from
something sordid and repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with
it, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much
differ from what it is to-day.[3] We see the streets where he played
when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways which separate
the dwellings. The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor
shops, lighted by the door, serving at once for shop, kitchen, and
bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one
or two clay pots, and a painted chest.

[Footnote 1: We shall explain later (Chap. XIV.) the origin of the
genealogies intended to connect him with the race of David. The
Ebionites suppressed them (Epiph., _Adv. Haer._, XXX. 14).]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3; John vi. 42.]

[Footnote 3: The rough aspect of the ruins which cover Palestine
proves that the towns which were not constructed in the Roman manner
were very badly built. 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. 55, and following;
Mark iii. 31,