Who Is My Mother and Who Are My Brothers?
Jesus and a house divided
The Gospels contain an episode where Jesus refuses to see his mother and brothers. It happens near the beginning of his ministry in Mark and occurs in all three of the synoptic Gospels.
I am focusing on this particular episode thanks to a small selection from the Gospel of Philip, a Valentinian text discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library.
Below is Marvin Meyer’s translation of the selection:
Three Women Named Mary
Three women always walked with the master: Mary his mother, <his> sister, and Mary of Magdala, who is called his companion. For “Mary” is the name of his sister, his mother, and his companion.
My previous article focused on identifying this mysterious sister of Jesus named Mary.
However, I couldn’t help but notice a second issue with the text. One could not claim that Mary, the mother of Jesus, had always walked with Him if it can be demonstrated in the Gospels that she and Jesus were physically in different locations at some specific time.
