Despite this, Eastern Church tradition typically states that Matthew and James were brothers.

[9][10][11] The apocryphal Gospel of Peter also refers to Levi as the son of Alphaeus.

Mary is called the wife of Cleophas in the King James Version.

[14] According to the surviving fragments of the work Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord of the Apostolic Father Papias of Hierapolis, who lived c. 70–163 AD, Cleophas and Alphaeus are the same person: "Mary the wife of Cleophas or Alphaeus, who was the mother of James the bishop and apostle, and of Simon and Thaddeus, and of one Joseph"[15] According to the Anglican theologian J.B. Lightfoot this fragment quoted above is spurious.

[16][17] The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that etymologically, the names Clopas and Alphaeus are different, but that they could still be the same person.