Joses
men named Joses
Joses (Ancient Greek: Ἰωσῆς) is a name, usually regarded as a form of Joseph, occurring many times in the New Testament:
Joses, one of the four "brothers" of Jesus (Greek: ἀδελφοί, romanized: adelphoi, lit. 'brethren')
Joses or Joseph, son of a Mary of Clopas and brother of a James (James the Less according to Mark 15:40), mentioned in Mark 15:40, Mark 15:47, and Matthew 27:56
Joses or Joseph, the real name of Barnabas according to Acts 4:36
There is also a Ἰησοῦ or a Ἰωσή (Jose, Joshua or Jesus) in Luke 3:29
Etymology
Joses is a short Greek form of Joseph. Unlike Greek Joseph, however, which remains frozen as Joseph in all grammatical cases, Joses functions like a true Greek name and is declined in Greek, taking the ending -e/-etos in the genitive case, hence Jose/Josetos (Ἰωσῆ/Ἰωσῆτος), 'of Joses'.
Although spelling of Joseph is fairly constant in Greek, spellings of the short forms Joses and Josis vary. Tal Ilan's catalogue of Jewish name inscriptions of the period (2002) notes variation in the spelling of "Joseph" (indeclinable in Greek) and various shorter (and sometimes declined) Greek variants, but also notes that the full form Joseph is dominant with 47 of 69 Greek inscriptions.
New Testament
Joses and Joseph in their various grammatical cases are often found as textual variants in the New Testament.
Joses, brother of Jesus
"Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him." (Mark 6:3, ESV)
"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?" (Matthew 13:55, ESV)
A minority of (Alexandrian, Western) Greek manuscripts in Matthew 13:55 read "Joseph" (Ἰωσήφ) the standard spelling of the name.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Joses” as men named Joses. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2721201. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joses” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.