Saint Joseph
According to the canonical Gospels, Joseph was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus.
Joseph is venerated as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, Anglicanism and Lutheranism. In Catholic traditions, Joseph is regarded as the patron saint of workers and is associated with various feast days. The month of March is dedicated to Saint Joseph. Pope Pius IX declared him to be both the patron and the protector of the Catholic Church, in addition to his patronages of the sick and of a holy death, due to the belief that he died in the presence of Jesus and Mary. Joseph has become patron of various dioceses and places. Being a patron saint of virgins, he is venerated as "most chaste". The veneration of the pure and most Chaste Heart of Joseph has, in contrast to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, no liturgical cultus, but is a private devotion.
Several venerated images of Saint Joseph have been granted a decree of canonical coronation by a pontiff. Religious iconography often depicts him with lilies or spikenard. With the present-day growth of Mariology, the theological field of Josephology has also grown and since the 1950s centers for studying it have been formed.
In the New Testament
The first appearance of Joseph is in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, often dated from around 80-90 AD. Each contains a genealogy of Jesus showing ancestry from King David, but through different sons; Matthew follows the major royal line from Solomon, while Luke traces another line back to Nathan, another son of David and Bathsheba. Consequently, all the names between David and Joseph are different.Like the two differing genealogies, the infancy narratives appear only in Matthew and Luke and take different approaches to reconciling the requirement that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem with the tradition that Jesus in fact came from Nazareth. In Matthew, Joseph obeys the direction of an angel to marry Mary. Following the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, Joseph is told by an angel in a dream to take the family to Egypt to escape the massacre of the children of Bethlehem planned by Herod, the ruler of the Roman province of Judea. Once Herod has died, an angel tells Joseph to return but to avoid Herod's son, and he takes his wife and the child to Nazareth in Galilee and settles there. Thus in Matthew, the infant Jesus, like Moses, is in peril from a cruel king, like Moses he has a father named Joseph who goes down to Egypt, like the Old Testament Joseph this Joseph has a father named Jacob, and both Josephs receive important dreams foretelling their future.
In the Gospel of Luke, Joseph already lives in Nazareth, and Jesus is born in Bethlehem because Joseph and Mary have to travel there to be counted in a census. Subsequently, Jesus was born there. Luke's account makes no mention of him being visited by angels, the Massacre of the Innocents, or of the flight into Egypt.
The last time Joseph appears in person in any of the canonical Gospels is in the narrative of the Passover visit to the Temple in Jerusalem when Jesus is 12 years old, which is found only in Luke. No mention is made of him thereafter. The story emphasizes Jesus' awareness of his coming mission: here Jesus speaks to both Mary and Joseph of "my father," meaning God, but they fail to understand.
Joseph is not mentioned as being present at the Wedding at Cana at the beginning of Jesus' mission, nor at the Passion at the end. If he had been present at the Crucifixion, he would under Jewish custom have been expected to take charge of Jesus' body, but this role is instead performed by Joseph of Arimathea. Nor would Jesus have entrusted his mother to the care of John the Apostle if her husband had been alive.
While none of the Gospels mentions Joseph as present at any event during Jesus' adult ministry, the synoptic Gospels share a scene in which the people of Nazareth, Jesus' hometown, doubt Jesus' status as a prophet because they know his family. In Mark 6:3, they call Jesus "Mary's son" instead of naming his father. In Matthew, the townspeople call Jesus "the carpenter's son," again without naming his father. In Luke 3:23 NIV: "Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,"; or alternatively punctuated: " τοῦ Ἡλί, 'the son of Heli'". In Luke the tone of the contemporary people is positive, whereas in Mark and Matthew it is disparaging. This incident does not appear in John, but in a parallel story, the disbelieving neighbors refer to "Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know".
The Pauline epistles are the oldest extant Christian writings. These mention Jesus' mother, but do not refer to his father. The Gospel of Mark, believed to be the first gospel to be written and with a date about two decades after Paul, also does not mention Jesus' father.
Mentions in the Gospels
Lineage
Joseph appears in Luke as the father of Jesus and in a "variant reading in Matthew". Matthew and Luke both contain a genealogy of Jesus showing his ancestry from David, but through different sons; Matthew follows the major royal line from Solomon, while Luke traces another line back to Nathan, another son of David and Bathsheba. Consequently, all the names between David and Joseph are different. According to Matthew 1:16 "Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary", while according to Luke 3:23, Joseph is said to be "the son of Heli".The variances between the genealogies given in Matthew and Luke are explained in a number of ways. One possibility is that Matthew's genealogy traces Jesus' legal descent, according to Jewish law, through Joseph; while Luke's genealogy traces his actual physical descent through Mary. Another possibility proposed by Julius Africanus is that both Joseph and his father were the sons of Levirate marriages. A third explanation proposed by Augustine of Hippo is that Joseph was adopted, and his two genealogies trace Joseph's lineage through his biological and adopted families.
Professional life
In the Gospels, Joseph's occupation is mentioned only once. The Gospel of Matthew asks about Jesus:Joseph's description as a "tekton" has been traditionally translated into English as "carpenter", but is a rather general word that could cover makers of objects in various materials. The Greek term evokes an artisan with wood in general, or an artisan in iron or stone. But the specific association with woodworking is a constant in Early Christian tradition; Justin Martyr wrote that Jesus made yokes and ploughs, and there are similar early references.
File:Georges de La Tour. St. Joseph, the Carpenter.JPG|thumb|upright|left|Joseph the Carpenter, by Georges de La Tour, c. 1645
Other scholars have argued that tekton could equally mean a highly skilled craftsman in wood or the more prestigious metal, perhaps running a workshop with several employees, and noted sources recording the shortage of skilled artisans at the time. Géza Vermes has stated that the terms 'carpenter' and 'son of a carpenter' are used in the Jewish Talmud to signify a very learned man, and he suggests that a description of Joseph as 'naggar' could indicate that he was considered wise and highly literate in the Torah.
At the time of Joseph, Nazareth was an obscure village in Galilee, about from the Holy City of Jerusalem, and is barely mentioned in surviving non-Christian texts and documents. Archaeology over most of the site is made impossible by subsequent building, but from what has been excavated and tombs in the area around the village, it is estimated that the population was at most about 400. It was, however, only about 6 kilometers from the city of Sepphoris, which was destroyed and depopulated by the Romans in 4 BC, and thereafter was expensively rebuilt. Analysis of the landscape and other evidence suggest that in Joseph's lifetime Nazareth was "oriented toward" the nearby city, which had an overwhelmingly Jewish population although with many signs of Hellenization, and historians have speculated that Joseph and later Jesus too might have traveled daily to work on the rebuilding. Specifically the large theatre in the city has been suggested, although this has aroused much controversy over dating and other issues. Other scholars see Joseph and Jesus as the general village craftsmen, working in wood, stone, and metal on a wide variety of jobs.
Modern appraisal
The name "Joseph" is found almost exclusively in the genealogies and the infancy narratives.The canonical gospels created a problem: they stated clearly that Mary conceives Jesus virginally, and Joseph is not his father; however, Jesus was described unambiguously by John and Matthew as "Joseph's son" and "the carpenter's son", and Joseph's paternity was essential to establish Jesus' Davidic descent. The theological situation was complicated by the gospel references to "brothers and sisters" of Jesus, who may have been
- the sons of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph;
- sons of Mary, the wife of Clopas and sister of Mary the mother of Jesus; or
- sons of Joseph by a former marriage.
The perpetual virginity of Mary is a Christian doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin "before, during and after" the birth of Christ, which means that Joseph and Mary never had sexual relations. The Catholic Church adheres to this doctrine, as do some Lutherans, Anglicans, Reformed, and other Protestants.
The term kiddushin, which refers to the first part of a two-part marriage, is frequently translated as "betrothal". Couples who fulfill the requirements of the kiddushin are married, until death or divorce.