WS, thank you for your sincere and thoughtful response to my post, and the tactful way you compliment first, than critique afterwords, which is exactly what I just did. Hahahaha
I have attempted to answer this several times, and I can’t seem to avoid it sounding sarcastic and derisive, which I don’t intend to do, so instead, I will learn from you, and simply ask you some hopefully thought provoking questions.
Do you find even the remotest suggestion in scripture that Joseph had been married prior to Mary
The RC’s call Mary a spotless vessel, and while this is not a biblical term, you may feel it is true, if so, how do you account for the fact that God chose a man for Mary who had been married and had at least 6 other children to another woman, do you believe God would give Mary anything but a spotless man for her mate?
If Joseph had already brought 6 children into the marriage, had you considered how old they would have been.
Would Christ not then be the youngest of the 7?
Would you agree that the youngest child would have been a minimum of 3 years older then Jesus?
Would you agree that James would have had to be at least 8 to 10 years older then Jesus?
When the family followed Mary around the country side, she was their mother in law, and only a few years older then James?
When they all came to see Jesus in Mt 12:47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.am I to believe that all his family was still following Mary around, and they ranged in ages from 33, to their 40’s?
If Joseph had James 15 years prior to Mary, James could have been the same age as his mother in law?
If Jesus was the youngest child, and not the eldest, he held no responsibility for Mary’s welfare when he died, so he simply took it upon himself to tell John to take her in, because according to Jewish law, it was not his to give, and it would have gone to James.
Why do you suppose the genealogy failed to list Joseph’s previous wife and children?
Mt 1: 6. And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
I am going to stop here, because I could no doubt go on forever on these absurd hypothetical questions if this line of reasoning is followed to it's natural end, but first let me get your thinking so far on this. (^g^) JH
Do you find even the remotest suggestion in Scripture that Joseph was not married prior to Mary?
Does Scripture absolutely rule out this possibilty? Is all that is true in Scripture?
SD
No, I do not. I will use this as a jumping off point in my next post.
The RC’s call Mary a spotless vessel, and while this is not a biblical term, you may feel it is true, if so, how do you account for the fact that God chose a man for Mary who had been married and had at least 6 other children to another woman, do you believe God would give Mary anything but a spotless man for her mate?
We use similar terminology in Orthodoxy, and compare Mary to the Ark of the Covenant and the Burning Bush as well. We do not believe Joseph was her mate, but more like her guardian. He protected her by giving her the protection of a seemingly normal marriage. It did not matter as much what kind of man he was, although we consider him to have been holy and to be a saint. None of Joseph's biological material contributed to the Incarnate Christ, and neither did he feed Christ first in the womb and then with the breast. Mary did. Mary's biological material was blended with the Divine to produce God Incarnate. This makes her situation unique.
If Joseph had already brought 6 children into the marriage, had you considered how old they would have been.
Yes. They would all be older than Christ, some close in age to Mary. But it gets even "better" than that. Orthodox tradition includes the names of Joseph's first spouse and the names of all of his children as well. More on that later.
Would Christ not then be the youngest of the 7?
Yes.
Would you agree that the youngest child would have been a minimum of 3 years older then Jesus?
Yes.
Would you agree that James would have had to be at least 8 to 10 years older then Jesus?
Sounds right. As I mentioned earlier, I'm thinking I'll look up a "Life of St. James."
When the family followed Mary around the country side, she was their mother in law, and only a few years older then James?
I don't think the family necessarily followed Christ around the countryside all the time. There is nothing in the Scripture to indicate that they were always around, and the traditional teaching is that during the time referred to in Mt 12:47 they had made a trip especially to see Jesus. More on this later as well.
When they all came to see Jesus in Mt 12:47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. Am I to believe that all his family was still following Mary around, and they ranged in ages from 33, to their 40’s?
The traditional teaching is that they went with Mary in this situation for a specific reason, and they were not "following Mary around." More later.
If Joseph had James 15 years prior to Mary, James could have been the same age as his mother in law?
Yes.
If Jesus was the youngest child, and not the eldest, he held no responsibility for Mary’s welfare when he died, so he simply took it upon himself to tell John to take her in, because according to Jewish law, it was not his to give, and it would have gone to James.
Jesus was her only natural child. If the tradition is true, then it was known that James was not Mary's son but rather her stepson. I do not know if stepsons bore the same responsibilities for stepmothers as natural sons do for natural mothers. This might be an interesting angle for investigation.
Why do you suppose the genealogy failed to list Joseph’s previous wife and children?
I don't know. Is it common for genealogies to do this? Perhaps the only purpose of the genealogy was to establish the connection to David through Joseph. Any previous marriage by Joseph would be irrelevent to this purpose.
I am going to stop here, because I could no doubt go on forever on these absurd hypothetical questions if this line of reasoning is followed to it's natural end, but first let me get your thinking so far on this.
I don't think this is absurd, and am sorry that you do. I don't blindly accept any story I might be told, but a Church tradition that has been preserved for at least 1700 years is not "any story" either. More to come still.
I don't. This does not mean it is not true. I believe that the nature of the argument we are having is less about the relationship between Mary and Joseph than it is about the nature of the Christian Faith, and the role of Scripture. The Orthodox teach that the totality of the faith is experienced within the Church, and that the preservation of this faith through teaching is accomplished through Holy Tradition. This Tradition, or teaching, includes as its apex the Holy Scriptures. They are completely true, the inspired word of God. But they are not the totality of the faith. There is not an impenetrable wall, with Scripture on one side and the lies of men on the other. Rather, Tradition includes other repositories of the faith, including the writings of the Holy Fathers, the teachings of the Ecumenical Councils such as the Nicene Creed, the hymns and prayers of the Church, art and architecture, and so on. If you're interested, I wrote about this at length to Havoc in post #23375. If you want to follow up on this, please read that post as well.
I’ll quote from some Patristic sources at length in my next post. And I think that they’re perspective is valuable. Using an analogy, this is why:
When installing software, you typically have a “troubleshooting guide.” And it’ll often walk you through a problem. “If X is happening, try A. If this doesn’t solve the problem, try B. If this still doesn’t work, try C.” This is crude, but I think that our practice of faith works in a similar way. When you have question X, try A – the Scriptures – first. If this doesn’t solve the problem, try B – the teachings of the Fathers. If this still doesn’t work, try C – the lives of the saints. And so on. Some people don’t need the troubleshooting guide at all. They have such a “feel” for software that they can figure it out themselves. And some people have such a “feel” for God, such a connection with the Holy Spirit operating in their lives, that they either don’t have problems or find their answers immediately through prayer. Church tradition is full of stories of saints who do just this. John the Baptist is a good parallel. His answers were not reached through studying Scripture.
But what if all you recognize as a source of authority concerning the nature of Christianity, and the lives of the people who are depicted in Scripture, is Scripture itself? Then you have to make “A” the answer no matter what, because there is no alternative. This seems to be where you are at. I say that the Church teaches that Mary and Joseph didn’t have sex. Not particularly radical, not like saying that Joseph was a Martian, not from my own fevered imagination. You turn to Scripture, and since this is your only choice then even if the evidence to the contrary is very brief and could be understood in more than one way, it must be definitive. I just don’t read Scripture that way. If Scripture is silent, or at best inconclusive, I have other sources to turn to for answers. And I don’t accept that something that’s not in Scripture is not valuable.
An even simpler analogy would be “when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” God forgive me for comparing Holy Scripture to a hammer. And a hammer, for this analogy, may be the best tool in your toolbox. But sometimes what you really need is a screwdriver.
You could summon up Occam’s Razor, and say that your answer is true and mine is not because yours is simpler and doesn’t require turning to extra-Scriptural sources. But I don’t believe that the easiest answer is always the right answer when it comes to matters of our Lord. The nature of the events of the Gospel are not simple, or obvious. The obvious answer would be that Christ was the demented son of Joseph and Mary. Neither of us accepts that, or ever could. But likewise we shouldn’t expect the most obvious or most apparently “Scriptural” answers to be the correct ones.
The Orthodox always draw crosses as flowering, because we believe that the cross is a sign of life. This isn’t in Scripture, but it is edifying. Wearing crosses is not in Scripture, but Christians of all kinds do.
I’ve heard conservatism defined as a democracy that gives the dead a vote. I think Christianity, and Holy Tradition, is similar. It gives the dead, those saints who have walked the Christian walk before us, a vote. If ever there is a direct conflict between the teaching of the Church and Scripture, we must choose Scripture. Countless saints have stood up to the Church and proven this is true. But if there is not a direct conflict, we should pay attention to what previous Christians filled with the Holy Spirit have written and taught and passed on. Because we can’t go it alone with Scripture. In my humble opinion, of course.
God speaks not only for us little ones but for the great sages and mystics who experience what we can only read about, and to whom all the words have therefore different (richer) contents. Would not a revelation which contained nothing that you and I did not understand, be for that very reason rather suspect? To a child it would seem a contradiction to say both that his parents made him and God made him, yet we see how both can be true. – CS Lewis, Collected Letters
I fully admit that the basis for some of the tradition is in early apocryphal writings. What I’ve been taught is that the Church’s position on early apocryphal writings is that some portions of them are considered important because of, for example, the gaps they may fill in about events that happened to the people mentioned in the canonical books of Scripture. Not all apocryphal sources are considered equal. St. Cyril in the 300’s dismissed entirely the Gospel of Thomas, for example, as Manichean. The sources that are used as a basis for traditional accounts of Mary are considered worthwhile because early Fathers of the Church recognized them as worthwhile as well, and include primarily the Protoevangelium of James and Pseudo-Matthew.
All of the passages below are from “The Life of the Virgin Mary, The Theotokos,” written and compiled by Holy Apostles Convent of Buena Vista, Colorado. It is considered hagiography, not doctrine, and in no way is acceptance of it any kind of requirement for membership in the Orthodox Church.
“Mary is not God, and did not receive a body from heaven, but from the joining of man and woman; and according to the promise, like Isaac, she was prepared to take part in the divine economy.” - St. Ephiphanios of Cyprus, born 315
“The holy parents of the Mother of God received from heaven a gift worthy of God, a throne higher than the very cherubim – she who would bear the Word and the Creator.” – St. John of Damascus, 7th century
The traditional tale of Mary is that she was given over by her parents Joachim and Anna and grew up under the high priest Zacharias, the future father of John the Baptist, in the apartments of the temple of Jerusalem. Her holiness was recognized, and as St. Romanus expresses in a 6th century hymn, “she was given over to the temple to be reared; and she received nourishment from the angels.”
But, as St. Ambrose writes in the 4th century, “she was a stranger to any fall or sin, but not a stranger to sinful temptations. God alone is without sin.”
St. Romanus again: “Mary did not leave the temple of the saints. Now, at the proper time, Mary had become radiant, and Zacharias observed that she was past the bloom of girlhood.”
The tale continues, and states that the solution that Zacharias comes up with for this holy girl is to marry her off to an old widower, Joseph. Needless to say, he is quite put out when she becomes pregnant. According to a the oldest known copy of the Protoevangelium of James, dating to the 4th century, Joseph was over 70 years old when he came to the temple at Zacharias’s summons. His first wife had borne seven children: James, Jude, Simon, Joses, and three daughters, one of whom was Salome, the future mother of the Apostles James and John. The same source puts these words in Joseph’s mouth: “I am an old man and have children. Why do ye hand over to me this infant, who is younger than my grandsons?”
“The enemy of our salvation was keeping an eye on virgins, according to the prophecy of Isias who spoke of a virgin conceiving. Thus the maiden is given in marriage to Joseph by the priests, thereby deceiving the enemy who always glories in his wisdom. Hence the marriage was both a protection and deception to him who was keeping a watchful eye on virgins.” – St. John of Damascus
“The Chaldean furnace that brought refreshment as the dew plainly prefigured thee, O Bride of God; for in a material womb, unconsumed thou hast received the divine and immaterial fire.” – St. Theophanes, 7th century
“Mary was then a pure virgin, serene in her state of soul, doubly enriched. In fact she liked good works while fulfilling her duties, and upholding right thoughts on faith and purity. She did not like to be seen by men but prayed to God to be her Judge. She was in no haste to leave her home, had no acquaintance with public places, preferring to remain constantly indoors living a withdrawn life, like the honey bee. She gave generously to the poor whatever in her household was left over…Her words were discreet and her voice measured; she did not shout and was watchful in her heart to speak no wrong of another, nor to even willingly listen to wrongs spoken of…” – St. Athanasius, early 4th century
“The giving of the holy Virgin to Joseph was not for marriage, but that she might be guarded. Joseph would be a witness of things to come, so that at the coming of the incarnate economy Jesus would not appear illegitimate. Thus Joseph showed himself to be a witness of truth.” – St. Ephiphanios
In reference to Mt. 1:25, “The Evangelist uses the word ‘till,’ (eos) not that thou shouldest suspect that afterwards Joseph knew Mary, but to inform thee, that before birth, the Virgin was wholly untouched by man.” – St. John Chrysostom, 4th century
“The verse ‘her firstborn’ does not mean the first among several brethren, but One Who was both her first and only Son.” – St. Cyril of Alexandria
“Lovers of Christ cannot hear that the Theotokos ever ceased to be a virgin.” – St. Basil, 4th century
I could go on and on and on, from the Nativity to the Wedding of Cana and beyond, but will try to wrap up with a couple of Orthodox references to the story of Mary and Jesus’s brethren coming to him during his ministry.
St. John Maximovitch interprets the Patristic teaching on Mk. 3:31-32 as saying that the brethren of Jesus came with Mary to interrupt Christ’s ministry, “even though full of grace, she did not yet fully understand in what the service and the greatness of her Son would consist. The Hebrew conceptions of the Messiah were still close to her, and natural feelings caused her to be concerned for Him. This included preserving Him from labors and dangers which appeared excessive.” And, “St. Epiphanios asserts that nowhere can it be seen in the Gospel that the siblings of Jesus were considered the children of Mary.”
Sorry, but I’m going to have to give up here. Time for bed. Also, I expect that you’re going to look through this and dismiss it as unreliable and un-Scriptural, and thus meaningless. All of this is a tiny slice of the Patristic writings on Mary, and her relationship with our Lord. If its of interest to you, there are many online sources for Patristic studies. I can only pray that it gives you something of a glimpse of the Orthodox tradition, and why we do not take it lightly.
Christ Bless.
WS