Trade: Here's another source on Adelphos
The most natural way to understand "brothers" is that the term refers to the sons of Mary and Joseph and thus to brothers of Jesus on his mother's side. To support the dogma of Mary's perpetual virginity, a notion foreign to the NT and to the earliest church fathers, Roman Catholic scholars have suggested that "brothers" refers either to Joseph's son's by an earlier marriage or to sons of Mary's sister, who had the same name [...]. Certainly "brethren" (adelphos) can have a wider meaning than male relatives (Acts 22:1). Yet it is very doubtful whether such a meaning is valid here for it raises insuperable problems. For instance, if "brothers" refers to Joseph's sons by an earlier marriage, not Jesus but Joseph's firstborn would have been legal heir to David's throne. The second theory — that "brothers" refers to sons of a sister of Mary also name "Mary" — faces the unlikelihood of two sisters having the same name. All things considered, the attempts to extend the meaning of "brothers" in this pericope, despite McHugh's best efforts, are nothing less that farfetched exegesis in support of a dogma that originated much later than the NT [...]. — D. A. Carson, Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, volume 8 (Zondervan, 1984).
More as regards adelphos, the Greek has words it can use for cousins (suggenēs”, “anepsios”) or other kin (Luke 1:36,58; 2:44; 21:16; 14:12; Mk. 6:4; Jn. 18:26; Acts10:24; Rom .9:3; 16:7,11,21, and anepsios: Col 4:10), which are different from the word for brethren (“adelphos”) which often refers to biological siblings.
One debater states that
“Adelphos and adelphe are used 368 times in the NT.
91 times it means sibling.
22 times it means countrymen.
12 times it means fellow man.
243 times it means spiritual sibling.
However, the reality is that the dispute about PMV cannot be determined by the use of adelphos alone, due to the lack of precision, while the principal of exceptions and the context in which adelphos is used play a strong role. While adelphos can also often mean brethren in the larger sense, when adelphos is used with a parent (not necessarily named), or when one is named as a brother of someone then that it is less likely to be used in the wider sense, (avoiding duplicates: Mt. 1:2,11; 4:18,21; 10:2; 14:3; 17:1; Mk. 5:37; 15:40; Jn. 11:2;
The often mentioning of “His mother, and his brethren” together, along with the naming of 4 brethren strongly suggests immediate family, rather than extended, and thus some resort to another scenario, that these brethren were because Joseph was a widower with sons from a previous marriage*. There is no reason to resort to this explanation except to disallow Scripture from contradicting a tradition of men, contrary to the most reasonable meaning, that of a normal consummated marriage, resulting in children.
Matthew 13:55-57: "Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. " Meanwhile unlike here, Luke 7:12 makes note of the case when a man was “the only son of his mother.”
"But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother. " (Galatians 1:19)
"And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. " (Mark 3:32)
"After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days. " (John 2:12)
"These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. " (Acts 1:14)
Rather than the weight of Scripture warranting PMV, instead it flows from doctrine close to that of demons (1Tim. 4:1-3) which certain so-called "church fathers" held, as shown in post 247. (perpetual Marian virginity)
*The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states, In the Apocryphal Gospels, the attempt is made to supply what the canonical Gospels omit. They report that Joseph was over eighty years of age at his second marriage, and the names of both sons and daughters by his first marriage are given. As Lightfoot (commentary on Galatians) has remarked, “they are pure fabrications.” Theophylact even advanced theory that they were the children of Joseph by a levirate marriage, with the widow of his brother, Clopas. Others regard them as the nephews of Joseph whom, after the death of his brother Clopas, he had taken into his own home, and who Thus became members of his family, and were accounted as though they were the children of Joseph and Mary. According to this view, Mary excepted, the whole family at Nazareth were no blood relatives of Jesus. It is a Docetic conception in the interest of the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary. All its details, even that of the advanced age and decrepitude of Joseph, start from that premise.
Which would have made him 82 when he fled to Egypt with Mary and Jesus, and then 92 when the incident with Jesus in the Temple at age 12 happened.
I have no doubt that sometime between the age of 12 and the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, Joseph died.
The complete absence of any reference to him after the Temple incident except for people thinking He was the carpenter's son, which does not mean Joseph was alive, lends itself to that. Plus Jesus passing the care of Mary to John at the cross indicates that too.