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The relevant portion of my argument:

>> John 19:25 lists the women at the cross of Jesus as "his [Jesus'] mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the [wife] of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene."

In other words, you have three "Marys:" Jesus' mother (who I'll call BVM, for "the Blessed Virgin Mary," Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. The King James bible actually gets it right with the punctuation: John always puts the word "and" (trans. of "kai") between each item in a list. So, we know that "his mother's sister, Mary the [wife] of Cleophas" is actually one person.

This seems strange. How could a woman named Mary have a sister named Mary? That simply wasn't done! Well, in ancient times, there was no concept of an "in-law." Mary of Cleophas was apparently BVM's sister-in-law.

From the books of Luke, Matthew and Mark, we find that there is again another "Mary" at the resurrection. This Mary is defined as the "mother of James the lesser and of Joses." (Mt 27:56)

James the less also has a brother named Jude, according to Luke 6:16: "and Judas, [the brother] of James." We can't be mixing up Jameses either, because Luke 6:14 pairs the other James up with John. We know the other James is the brother of John. For instance, Matthew 4:21 refers to, "...James [the son] of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father."

So, we have James, Joses and Judas who are sons of a woman named Mary who is not the mother of Jesus. And we know that we have at the same time a sister-in-law of the mother of Jesus who is also named Mary. But don't we know that James, Joses and Judas are sons of Alphaeus? How could they be sons of Mary, the wife of Cleophas?

Here's where the business of translation gets tricky. The King James bible calls James, "the [son] of Alphaeus." Why the brackets? Because the word, "son" does not appear in the original text. James is simply James of Alphaeus. Judas is simply Judas of James. Mary is simply Mary of Cleophas.

[Actually, that's Mary of "Clopas," in fact. The "e" and the "h" are inventions of the King James Bible. The authors of the King James bible sometimes changed names to distinguish between two people of the same name. For example, Judas the saint became known as Jude, while Judas Iscariot remained Judas. Why change "Clopas" into "Cleophas?" One of the disciples on the road to Emmaus was named Clopas, and there's no reason to doubt he's Mary's husband.]

While we know Clopas is a person, there is a city called Alphaeus in Northern Palestine. It seems odd for Jesus to have in-laws from that far North, but it seems stranger still for a Jew to be given the Greek name of a city. So, the two disciples who are called "[sons] of Alphaeus" are probably simply from Alphaeus.

In any event, we know that one apostle James is James of Alphaeus, and brother of Judas and Joses. We know the other James cannot possibly be the brother of Jesus, because he is the son of Zebedee. And in this case, we know that Zebedee is the name of James' father, because we meet him in Matthew 4:21, fixing the boat.

So, at this point, it seems more than likely that Jesus had cousins named James, Joses and Judas, and that neither James is Jesus' brother. <<