Jesus Christ's Earthly Family - Before beginning a study of the Word of God regarding the Lord's brethren, let us first look at the historical background which made an issue of who was the Lord's family. This question is far from new; in fact, it had become a flaming issue by 300 A.D. when Christianity west of the Euphrates River divided into two camps over the issue. The one camp was in Antioch in the country now called Turkey where Aramaic was the language spoken. The other school had its home base in Alexandria, Egypt, where Greek was the scholar's language. The leader in the Greek school was Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. Born into a non-Christian family, he became a Christian later in his life. In his early non-Christian days, he believed in Isis, Osiris, Horus and other such Egyptian gods. Undoubtedly this early learning influenced his thinking when he became a Christian. As Bishop of Alexandria, he proposed a new doctrine, namely, that Mary was the mother of Go...