Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But whenever the nativity comes into dispute, all who reject it, as prejudicing the truth of Christ's flesh, want to make the Lord himself deny that he was born, on the ground that he said, "Which one is my mother, and which ones count as my brothers?" Let Apelles, then, hear what we have already answered Marcion in that treatise in which we challenged him on his own gospel -- the matter of this pronouncement needs weighing. [2] In the first place, no one would ever have announced to him that his mother and his brothers were standing outside unless it were plainly settled that he possessed a mother and brothers at all, and that these very people were the ones then being announced -- either already known beforehand, or just then discovered to be there on the spot. This is true even though the heresies have accordingly stripped this out of the gospel: that his father was believed to be Joseph the carpenter, and his mother Mary, and his brothers and sisters were very well known to those who marveled at his teaching. [3] "But they had announced to him, by way of testing him, a mother and brothers he did not have." Scripture does not say this -- and it is not one to keep silent when something is done to test him: "Behold," it says, "a teacher of the law rose up, testing him"; and elsewhere, "And the Pharisees came to him, testing him." No one forbids supposing that this too was done by way of a test. But I do not accept what you import beyond what Scripture says. [4] Furthermore, the matter of the test would need some basis. What did they think there was to test in him? "Surely it was whether or not he had come into the world by birth -- for had his answer denied it, that is precisely what the tempter's announcement was fishing for." But no temptation aimed at exposing his self-knowledge on a point it doubts by testing arises so suddenly, without some prior question already raising the doubt that forces the temptation. [5] Moreover, if there was never anywhere any stirring of debate about Christ's nativity, on what ground do you argue that they meant, by this test, to probe into a question they never actually raised? We add further: even if he were to be tested about his birth, he certainly would not be tested this way, by the announcement of persons who could exist even if Christ had not been born. We are all born, and yet not all of us have either brothers or a mother; [6] one may even have a father more readily than a mother, and uncles more readily than brothers. So a test of his nativity simply does not fit, since it could stand quite well without any mention of mother or brothers at all. It is far easier to suppose that, being sure he had both mother and brothers, they were testing rather his divinity than his birth -- whether, acting from within, he would know what was happening outside, when tested with the lie of announcing the presence of people who were not actually present. Except that even so the cleverness of the test would have come to nothing: [7] for it could well have happened that those they announced as standing outside he knew to be actually absent, on some prior information of illness, or business, or travel. No one tests in a manner where he knows he risks the blush of being caught out. [8] So, with no fitting basis for a test available, the plain honesty of the announcer stands cleared: his mother and brothers really had arrived. But let Apelles also learn the reasoning behind an answer that denies mother and brothers only for the present moment. [9] The Lord's brothers had not believed in him, as is recorded even in the gospel published before Marcion's time; and his mother is likewise nowhere shown to have clung to him, while the other Marys and Martha are frequently found in dealings with him. Indeed, their unbelief is plain right here: while Jesus was teaching the way of life, while he was preaching the kingdom of God, while he was at work healing sicknesses and afflictions, with strangers riveted on him, his own nearest kin kept their distance. [10] In the end they arrive and stand outside, not even coming in -- giving no thought, evidently, to what was going on inside, nor even waiting patiently, as though they had something necessary to bring, at the very moment he was most occupied; instead they interrupt all the more and want him called away from so great a work. I ask you, Apelles -- or you, Marcion -- if, by chance, while playing at the board or arguing about actors or charioteers, you got summoned away on account of some such report, would you have failed to say, "Which is my mother, which are my brothers?" [11] Christ, preaching and proving God, fulfilling the law and the prophets, dispersing the darkness of so many past ages -- did he use this saying unworthily, to strike the unbelief of those standing outside, or to shake off the interruption of those calling him away from his work? Besides, for denying his birth there would have been a different place, time, and turn of speech than one that could just as well be uttered by someone who did have both a mother and brothers: when indignation disowns parents, it is not denying them but rebuking them. [12] Finally, he made others preferred, and in showing the merit of that preference -- namely, attentiveness to the word -- he demonstrates on what terms he denied mother and brothers: by the very standard by which he adopted as his own those who clung to him, he disowned those who kept apart from him. Christ is in the habit of practicing what he teaches others. [13] What sort of thing would it have been, then, if, while teaching others to rate neither mother nor father nor brothers above the utterance of God, he himself, the Word of God, should abandon that same teaching the moment mother and brotherhood were announced to him? He disowned his kin, then, in the very manner he taught them to be disowned, for the sake of God's work. But there is also, besides, a figure here: the synagogue set apart in the mother, and the unbelieving Jews in the brothers. Israel stood outside in them; but the disciples, new ones, hearing and believing within, clinging to Christ, sketched out the outline of the church, which, refusing the fleshly kin, he named a better mother and a worthier brotherhood. In the same sense, finally, he answered that other exclamation too -- not denying the womb and breasts of his mother, but marking out as more blessed those who hear the word of God.