JEŽÍŠOVO PŘÍBUZENSTVO U AMBROSIASTERA

Ambrosiaster’s exposition of the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41–52) leads us, with the passage of 2000 years, to three questions associated with Jesus’ relatives: who was the father of Joseph (Quaest. 56), whether Jesus was a son of Joseph (Quaest. 75), and who are the “brothers of the Lord” (Comm. Gal. 1,19). These three themes also reveal certain characteristics of the author’s style and help us place the author within a broader context, both thematically and temporally. The clear formal structure of Quaestiones, the ease of the explanation submitted, the absence of other possible solutions, the absence of references to philosophy and literature, only sporadic references to the Fathers (discussed more in detail by A. Volgers) – all this corresponds to the hypothesis that the work was conceived as a pastoral-catechetical manual, designed for the practical needs of priests (and probably also drafted by a priest). The dispute over the “brothers of the Lord” demonstrates that Ambrosiaster did not hesitate to differ in his explanation from his contemporaries (Marius Victorinus, Jerome and Helvidius, in a broader context also Augustine and Pelagius), and also, thanks to recent observations by S. Cooper and D. Hunter, allows us to determine more accurately the time of the gamma version of his commentary on Galatians.