Matthew 1:18-25 - Marital strife between Mary and Joseph

[Mendalla]

So what happens when your husband finds out that you've been knocked up and not by him? Well, even if you say that the father is the Holy Spirit, somehow that's got to cause some upset, eh.

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 1:18-25 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

The Birth of Jesus the Messiah - Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to...

www.biblegateway.com

(FYI, I am using the NRSV out of preference for its more scholarly approach. If someone has another version of any passage I post that they like better, feel free to post a link to it on BibleGateway or post it in quotes in the thread.)

So Joseph has the expected reaction to Mary's news: "I'm outta here, babe." But an angel talks him down and they patch things up. Though no nookie allowed until the baby is born, apparently. But that happens anyhow.

Of course, this assumes you take the "pregnant by the Holy Spirit" thing literally. Maybe the baby was his and the Holy Spirit thing is a bit of Trinitarian mythologizing about Jesus. IOW, maybe this is all made up by Matthew.

Or maybe Mary really did get it on with someone else but Joseph decided to accept the child as his own. The angel came in a dream so maybe it was his "inner voice" or conscience rather than a literal visitation from heaven. Mythologizing of another kind, in other words.

I mean, there's all kinds of dramatic possibilities here that don't require a literal angel or Mary to have literally had her child implanted by some Holy Spirit woo woo.

In the end, though, I think this probably tells us more about Jesus than about Mary and Joseph's relationship. Mary getting pregnant apparently without benefit of male company, an angel intervening with Joseph, definitely point to an attempt to make Jesus' birth special, while still making it a human event. Myth-making again, in other words.

Thoughts?

(I'm saving Matthew 2, which is the real meat of Matthew's birth narrative, for Epiphany, by the way since it more properly belongs here. Next week we'll hit Luke's narrative including the Shepherds and that will take us up to the big day.)

 

[Redbaron]

Interesting to note for the 'fulfillment' prophecy, that Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Greek Septuagint, which is a mistranslation from the Hebrew original of Isaiah.

 

[Mendalla]

Interesting to note for the 'fulfillment' prophecy, that Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Greek Septuagint, which is a mistranslation from the Hebrew original of Isaiah.

Which, of course, brings us back to the thread on the Biblical origins of Catholic doctrine, eh. Yeah, how different Christianity would have been had Matthew used the Hebrew version.

 

[paradox3]

Interesting to note for the 'fulfillment' prophecy, that Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Greek Septuagint, which is a mistranslation from the Hebrew original of Isaiah.

You learn something new every day, as my mom used to say. I have always assumed the Greek Septuagint was written much later than it actually was.

A quick search has taught me that the Greek New Testament uses the Greek Septuagint when it quotes the Hebrew Scriptures. Not the original Hebrew version.

As an aside, when we hear of Jesus reading in the synagogue, was he reading the scripture in its original Hebrew?

The mistranslation you speak of concerns the young woman/ virgin I assume?

 

[Mendalla]

The mistranslation you speak of concerns the young woman/ virgin I assume?

Yep, that one. The mistranslation that launched Christianity's version of the goddess cult.

 

[Luce NDs]

I will not comment on the dark and mysterious Aye ... "i"? Sometimes considered an abstract ... yet creative in your essence of dreams!

I'm told the abstract is denied ... it is as declared by ... hoo?

 

[paradox3]

As a child I was never taught to understand the virgin language literally. I was, however, taught that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. So I always imagined something supernatural in Matthew's birth narrative.

I no longer read the story supernaturally and now favor myth or metaphor as the explanation.

Joseph is portrayed as a very nice man in this passage. It would have been within his rights to reject Mary completely when he learned she was pregnant.

 

[Mendalla]

And I had not planned on focussing this discussion on that passage, but since Red brought it up, here's some thoughts.

Of course, Mystic has already discussed the evolution of the doctrines around Mary in another thread, but this passage is really where it starts.

Why a "virgin" birth?

There a few things at play, of course.

In the classical world, attributing divine parentage to a hero or leader was part of the culture. Whether we're talking mythical heroes like Heracles or Perseus, or looking an historical figure like Alexander, divine parentage was a sign of being someone special, a cut above the everyday run of human leaders. So attributing divine parentage to Jesus would actually have played well to the Gentile community. It is a way of identifying someone as being of great significance.

Of course, there was the rush to make Jesus fulfill prophecy. Since Matthew was clearly working with the Septuagint, his version of Isaiah called for a virgin birth. That still does not automatically mean divine parentage. It could have been some weird miracle. But working in the divine parentage aspect then hit on what I talk about above.

For the RCs, the aspect of Jesus being sinless is regarded as important though, to be honest, I am not sure we see that here in Matthew. Matthew seemed to be more about making Jesus very existence magical as a sign of his status. Sin does not seem to enter into it at this point.

I, personally, have a bit of a problem with whole Jesus and Mary being "sinless" thing, since it carries the implication that sex is sinful. Jesus could not be conceived the normal way and still be sinless, in other words. And I heartily disagree with that. Sex is the normal, natural way for humans to be born and Jesus being born that way would actually go a long way towards yanking him back to the "fully human" side of the equation, which seems to lean strongly to the "fully divine" side when one gets into doctrines like this.

So this seems to me to be taking a rather human story, a young couple having a baby who will grow up and become an important teacher and leader, and injecting some mythology into it to push the notion of Jesus as a quasi-divine figure. The notion of Jesus and therefore Mary needing to be "sinless" strikes me as a later development that pushes this rather further than I suspect Matthew intended.

Endnote: By Matthew, I mean the dude who wrote the book. I realize we don't know for sure if it was Matthew and which Matthew if it was but the name has stuck so I'm using it as a placeholder for "author of this book".

 

[paradox3]

About Jesus being sinless. Did this idea originate with the retelling of the Passover story? With Jesus as the unblemished sacrificial lamb?

Or do we have a sinless Jesus appearing earlier in the gospels anywhere? Agreed it is not part of Matthew's birth narrative.

 

[jimkenney12]

If there was a Joseph. There is no father in Mark's gospel and this would have been common with the Romans creating many widows. In Mark, Jesus was the builder. I am not sure which gospel identified him as the builder's son. Naming his father as Joseph provides a link to the Joseph who dreamed and interpreted dreams.

I am using this passage for my message next Sunday for the theme of Liberating Love. Joseph's initial reaction was influenced by the need to look respectable to his peers. The angel asks Joseph to put his love for Mary ahead of the attitudes of the community, liberating him from the power of community tyranny and personal pride. My opening story for the service will be the Good Samaritan. I like to tell a story close to the beginning of the service that will feed into the message. The love shown by Jesus liberated his followers from fear and communal expectations.

 

[Luce NDs]

If there was a Joseph. There is no father in Mark's gospel and this would have been common with the Romans creating many widows. In Mark, Jesus was the builder. I am not sure which gospel identified him as the builder's son. Naming his father as Joseph provides a link to the Joseph who dreamed and interpreted dreams.

I am using this passage for my message next Sunday for the theme of Liberating Love. Joseph's initial reaction was influenced by the need to look respectable to his peers. The angel asks Joseph to put his love for Mary ahead of the attitudes of the community, liberating him from the power of community tyranny and personal pride. My opening story for the service will be the Good Samaritan. I like to tell a story close to the beginning of the service that will feed into the message. The love shown by Jesus liberated his followers from fear and communal expectations.

The alternate meaning that can be read into this story seems endless ... preparing for a hanging participle ... a follower! These can go on and on with a bit of abstract, darkness and mystery to blend in ... this often goes with fathering as you are never sure ... of anything but the mother ... yet the father will demand appreciation ... Imagine Solomon and his breeding habits ... almost mythological ...

Can such intercourse only go on in someone's head? It is to me a great curiosity how some folk can believe such things ... except by blind faith, unseeing evidence, and other intangibles ... Pan 'd connections?

 

[Mendalla]

If there was a Joseph. There is no father in Mark's gospel and this would have been common with the Romans creating many widows. In Mark, Jesus was the builder. I am not sure which gospel identified him as the builder's son. Naming his father as Joseph provides a link to the Joseph who dreamed and interpreted dreams.

Question: Is there even support for the virgin birth in Mark? It does not have a birth narrative but does it even come up elsewhere? I don't recall. As you say, Mark does not even identify Jesus' human father.

The angel asks Joseph to put his love for Mary ahead of the attitudes of the community, liberating him from the power of community tyranny and personal pride.

Nice reading of it. That's certainly the approach I would probably take if I was writing this story.

 

[jimkenney12]

For Mark, all that seemed to matter was the ministry of Jesus beginning with his baptism and finishing with the empty tomb.Jesus in Mark is the most human Jesus in the Christian writings in the Bible. I believe the Gospel of Thomas also has a quite human Jesus.

 

[Waterfall]

For Mark, all that seemed to matter was the ministry of Jesus beginning with his baptism and finishing with the empty tomb.Jesus in Mark is the most human Jesus in the Christian writings in the Bible. I believe the Gospel of Thomas also has a quite human Jesus.

And this would fit in with the Jewish expectations of the Messiah. One of the Jewish prophecies is that the Messiah would be fully human and come from two human parents.
Unfortunately Jesus doesn't qualify for most of the Jewish prophecies for the Messiah.

 

[Mendalla]

And this would fit in with the Jewish expectations of the Messiah. One of the Jewish prophecies is that the Messiah would be fully human and come from two human parents.
Unfortunately Jesus doesn't qualify for most of the Jewish prophecies for the Messiah.

Had he unambiguously fulfilled the prophecies and thereby attracted most Jews to follow him, then likely a Jesus-focused Judaism would have developed instead of a Gentile-dominated Christianity. And the Jewish revolt and destruction of Jerusalem might have happened sooner if conflict erupted between this new Judaism and the Roman-backed Jewish authorities Major change in history to say the least.

 

[Mystic]

jimkenney12: "If there was a Joseph."

Independent sources used by Matthew, Luke, and John (1:45; 6:42) all confirm in multiple verses that Joseph is Marey's wife or Jesus' reputed father.

Redbaron: "Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Greek Septuagint, which is a mistranslation of the Hebrew original."

Your comment demonstrates a popular misconception that the Septuagint mistranslates the Hebrew "almah" as the Greek "parthenos." To illustrate, I quote from Kittel's magisterial "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. V in an article that investigates the use of "parthenos" in non-biblical Greek and Jewish literature as well as the Septuagint and New Testament usage:

"This review makes it plain that on purely lexical grounds it is impossible to say whether the [Septuagint] translator is expressing true virginity when he uses "parthenos" in Isaiah 7:14....In itself this is in keeping with the meaning of "almah... In the light of the use elsewhere, it probably had the same sense that "parthenos" had originally, namely the young woman who has just reached maturity."(pp. 831, 833)."

For early Christianity, the most important part of Isaiah 7:14 is the prophecy of a birth that brought "God with us."

Mendalla: "The mistranslation that launched Christianity's version of the goddess cult."

With his unique interest in Jesus' fulfillment of OT prophecy, Matthew alone quotes Isaiah 7: 14. Luke and Ignatius have very different virgin birth traditions than Matthew and the scholarly consensus is that belief in Jesus' virgin birth predates all 3 sources by a long time. So it is likely that Matthew's quest for a prooftext (Isaiah 7:14) is a reaction to belief in the virgin birth, and not vice versa.

Hostile home town Jews are "scandalized" by Jesus' reputation and in part express the scandal by asking, "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary (Mark 6:3)?" In a patriarchal culture to call someone the son of his mother in a scandal implies illegitimacy. So the disciples and hostile Nazareth residents agree on one point: that Jesus is not the natural son of Joseph. In my view, this account indirectly traces belief in Jesus' virgin birth to His lifetime.

 

[jimkenney12]

What if the author of Matthew had a copy of the gospel of Mark and the author of Luke had copied of both of the other gospels?

 

[Luce NDs]

What if the author of Matthew had a copy of the gospel of Mark and the author of Luke had copied of both of the other gospels?

Like Lucan process a devil as Lucy? Sometimes reffered to as the crazy psycho ... psychologists get into this unreal realm ... handle as if it was a wisp from the depths ... Freud called it a vapour ... said the fey sct suffered from such weaknesses ...

Old scripts make suggestions about how weaker essences should be treated ... but such things are denied in light of brute powers!

Thus reality burns ... and we don't understand the reason! Irrationality ...

 

[Mystic]

What if the author of Matthew had a copy of the gospel of Mark and the author of Luke had copied of both of the other

The scholarly consensus is that Matthew and Luke both used Mark and Q (a sayings collection) as primary sources, but didn't know about each other.
There are many reasons for this: e. g. where Matthew and Luke overlap, each Gospel sometimes preserves the more original (often the more Semitic) wording. Matthew and Luke also have their own unique sources, designated M and L by scholars respectively, each with their own unique theological interests. JOn the other hand, John uses none of the 3 Synoptic Gospels and has its own unique sources; e. g. a Signs Source and a Revelation Discourse source.

 

[jimkenney12]

I believe the scholarly consensus makes less sense than Luke reading Matthew and deciding he needed to write a different Gospel to serve his own agenda. They both might have also referred to the gospel of Thomas. In that era, it would make sense that there were a variety of oral traditions in play as well. All of the written works originated in oral stories and claims.

John probably had copies of all three synoptic Gospels and saw little need for another biography. The Gospel of John is a set of theological claims served in a carefully designed story. The I AM claims and the miracles are carefully designed components of an argument.