All Things Christmas (10 page)

As the Roman Empire grew, the necessity to rapidly move troops from one area to another became a
prior
ity. Rome attacked the problem by constructing a network of highways throughout the land. Upon conquering an area one of the first things the Romans did was build forts along the perimeter and link them with all-weather roads of stone block over a base of gravel. Rome recruited its army from the provinces and shifted the men from one region to another. It made good sense not to conscript an army from your former enemies and then go home and leave them in charge, much better to have Britons in Gaul, Macedonians in Syria and so on. As Rome shifted troops, they also disseminated cultural and religious beliefs. The earliest introduction of the gospel to Britannia was the result of the efforts of Christian soldiers stationed there.

It has been said that everyone participates in God’s plan, some willingly and some unknowingly. Given man’s limited scope, most of the time we find it impossible to see the good that God extracts from evil. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine anything worthwhile coming from the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao
Tse
-Tung,
Pol
Pot,
Idi
Amin
, et al. And yet, the same thing can be said for Caligula, Nero, Domitian or Diocletian. Even with a 2,000 year perspective it’s still difficult to make sense of the actions of s
uch despots.

And yet God, with his eternal perspective and omniscient power, can arrange the affairs of this chaotic world in such way as to accomplish his goals…in the fullness of time.

Chapter Eleven

THREE VIEWS of SAINT JOSEPH

Though we know little about him, St. Joseph, the husband of Mary and foster-father of Jesus, played a critical role in the Holy Family. Most of our information concerning St. Joseph comes from the birth narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. There are also several apocryphal accounts and legends regarding both Joseph and Mary that may, or may not, provide further illumination.

T
he
F
iner
Details

Both Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 refer to Joseph as a
tekton
, a craftsman. Tradition has settled on his craft being wood working, thereby making him a carpenter. Whether he performed general work such as making yokes for oxen, plows and so on, worked mainly in the construction trade, or did fine woodwork such as carvings and fin
ish details can never be known.

We
also
know Joseph was a man of humble means since he presented the sacrifice of two turtledoves or a pair of pigeons when he took Jesus to the Temple for Mary’s purification. An offering of birds was the standard for those who could not afford a lamb. We know
too
that he was a holy and observant Jew since the Gospel refers to him as “
a righteous man
.”

Did Jesus have Brothers and Sisters?

Matthew 13:53-56 says, “
And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his own country he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?
”

The question would appear to have been settled then and there. However, that is not the case.
The three major divisions of Christianity have each developed their own viewpoint on this question.
And e
ach of the
m
revolves around Mary as much as Joseph.

The Protestant Viewpoint

Luther argued that correct interpretation of scripture rests not with the Church but
“
in the heart of the pious believer
.”
This has led the majority of Protestants to follow the practice of
plain or explicit
interpretation of the Bible. This rule says that when the plain
interpretation
of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other; take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, and literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and fundamental truths indicates otherwise.

At first glance, this passage from Matthew appears to be exactly such a situation. However, it comes with certain suppositions, making it problematic. Mary and Joseph are now assumed to
be the parents of at least six additional children after the virginal and miraculous conception of Jesus.
This assumes
Joseph
was
you
ng enough to father this brood.

We know Jesus was the firstborn, and therefore the oldest, because they made an offering of two turtledoves or pigeons at the Temple (Luke 2:22-24) to redeem him as required by Numbers 18:15: “…nevertheless the first-born of man you shall redeem…” This becomes contradictory when one considers that Jesus assigned John with the task of caring for his mother from the cross. Why did he need to do this if he had four younger
half-
brothers? Tradition says John moved Mary from Jerusalem to Ephesus to protect her from harm. Wouldn’t her
children
have been upset by this and
protested that
she
should
stay with them rather than John, a non-relative?

The Orthodox Viewpoint

Among other differences, t
he Eastern Church
holds to a doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity. In their traditions, Joseph was a widower with children when they married. So instead of having
s
iblings, Jesus ha
d
older
step-brothers and step-sisters.

Making Joseph an older man solves two other issues. First, if he were not searching for a wife, in the fullest sense of the word, but rather a caretaker
for his children
, it becomes more reasonable to view him as “a most chaste spouse”…a term the Church has applied to him from earliest times. Secondly, making him older conforms to the tradition that Joseph had died by the time Jesus began his public ministry. (The last mention of Joseph in the Bible occurs when the 12-year-old boy Jesus is left behind at the Temple and he is
not
mentioned at the wedding feast in Cana.) The Orthodox view makes Jesus the youngest child in the family. And, since he was Mary’s only child, he would be solely responsible for her care when Joseph died. Were Joseph not dead, her car
e would have been a moot point.

The Catholic Viewpoint

Where the Protestant view tends to a younger Joseph and the Orthodox view to an older, the Catholic view demands neither. While agreeing with the Eastern view on Mary’s perpetual virginity and Joseph’s death prior to Jesus’ public ministry, the Catholic Church believes the Holy Family consisted of three persons: Joseph, Mary and Jesus. This, of course, necessitates charging John with her care since there was no one else.

This still leaves
open
the question of his “brothers” and “sisters.” The Bible provides a list of these brothers. If they were not siblings, who were they? A
real and
close
kinship between Jesus and
these
brethren
is clear
. But
the term
brethren
,
or brother
, can be
applied to step-brothers as well as to
blood
brothers, and in Scriptur
e
is often extended to near or even distant relatives
.

Comparing
John 19:25
to
Matthew 27:56 and Mark 15:40
,
we find that Mary of
Cleophas
, or
Clopas
,
was
the sister of Mary the Mother of
Jesus. We know she is
Clopas
’ wife because that is the way a
married wom
a
n
would have been identified. So this Mary
is the same Mary
who was
the mother of James the Less and of Joseph, or
Joses
.
Isn’t James the
Lesser
named in the list of apostles as the
son of Alpheus
? Yes, but it is commonly recognized that
Clopas
and Alpheus are different transcriptions of the same Aramaic word,
Halphai
.

Following the Brethren
Through
History

We know nothing of
Joses
, or
Joseph
.
Jude
, however,
is the
autho
r of the Epistle
of Jude.
He is
identified
Judas Jacobi
,
Jude the brother of James
,
in the Douay Version of Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13
.
It
was
the
Greek custom for a man to
append
his brother's name instead of his father's when the brother was better known.
In his Epistle, Jude calls himself
the brother of James
.

Simon, like Joseph, remains a bit of a mystery
.
Many
commentators
identify him as
Symeon
, or Simon, who, according to
Hegesippus
, was a son of
Clopas
and succeeded James as Bishop of Jerusalem.
Others
have identified
him
as
the Apostle Simon the
Cananean
(Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18) or
Simon
the Zealot (Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). Th
e
grouping
of
James, Jude
(
also called
Thaddeus
)
, and Simon, after the other
s but before
Judas Iscariot, seems to indicate
a
conne
ct
ion between the
m
.

So two, and possibly three, of these cousins were among Jesus’ Apostles. This seems to be verified in
1 Corinthians 9:5
where Paul writes,
“Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”
The mention of Cephas at the end indicates that St. Paul, after speaking of the Apostles in general, calls special attention to the more prominent ones,
the
brothers (
brethren
)
of the Lord and Cephas
.

Further Considerations

Some would object that the brethren of the Lord couldn’t have been Apostles since just months before his death they didn’t believe in him
(John 7:3-5)
. This
assumption
is based on a misreading of the text. They didn’t doubt his powers, what they misunderstood was his Messianic mission. They wanted him to declare himself a temporal leader. This expectation remained alive among the Apostl
es even after his resurrection.

The
final
objection
to
the Catholic
, and Orthodox,
position
is found in
Matt 1:2
4-25, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord
commanded
him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son...” It can be demonstrated from other
Biblical
examples that the phrase
firstborn son
neither implies other children nor does the phrase
knew her not until she had borne a son
necessarily imply that he knew her afterwards.