One common argument many Roman Catholic apologists in favour of the perpetual virginity of Mary is that the authors of the New Testament were limited in their word usage due to Aramaic not having a word for "cousin," so the terms "brother" and "sister" were used of the relatives of Jesus we read about in Matt 12:46-49 and other texts. This argument is fallacious on many counts, and one cannot help but conclude that apologists who use this argument (e.g., Patrick Madrid; Karl Keating) are trying to pry open up any and every possible escape hatch because a highly unlikely possible position is being adopted a priori on grounds that are not exegetical. The following provides a sound refutation of this argument:
Some who hold to the Hieronymian view argue that the phrase “brothers of the Lord” has its roots in the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christian community, and that the woodenly literal phrase in Aramaic (which had no precise word for “cousins,” and so used the Hebraism) was handed down to the subsequent Greek-speaking community in the form of hoi adelphoi tou kyriou, which then made its way into the NT. However, Meier has shown that Josephus, when referring to James, designates him ho adelphos tou kyriou (The Jewish Antiquities [20.9.1 § 200], cited in John P. Meier, “Jesus in Josephus: A Modest Proposal,” CBQ [1990]: 76-103). This is significant, for not only did Josephus write independently of the NT writers or other Christian influences, but it is clear that Josephus knew of the distinction between αδελφος and ανεψιος (he uses the latter for “cousin” twelve times in his works; see Meier, Brothers,” 19. N. 33), even clarifying the Hebrew of Gen 29:12 (where the Hebrew has אָח and the LXX has αδελφος) with a more precise paraphrase: “For Rebekah my mother is the sister of Laban, your father. They had the same father and mother, and so we, you, and I, are cousins [ανεψιοι]” (cited in Meier, “Brothers,” 19). Hence, “when Josephus calls James ‘the brother of Jesus,’ there is no reason to think he means anything but brother,” ibid. (Eric D. Svendsen, Who is My Mother? The Role and Status of the Mother of Jesus in the New Testament and Roman Catholicism [Amityville, N.Y.: Calvary Press, 2001], 294 n. 31).
