphai" in Matthew 13:56 and Mark 6:3 likewise
are to be translated "relatives".
Sincerely in Christ,
Father Mateo
- Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit -
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