and following, vi. 3; Luke viii. 19, and following; John
ii. 12, vii. 3, 5, 10; _Acts_ i. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 25.]

[Footnote 3: That these two sisters should bear the same name is a
singular fact. There is probably some error arising from the habit of
giving the name of Mary indiscriminately to Galilean women.]

[Footnote 4: They are not etymologically identical. [Greek: Alphaios]
is the transcription of the Syro-Chaldean name Halphai; [Greek:
Klopas] or [Greek: Kleopas] is a shortened form of [Greek:
Kleopatros]. But there might have been an artificial substitution of
one for the other, just as Joseph was called "Hegissippus," the
Eliakim "Alcimus," &c.]

[Footnote 5: John vii. 3, and following.]

[Footnote 6: In fact, the four personages who are named (Matt. xiii.
55, Mark vi. 3) as sons of Mary, mother of Jesus, Jacob, Joseph or
Joses, Simon, and Jude, are found again a little later as sons of Mary
and Cleophas. (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; _Gal._ i. 19; _Epist.
James_ i. 1; _Epist. Jude_ 1; Euseb., _Chron._ ad ann. R. DCCCX.;
_Hist. Eccl._, iii. 11, 32; _Constit. Apost._, vii. 46.) The
hypothesis we offer alone removes the immense difficulty which is
found in supposing two sisters having each three or four sons bearing
the same names, and in admitting that James and Simon, the first two
bishops of Jerusalem, designated as brothers of the Lord, may have
been real brothers of Jesus, who had begun by being hostile to him and
then were converted. The evangelist, hearing these four sons of
Cleophas called "brothers of the Lord," has placed by mistake their
names in the passage _Matt._ xiii. 5 = _Mark_ vi. 3, instead of the
names of the real brothers, which have always remained obscure. In
this matter we may explain how the character of the personages called
"brothers of the Lord," of James, for instance, is so different from
that of the real brothers of Jesus as they are seen delineated in John
vii. 2, and following. The expression "brother of the Lord" evidently
constituted, in the primitive Church, a kind of order similar to that
of the apostles. See especially 1 _Cor._ ix. 5.]

[Footnote 7: _Acts_ i. 14.]

His sisters were married at Nazareth,[1] and he spent the first years
of his youth there. Nazareth was a small town in a hollow, opening
broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain
of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four
thousand, and it can