What were the names of Jesus’ sisters?

Q. What were the names of Jesus’ sisters? Or how many sisters did he have?

Matthew records in his gospel that when Jesus taught in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, the people there “were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? 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? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’ And they took offense at him.”

Much could be said about this passage in confirmation of the statement that Jesus made at the time, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” But for our present purposes, the significant part of the passage to focus on is the statement by the people in Nazareth, “And are not all his sisters with us?” The language suggests that Jesus had at least three sisters. However, Matthew does not provide their names, as he does for the brothers, and the names are not given anywhere else in the Bible—perhaps.

There is a later Christian tradition that the names of two of Jesus’ sisters were either Mary and Salome or Anna and Salome. Some interpreters have identified this Salome with the woman whom Mark mentions in his gospel as an eyewitness of Jesus’ crucifixion and of his resurrection. So we have the very interesting possibility that at least one of Jesus’ sisters accompanied him from Galilee to Judea on the last trip he made there and was consequently a witness of his crucifixion and resurrection.

What makes this possibility even more intriguing is that as the various gospel writers describe the women who were at the cross and the empty tomb, they mention different women by name. Interpreters believe that this may be because the gospel writers name the women they knew personally and whose stories they heard and verified, or else because they name the women who would have been familiar to their audience. If the latter is the case, then this Salome, whoever she was, may have been known to Mark’s audience in Rome, suggesting that she could have had a wide ministry.

Nevertheless, we do not know for sure. The Bible does not tell us the names of Jesus’ sisters, or exactly how many sisters he had, and we do not know how reliable the later tradition is. We are left with what I find to be a historical puzzle that contains a very intriguing possibility.