We looked at a smattering of chapters from Leviticus with a focus on Jewish festivals. The assignment was to locate New Testament mention of the prominent celebrations: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles.

References to Passover abound in the New Testament and everyone found at least one. References to Pentecost, too, while not plentiful, were well-known from the Christian Pentecost liturgy: Acts 2:1.

Mention of Tabernacles proved scarce with some among us coming up empty.

But a few diligent souls found John 7:2. And among those who did, some read beyond verse 2 and encountered the reference to "Jesus' brothers" in verses 3 and 5.

"Who are these brothers? Are they cousins?" one sweet lady asked.

One participant, a former Lutheran, shared that she had always been told that Jesus was Mary's firstborn, that the firstborn was special to God, but that Mary had other children after Jesus.

I said to her, flatly, "Well, we aren't Lutheran."

Then I suggested that "brothers" in this passage, especially "unbelieving brothers," may refer to fellow Jews. In other places, especially in the rest of the New Testament outside of the Gospels, "brothers" may mean believers in Jesus, sometimes Jew and sometimes Gentile.

But I concluded by saying that there are a couple of instances in the Gospels where "brothers" means blood relations of Jesus. I took them to Mark 6:3 where Jesus' brothers are named and, of course, their mention in Matthew 12:46-49. There are parallels; I didn't cited every Gospel occurrence, just representative passages to give them a sense of how the term αδελφος is used.

When our leader joined us, we put the question to him and he went into the classic explanations, recalling also the designation of James as "the brother of the Lord" which I had failed to mention. I suppose the Orthodox "widower" position is more tenable than the Catholic "cousins" view.

Yet, I still wonder why polygamy isn't proposed. It's the first thing that I think of. Jim said such an arrangement is an argument from silence but that's not an accurate assessment. It is a speculative arrangement, but no more speculative than the idea that Joseph was a widower.