Simon, Brother of Jesus: A Name in a Crowd's Question

A Man of Two Verses

Simon is a man who lived in the era of the New Testament, placed by the chronology at around 4 BC to AD 33 (era placed on Ussher's chronology, 1650). The dossier reckons him to the tribe of Judah. His father was Joseph and his mother Mary, and his brothers were Jesus, James, Joses and Jude. Everything Scripture records about him fits into two verses: Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3. He speaks no word that is written down. He goes nowhere that is reported. He is a name inside somebody else's question.

Named Among the Brothers

Both mentions are lists, and both lists are spoken by people who are looking at Jesus and trying to place him. Matthew records the question this way: "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas?" (Matthew 13:55). Mark records it with the trades and the names slightly rearranged: "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judah, and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" They were offended at him" (Mark 6:3).

That is the whole of it. Simon's name is the third or fourth item in a family roll called out by people who knew the household. In Matthew he stands third, between Joses and Judas. In Mark he stands last, after Judah. The variation matters less than the shared point: whoever assembled this question could count the brothers on their fingers, and Simon was one of the fingers.

Notice what kind of mention this is. It is not a scene. No one records Simon doing anything, believing anything, refusing anything. He is evidence in an argument he is not part of. The crowd is reasoning from the ordinariness of the family to the ordinariness of the man in front of them, and Simon's name is part of the proof. If Jesus has a brother named Simon whom we know, the reasoning runs, then what is all this?

The Offense That Was Not His

Mark adds a line that Matthew does not: "They were offended at him" (Mark 6:3). It is important to read that carefully. The offense belongs to the people asking the question, not to Simon. Scripture does not say here that Simon was offended, and it does not say that he was not. The dossier records no sin of Simon, no failure, no refusal, no misstep. He is not blamed and he is not praised. To supply him with either would be to write a chapter the Bible did not write.

This is worth sitting with, because we are used to Bible figures who act. Simon's entire presence in Scripture is a matter of being related to someone. He is defined, in the only two places he appears, by the household he came from and the brother who was under discussion.

What We Do Not Know

We do not know whether Simon married; no children are named. We do not know what he did for a living, whether he followed his brother, what he thought of the offense taken in Mark 6:3, when he died, or where. We are not told his age relative to his brothers, and the two lists do not agree closely enough in order for us to build anything on their sequence. No scene is told about this person at all: every mention is a list or a passing note. His sisters are referred to in Mark 6:3, but they are not named either.

Any fuller life of Simon that circulates is not drawn from these two verses. It is honest to stop where the text stops.

The Line to Christ

Simon's connection to Christ is not one he argued for or preached. It is simply this: in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 he is named as a brother of the one the crowd is questioning. The carpenter's son, the son of Mary, has a brother named Simon.

That is the strange gift of these two verses. The people who spoke them meant them as a dismissal. They listed the brothers in order to make the point that this family was known, local, unremarkable, and that nothing extraordinary could come out of it. The names were meant to close the case. Instead the names were written down, and Simon's among them, so that every later reader could see exactly how ordinary the household of Jesus looked from the outside.

Mark says plainly what came of the question: "They were offended at him" (Mark 6:3). Simon's name sits inside that sentence, on the list of things that were used against his brother. For a man of two verses, that is not nothing. He is a witness, without a word of testimony, to the reality of the family Jesus belonged to.