If, accordingly, those spoken of as ἀδελφοὶ Ἰησοῦ were merely cousins, and three of these were apostles, it must excite surprise that not only in the Acts (i. 14), after an enumeration of the apostles, the brothers of Jesus are separately particularized, but that also (1 Cor. ix. 5) they appear to be a class distinct from the apostles. Perhaps, also, the passage Gal. i. 19 ought to be understood as indicating that James, the Lord’s brother, was not an apostle. [293] If, therefore, the ἀδελφοὶ Ἰησοῦ seem thus to be extruded from the number of the apostles, it is yet more difficult to regard them merely as the cousins of Jesus, since they appear in so many places immediately associated with the mother of Jesus, and in two or three passages only are two men bearing the same names mentioned in connexion with the other Mary, who accordingly would be their real mother. The Greek word ἀδελφὸς may indeed signify, in language which pretends not to precision, as well as the Hebrew ‏אה‎, a more distant relative; but as it is repeatedly used to express the relationship of these persons to Jesus, and is in no instance replaced by ἀνεψιὸς—a word which is not foreign to the New Testament language when the relationship of cousin is to be denoted (Col. iv. 10), it cannot well be taken in any other than its proper signification. Further, it need only be pointed out that the highest degree of uncertainty exists respecting not only the identity of the names Alpheus and Cleophas, upon which the identity of James the cousin of Jesus and of the Apostle James the Less rests, but also regarding the translation of Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου by the brother of James; and likewise respecting the assumed identity of the author of the last Catholic Epistle with the Apostle Jude. Thus the web of this identification gives way at all points, and we are forced back to the position whence we set out; so that we have again real brothers of Jesus, also two cousins distinct from these brothers, though bearing the same names with two of them, besides some apostles of the same names with both brothers and cousins. To find two pairs of sons of the same names in a family is, indeed, not so uncommon as to become a source of objection. It is, however, remarkable that the same James who in the Epistle to the Galatians is designated ἀδελφὸς Κυρίου (the Lord’s brother), must unquestionably, according to the Acts of the Apostles, be regarded as the son of Alpheus; which he could not be if this expression signified a brother. So that there is perplexity on every side, which can be solved only (and then, indeed, but negatively and without historical result) by admitting the existence of obscurity and error on this point in the New Testament writers, and even in the very earliest Christian traditions; error which, in matters of involved relationships and family names, is far more easily fallen into than avoided. [294]