NEW TESTAMENT CHARACTERS

JOSEPH.
NARRATOR (Matthew)
Soon Joseph realised his fiancee was pregnant, but not by him. Being a decent sort of man he did not want to make her face a public scandal, but engagements were legally binding and he needed a divorce to break it off. While he was wondering whether he should find a way to do this privately he had a dream in which the angel came to him.

ANGEL
Joseph, Son of David, don’t be afraid to marry Mary, her child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will have a son and you must call Him Jesus, which means God-to-the-Rescue, because He will rescue His people from their own sins.

* * *

When dealing with Christ’s family we are harassed by the wrong kind of tradition - not early tradition which may be valid evidence, but mediaeval and modern tradition which can only obscure the truth. “Joseph” said the carol for example, “was an olde man and an olde man was he.” He was nothing of the kind.

All there is to know about Joseph is in the first two chapters of Matthew, the first two chapters of Luke, and a few scattered references the most significant of which is Matthew 13:55 from which we learn that he was a carpenter. Since Mark 6:3 tells us Jesus was also a carpenter we may infer something about the life of the family - with Jesus learning the trade from Joseph.

Mediaeval tradition included a negative attitude to family life and sex, from which came the outrageous tradition that Mary and Joseph remained celibate not only until Jesus was born but afterwards as well. (Hence the mediaeval suggestion that he was old - to make such celibacy more credible). This false idea robs us of the one main fact which we do know about Christ’s childhood - that it was normal.

When God became a man He came into an ordinary family - a good family certainly, but not something unnaturally super-spiritual. He had four brothers and at least two sisters. Joseph and Mary had their hands full bringing them up - which was just as well or they might have felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of bringing up the Messiah. Only in a large family could Jesus have a normal childhood.

What do we know about Joseph?
Carpentry was a skilled and respected craft. He was not rich but not poor either. (So the little donkey of the carol is probably realistic. A carpenter could provide a donkey but not afford a horse or camel.)

Joseph was engaged to marry Mary, and here we need to know something of the marriage customs. An engagement was binding. It needed a divorce to break it; but it was a disgrace for a couple, even engaged, to sleep together until after the full marriage ceremony. It was in keeping with the culture that Mary and Joseph were both virgin until their wedding.

Unexpectedly, his fiancee left Nazareth and travelled to Judea to visit a relative. When she came back, he realised that she was pregnant. (Was it just beginning to show? Did she give it away by something she said, or perhaps most likely, did she confide in her mother who felt a duty to tell Joseph?)

Joseph was not vindictive and looked for a quiet way to break the engagement without a public scandal, probably a divorce in some other town. Then he had his first vision of an angel.

Once he knew that Mary’s child was the Messiah, miraculously conceived by The Holy Spirit’s power, he married Mary, knowing he must wait for her until after the baby was born but wanting to protect her reputation.

A Scandal?
Was this attempt to avoid public scandal successful? We are not sure. They did not leave Nazareth and head for Bethlehem until shortly before the baby was due. The neighbours may well have realised that the date of the marriage and the expected date of birth were too close together. If so, Joseph would have shared the social stigma and no one doubted that he was the father. As it happened, they were away from Nazareth for long enough to blur the issue. When they returned they seem to have been accepted back into the community without any scandal, or at least with one which people were prepared to forget.

The Provider.
When we look at Joseph’s role as provider we realise he had to give up work to travel to Bethlehem. The journey cost money and once in Bethlehem they had to stay at least six weeks. It was only at the beginning that was there no room at the inn. Within a day or so we may be sure, Joseph had found accommodation - but had to pay for it. And he was not working.

On the fortieth day the family went to the temple in Jerusalem for the ceremonies which followed the birth of a boy. By this time money was running short - so much so that they could only give the smallest cheapest offering - two pigeons.

A carpenter would normally have been able to afford a lamb. Offering pigeons was an admission of poverty and Joseph, it seems, felt acutely his inability to provide anything better. This may be why Matthew’s account does not mention it - Matthew’s account being told from Joseph’s point of view.

Luke, telling the story from Mary’s point of view has no problem writing about the temple visit - to Mary it was a big event. Joseph, however, is the one who, struggling to provide for his wife and child, thinking hard about what their next move would be, records the event which both redirected them and financed the redirection. The arrival of “The Magi” a party of scholars from an eastern country.

All attempts to fit together Matthew’s account with Luke’s flounder until one realises that the Magi did not come to the stable (pity about the Christmas cards and crib scenes). They came later, after the visit to the temple. The family were then in “a house” presumably an inn of some kind. Their visit meant, for Joseph, the task of leading his family to safety in Egypt and the gold to pay for it. No wonder this is the story he emphasised. It was the one which had affected him and his role most deeply.

What more do we know of Joseph?
He was with Mary and Jesus when they went to the temple, prior to Jesus’ Bar Mitzvah, and managed to lose Him in the crowd (Luke 2:41-52). Modern parents would never have been so careless - but then modern parents have to bring up their children in a dangerous world. The ease with which Mary and Joseph accepted that their twelve-year-old was somewhere in the crowd demonstrated a delightfully safe community - safe for children at any rate. It also provides extra evidence that there were younger children in the family - parents of an only child would not have missed Him.

After that we hear no more about Joseph.

Presumably he lived long enough to see his children’s education complete. Presumably he died some time when Jesus was a young man. So Jesus was left with the responsibility of caring and providing for a family until such time as his younger brothers were ready to take it over.

Even by his death, as by his profession, Joseph had given Jesus a background experience of life, learning and working. He taught his son to run a business, deal with customers and suppliers, to go into the homes of rich and poor alike, for all needed their doors and window frames repaired. Finally Jesus experienced bereavement and the resulting responsibility for a family with younger dependants.

Joseph is supposed to be the patron saint of carpenters, but might well be the patron saint of family men. In many ways he is the patron saint of masculinity - a strong silent man, a solid support, a reliable provider, a skilled craftsman, a carrier of responsibility. He held his family together, trained his children, loved his wife and then, just when it all began to be interesting, slipped quietly out of the story. (We hope he had a ringside seat in Heaven, watching it all unfold!)

References - Joseph:
Matthew 1 - 2 Jesus’ birth and childhood
Matthew 13:55 A carpenter.
Luke 1 - 2 Jesus’ birth and childhood
Luke 3:23 Genealogy
John 6:42 brief mention