What are the ages of brothers of Jesus Christ?

Answer 1

AnswerMatthew's Gospel says that James, Joses, Simon and Judas were the brothers of Jesus. Presumably, from this order and from other references, James was the oldest of the four. The question remains whether James was older or younger than Jesus.

Many Christians, wishing Mary to have remained a virgin for her entire life, say that James, and therefore the other brothers, were older half-brothers of Jesus. If so, James would probably have been at least ten years older than Jesus. As Jesus was born no later than 4 BCE, and probably much earlier according to inferences in the gospels, this would have made James around seventy years old at the time Paul seems to have described him as a vigorous leader of the Jerusalem Church - improbable in the first century CE.

On the biblical evidence alone, it is somewhat more likely that the brothers were born to Mary after Jesus and were each somewhat younger than the older brother.

Others, seeing the difficulty in James, Joses, Simon and Judasbeing either half-brothers or younger brothers of Jesus, say that they were not brothers at all, but merely cousins. In this case, we have no biblical information to compare their ages with that of Jesus.