pharoah

I was reading another thread in this forum and this verse caught my attention:

What caught my attention is the assertion that Jesus had a brother named Joseph. This struck me as highly unusual, because I can't recall any geneology in the Bible where a son has the name of his father. Is this the only known instance of this occurrence?

Chris Weimer

Er, well, first of all, Jesus' father is never named in Mark. Furthermore, the brother's name isn't Joseph (Ιωσηφ) but Joses (Ιωσησ, Ιωσητος).

pharoah

I'm well aware of that. I probably should have used the Matthew quote. I only used Mark because he originated it.

There are some manuscripts of Matthew 13:55 (and possibly Mark 6:3) that have Joseph instead of Joses, so I presume that the Greek is different also. My understanding is that some scholars believe that Joses and Joseph are the same Greek name.

Anat

Well, there was a Babylonian amora named Abba bar Abba ie Abba son of Abba (and Abba means father, just to make it more confusing). Quite rare, but not non-existent.

Chris Weimer

Yes, but Matthew inherited it from Mark. You can't impose Matthew's advanced narrative on Mark like that.

Joses is probably the Hellenized name of Joseph, although from Josephus we learn that it is Ιωσηφος and not Ιωσης. I suppose its possible that both names are Joseph - I'm not positive.

premjan

bar abba = barabbas?

Benni72

Why couldn't Joseph Jr. have had another father?

rickP

bar abba? Is that a new swedish pop band?

Ben C Smith

Richard Bauckham says the following on page 6 of Jude and the Relatives of Jesus:

Ἰωση̂ς represents Jose (יוסה or יוסי), which was a common abbreviated form of the common Jewish name Joseph (יוסף). The abbreviated name was that of several rabbis, before and after the New Testament period, occurs in a letter of the early second century A.D. from Muraba'at (Mur 46 line 1), and is found ten times in Palestinian synagogue inscriptions from the centuries after the New Testament period.

I do not know whether any such naming occurs in the rest of the Bible. However, papyrus Yadin 12, dated to the year 125 and helpfully transcribed online by K. C. Hanson, has an instance of Jesus son of Jesus.

Ben.

MrsYoungie

Passage Luke 1:59:

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah,
Passage Luke 1:60:
but his mother spoke up and said, "No! He is to be called John."


The above is about the naming of John the Baptist. I once asked a co-worker who was a JW about this passage, because even today Jews do not name children after living relatives and she just gave me some mumbo jumbo about naming children in ancient times. I tried to point out that in all the lengthy geneologies, there was not a single instance of a son named for his father. Why would they suggest that this baby be named for his father? Was John the Baptist's father dead? Or is this just an anomaly?