John 19:25

John 19:25. But there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. In Matthew 27:55 we are told of ‘many women beholding from afar.' But as there is nothing to say that the moment was the same as that now before us, the supposed contradiction between ‘by the cross' and ‘from afar' disappears. If the third of the women here mentioned be the same as the second, we shall have two sisters of the same name in one family; for ‘sister' cannot mean cousin. The high improbability of this leads to the supposition that we have here four women, in two groups of two each. This view is confirmed by the fact that the lists of apostles are in like manner given us in groups of two, and by what does not seem to have been urged as an argument upon the point, that the four women seem designedly placed in contrast with the four soldiers. (Not that the Evangelist makes the number in order to suit his purpose; but that out of the ‘many' spoken of by Matthew he selects four for its sake. It is the same habit as that of which we have seen so much, the selection of particulars to illustrate the historical idea which he is desirous to unfold.) On the supposition that four women are mentioned, it appears from the earlier Gospels that the second, here unnamed, was Salome, John's own mother. Whether Clopas may be identified with Cleopas (Luke 24:18) it is impossible to decide.