Joses

Joses 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 Joses or Joseph, son of a Mary 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 in the genitive case, hence Jose/Josetos (/), '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.