Quite true brother has shades of meaning because Aramaic and other Semitic languages do not differentiate between a blood brother/sister and a cousin or other
For example
The NT was written in Greek, ok -- not all and we must remember also that the words of Jesus were mostly Aramaic or Hebrew or maybe even GReek -- as already shown in SEmitic languages like Aramaic/hebrew there is no differntiating term between a blood brother and a cousin, if one examines the GReek ouch outos estin o tekton o uios Marias adelphos de Iakobou Iose kai Iouda kai Simonos
If the term is that the adelphoi have the same mother then it would be ho adelphos But that is not used. Without the article adelphos is non-specific and non-exclusive and can mean kinsmen, relatives
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If one goes to the Middle-East you can see where a guy will call his cousin his brother. This is true of this clan society just as it was in the time of Christ.
The one thing that strikes me is that if they were the children of Mary, then why did Jesus tell John to take care of His mother? that's a classic affront if he had any brothers through Mary.
At the very best, your statement, Newwoman that things are ambiguous just by looking at one source is a sound statement for peace.
Good job, Cronos in putting this together. (I’m sure we could find many more examples in the Old Testament.)
Many of the finer points are “lost in translation.” As for me, I only read English and see through the 20th/21st century lens. Therefore, I need to trust scholars who make it their business to understand the orignal language and culture.