Simon (brother of Jesus)

• born April 14, A.D. 2

123:6.7His third brother, Si­mon, was born on Fri­day evening, April 14, of this year, A.D. 2.

• started school

127:1.5This year Si­mon started to school, and they were com­pelled to sell an­other house. James now took charge of the teach­ing of his three sis­ters, two of whom were old enough to be­gin se­ri­ous study. As soon as Ruth grew up, she was taken in hand by Miriam and Martha. Or­di­nar­ily the girls of Jew­ish fam­i­lies re­ceived lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion, but Je­sus main­tained (and his mother agreed) that girls should go to school the same as boys, and since the syn­a­gogue school would not re­ceive them, there was noth­ing to do but con­duct a home school es­pe­cially for them.

• placated bellicose playmates by persuasion and nonresistance

127:4.5James and Si­mon grew up try­ing to fol­low Je­sus’ plan of pla­cat­ing their bel­li­cose and some­times irate play­mates by per­sua­sion and non­re­sis­tance, and they were fairly suc­cess­ful; but Joseph and Jude, while as­sent­ing to such teach­ings at home, made haste to de­fend them­selves when as­sailed by their com­rades; in par­tic­u­lar was Jude guilty of vi­o­lat­ing the spirit of these teach­ings. But non­re­sis­tance was not a rule of the fam­ily. No penalty was at­tached to the vi­o­la­tion of per­sonal teach­ings.

• well-meaning boy; dreamer

127:4.7James was grow­ing up to be a well-bal­anced and even-tem­pered youth, but he was not so spir­i­tu­ally in­clined as Je­sus. He was a much bet­ter stu­dent than Joseph, who, while a faith­ful worker, was even less spir­i­tu­ally minded. Joseph was a plod­der and not up to the in­tel­lec­tual level of the other chil­dren. Si­mon was a well-mean­ing boy but too much of a dreamer. He was slow in get­ting set­tled down in life and was the cause of con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety to Je­sus and Mary. But he was al­ways a good and well-in­ten­tioned lad. Jude was a fire­brand. He had the high­est of ide­als, but he was un­sta­ble in tem­per­a­ment. He had all and more of his mother’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and ag­gres­sive­ness, but he lacked much of her sense of pro­por­tion and dis­cre­tion.

• graduated from school in A.D. 16
• worked with Jacob the stone mason

128:2.2This year Si­mon grad­u­ated from school and be­gan work with Je­sus’ old boy­hood play­mate and ever-ready de­fender, Ja­cob the stone ma­son. As a re­sult of sev­eral fam­ily con­fer­ences it was de­cided that it was un­wise for all the boys to take up car­pen­try. It was thought that by di­ver­si­fy­ing their trades they would be pre­pared to take con­tracts for putting up en­tire build­ings. Again, they had not all kept busy since three of them had been work­ing as full-time car­pen­ters.

• Jesus took S. to Jerusalem for Passover

128:3.1This year the fi­nan­cial pres­sure was slightly re­laxed as four were at work. Miriam earned con­sid­er­able by the sale of milk and but­ter; Martha had be­come an ex­pert weaver. The pur­chase price of the re­pair shop was over one third paid. The sit­u­a­tion was such that Je­sus stopped work for three weeks to take Si­mon to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and this was the longest pe­riod away from daily toil he had en­joyed since the death of his fa­ther.

128:3.2They jour­neyed to Je­ru­sa­lem by way of the De­capo­lis and through Pella, Gerasa, Phil­a­del­phia, Hes­h­bon, and Jeri­cho. They re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the coast route, touch­ing Ly­dda, Joppa, Cae­sarea, thence around Mount Carmel to Ptole­mais and Naz­a­reth. This trip fairly well ac­quainted Je­sus with the whole of Pales­tine north of the Je­ru­sa­lem dis­trict.

128:3.3At Phil­a­del­phia Je­sus and Si­mon be­came ac­quainted with a mer­chant from Da­mas­cus who de­vel­oped such a great lik­ing for the Naz­a­reth cou­ple that he in­sisted they stop with him at his Je­ru­sa­lem head­quar­ters. While Si­mon gave at­ten­dance at the tem­ple, Je­sus spent much of his time talk­ing with this well-ed­u­cated and much-trav­eled man of world af­fairs. This mer­chant owned over four thou­sand car­a­van camels; he had in­ter­ests all over the Ro­man world and was now on his way to Rome. He pro­posed that Je­sus come to Da­mas­cus to en­ter his Ori­en­tal im­port busi­ness, but Je­sus ex­plained that he did not feel jus­ti­fied in go­ing so far away from his fam­ily just then. But on the way back home he thought much about these dis­tant cities and the even more re­mote coun­tries of the Far West and the Far East, coun­tries he had so fre­quently heard spo­ken of by the car­a­van pas­sen­gers and con­duc­tors.

128:3.4Si­mon greatly en­joyed his visit to Je­ru­sa­lem. He was duly re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael at the Pass­over con­se­cra­tion of the new sons of the com­mand­ment. While Si­mon at­tended the Pass­over cer­e­monies, Je­sus min­gled with the throngs of vis­i­tors and en­gaged in many in­ter­est­ing per­sonal con­fer­ences with nu­mer­ous gen­tile pros­e­lytes.

128:3.5Per­haps the most no­table of all these con­tacts was the one with a young Hel­lenist named Stephen. This young man was on his first visit to Je­ru­sa­lem and chanced to meet Je­sus on Thurs­day af­ter­noon of Pass­over week. While they both strolled about view­ing the As­monean palace, Je­sus be­gan the ca­sual con­ver­sa­tion that re­sulted in their be­com­ing in­ter­ested in each other, and which led to a four-hour dis­cus­sion of the way of life and the true God and his wor­ship. Stephen was tremen­dously im­pressed with what Je­sus said; he never for­got his words.

128:3.6And this was the same Stephen who sub­se­quently be­came a be­liever in the teach­ings of Je­sus, and whose bold­ness in preach­ing this early gospel re­sulted in his be­ing stoned to death by irate Jews. Some of Stephen’s ex­traor­di­nary bold­ness in pro­claim­ing his view of the new gospel was the di­rect re­sult of this ear­lier in­ter­view with Je­sus. But Stephen never even faintly sur­mised that the Galilean he had talked with some fif­teen years pre­vi­ously was the very same per­son whom he later pro­claimed the world’s Sav­ior, and for whom he was so soon to die, thus be­com­ing the first mar­tyr of the newly evolv­ing Chris­tian faith. When Stephen yielded up his life as the price of his at­tack upon the Jew­ish tem­ple and its tra­di­tional prac­tices, there stood by one named Saul, a cit­i­zen of Tar­sus. And when Saul saw how this Greek could die for his faith, there were aroused in his heart those emo­tions which even­tu­ally led him to es­pouse the cause for which Stephen died; later on he be­came the ag­gres­sive and in­domitable Paul, the philoso­pher, if not the sole founder, of the Chris­tian re­li­gion.

128:3.7On the Sun­day af­ter Pass­over week Si­mon and Je­sus started on their way back to Naz­a­reth. Si­mon never for­got what Je­sus taught him on this trip. He had al­ways loved Je­sus, but now he felt that he had be­gun to know his fa­ther-brother. They had many heart-to-heart talks as they jour­neyed through the coun­try and pre­pared their meals by the way­side. They ar­rived home Thurs­day noon, and Si­mon kept the fam­ily up late that night re­lat­ing his ex­pe­ri­ences.

128:3.8Mary was much up­set by Si­mon’s re­port that Je­sus spent most of the time when in Je­ru­sa­lem “vis­it­ing with the strangers, es­pe­cially those from the far coun­tries.” Je­sus’ fam­ily never could com­pre­hend his great in­ter­est in peo­ple, his urge to visit with them, to learn about their way of liv­ing, and to find out what they were think­ing about.

• brought Jude home after he ran away

128:7.8Je­sus spent a great deal of time this year with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily. He would take them for long and fre­quent strolls up the hill and through the coun­try­side. Be­fore har­vest he took Jude to the farmer un­cle south of Naz­a­reth, but Jude did not re­main long af­ter the har­vest. He ran away, and Si­mon later found him with the fish­er­men at the lake. When Si­mon brought him back home, Je­sus talked things over with the run­away lad and, since he wanted to be a fish­er­man, went over to Mag­dala with him and put him in the care of a rel­a­tive, a fish­er­man; and Jude worked fairly well and reg­u­larly from that time on un­til his mar­riage, and he con­tin­ued as a fish­er­man af­ter his mar­riage.

• married March, A.D. 24

134:1.4Both Si­mon and Jude had for some time wanted to get mar­ried, but they had dis­liked to do this with­out Je­sus’ con­sent; ac­cord­ingly they had post­poned these events, hop­ing for their el­dest brother’s re­turn. Though they all re­garded James as the head of the fam­ily in most mat­ters, when it came to get­ting mar­ried, they wanted the bless­ing of Je­sus. So Si­mon and Jude were mar­ried at a dou­ble wed­ding in early March of this year, A.D. 24. All the older chil­dren were now mar­ried; only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained at home with Mary.

• Simon (brother of Jesus)

138:1.4It had been ar­ranged that the six were to la­bor for two weeks, af­ter which they were to re­turn to the home of Zeb­e­dee for a con­fer­ence. Mean­time Je­sus went over to Naz­a­reth to visit with Joseph and Si­mon and other mem­bers of his fam­ily liv­ing in that vicin­ity. Je­sus did ev­ery­thing hu­manly pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with his ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will, to re­tain the con­fi­dence and af­fec­tion of his fam­ily. In this mat­ter he did his full duty and more.

• at Jesus’ 4th appearance

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.