(NRSV) 7 After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not wish[a] to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him. 2 Now the Jewish festival of Booths[b] was near. 3 So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; 4 for no one who wants[c] to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.’ 5 (For not even his brothers believed in him.) 6 Jesus said to them, ‘My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil. 8 Go to the festival yourselves. I am not[d] going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.’ 9 After saying this, he remained in Galilee.
10 But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were[e] in secret.
There were the usual comments (in a Protestant study) about Jesus' brothers being half brothers. Now the reason I say Protestant is that most of the Christian world believes Mary had no more children after Jesus and remained a virgin. Tradition holds that these are Joseph's sons from a previous marriage, or refers to a clan culture where close relatives (cousins) are called brothers or sisters,
I'd like to propose that God knew best. Our Creator God knows culture and he knows biology. If Jesus had half brothers and yet was the Messiah who was killed, there would be great demands placed on his brothers to take his place (particularly from those followers who didn't believe in the Resurrection). That would have been common in that culture. It still is today.
But God also designed microchimerism--the passing of fetal cells between a pregnant woman and her babies. Most of the studies in the last century have involved male offspring. Children leave behind their fetal cells in their mothers. There is strong biological evidence that these cells (particularly males) protect the mother for the rest of her life. And those fetal cells can also appear in the bloodstreams of the woman's future children. Because of microchimerism there may also be the grandmother's cells passed to the children which the mother got from her mother. Do you suppose God didn't have a plan to have only Jesus and not other men have Mary's cells in their blood stream?
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