As to the form of the houses, it is, in Syria, so simple and so imperiously regulated by the climate, that it can scarcely ever have changed.] The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was rather numerous.

Jesus had brothers and sisters,[1] of whom he seems to have been the eldest.[2] All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages who were named as his brothers, and among whom one, at least--James--had acquired great importance in the earliest years of the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german.

Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary,[3] who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person[4]), and was the mother of several sons who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus.

These cousins-german who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers opposed him,[5] took the title of "brothers of the Lord."[6] The real brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his death.[7] Even then they do not appear to have equaled in importance their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose character seems to have had more originality.

Their names were so little known, that when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented themselves to him.
[Footnote 1: Matt.xii.46, and following, xiii.