55. Is not this the carpenter's son?--In Mark (Mr 6:3) the question is, "Is not this the carpenter?" In all likelihood, our Lord, during His stay under the roof of His earthly parents, wrought along with His legal father.
      is not his mother called Mary?--"Do we not know all about His parentage? Has He not grown up in the midst of us? Are not all His relatives our own townsfolk? Whence, then, such wisdom and such miracles?" These particulars of our Lord's human history constitute the most valuable testimony, first, to His true and real humanity--for they prove that during all His first thirty years His townsmen had discovered nothing about Him different from other men; secondly, to the divine character of His mission--for these Nazarenes proclaim both the unparalleled character of His teaching and the reality and glory of His miracles, as transcending human ability; and thirdly, to His wonderful humility and self-denial--in that when He was such as they now saw Him to be, He yet never gave any indications of it for thirty years, because "His hour was not yet come."
      And his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?

JFB.