MARY, THE WIFE OF CLEOPHAS (Maple n row KXwirill). St. John (xix. 25) calls her the sister of the mother of Jesus. Now there stood,' he says, ' by the cross of Jesus, his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Mag dalene.' There is a little ambiguity in the words, and the punctuation of the A. V. rather favours the opinion that his mother's sister and Mary the wife of Cleophas were different persons, and that four and not three individuals are spoken of. And it has been thought that his mother's sister was Salome, the wife of Zebedee and the mother of James and John. The objection to the other and more received opinion, on the ground that the two sisters were not likely to have the same name, is of very little weight. We have seen [JERUSALEM] that the high-priest Onias III. had a brother also named Onias, who eventually succeeded him in his office under the adopted name of Menelaus. We have the authority of the earliest traditions for opinion that our Lord's mother had at least one sister called Mary. Indeed, it is an old opinion, that Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary, had three daughters of that name by different hus bands ; and Dr. Routh, in his Reliquiee Sarrce, gives us from Papias the scholar of St. John (ex Cod. MS. Bibl. Bodl., 2397), the following enu meration of four Marys of the N. T. Maria, Mater Domini ; 2. Maria, Cleophm sive Alphei uxor quae fuit mater Jacobi Episcopi et Apostoli, et Simonis, et Thadei, et cujusdam Joseph ; 3. Maria Salome uxor Zebedei, meter Johannis even gel•stm et Jacobi ; 4. Maria Magdalene. It is further stated in this fragment of Papias, that both Mary the wife of Cleophas and Mary Salome were aunts of our Lord, and consequently sisters of the Virgin Mary. In Matt. xxvii. 56, we read—instead of Maple i7 ro0 10tunra—Mapla i1 TOO 'IaK(43ou Kai Tocri? Mirnp ; and in Mark xv. 4o, Maple it Tog 'Iathpou roD pupa; sal 'Loaf) Arnp. She was, therefore, besides being the wife of Cleophas, the mother of James the less and Joses. Now, in
Matt. (x. 3), where the apostles are mentioned name by name, this James is called the son of Alpheus ; the other James being the brother of John and son of Zebedee. Hence Mary the mother of James was Mary the wife of Alpheus. How comes she to be called the wife of Cleophas? St. John's words are, Mepla i Tog KNonra, and may mean Mary the daughter, not the wife, of Cleophas • and the fragment of Papias, to which we have referred, says that St. John calls her Maple it ro0 lOwnra for this or some similar reason. Maria Jacobi minoris et Joseph mater soror fuit Maxim Matris domini, quern Cleophm Joannes no minat vel a patre eel a gentilitatis familii, vel cause. The more genera] opinion is now, that Cleophas and Alpheus were the same person, the two Greek words being only different ways of ex pressing the same Hebrew name 4k*n. The sons of Mary and Alpheus are generally allowed to be those who are called the brethren of the Lord, and from the way in which they were spoken of by the Jews, they were probably brought up with Jesus, and belonged to the same household. Most likely Joseph, the husband of the younger Mary, and Alpheus, the husband of the elder one, had both died before our Lord's ministry began, and the two sisters thenceforth lived together. This would account for the sons of Alpheus being called the brethren of the Lord, and throw light on seve ral passages of the N. T. (see Matt. xiii. 55, 57 ; Mark iii. 2i, 31-35 ; Mark vi. 3-4 ; John vii. 3-5); and may not their want of faith and occasional opposition to his work account in some degree for the ]ow place which they occupy in every classifi cation of the apostles, and perhaps for our Lord's transferring his mother from their care to that of the beloved apostle at his death, while they give point to the words, If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple' (Luke xiv. 26). —M. H.