📜The Story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus📜

So many misconceptions about the Biblical accounts; mis-translations, legends springing up outside of anything found in the Gospels. So little knowledge the average person has of the Jewish culture of that time period during the Roman occupation.

We have to start with Mary’s pregnancy. An unwed Jewish girl getting pregnant! The Sanhedrin would have been well within the law to sentence her to death, but since Joseph quickly married her, and since Joseph’s and Mary’s families were probably well thought of in the community, she was spared that fate.

Poor Mary! Like girls of today, she had probably dreamed of the fine wedding she would have. She may have already been accumulating the things she would need for housekeeping. She would have been weaving and sewing, and collecting dishes and other items she would need.

But very likely, the magnificent wedding feast which her parents would have been planning didn’t happen. Joseph and Mary would have of necessity been married in a small, brief ceremony, with only a few close relatives present. Mary must have felt like her world came crashing down.

It was traditional for women to gather at the town well at the same time every morning, so they could visit and gossip for a little while as they were filling their containers with the water they needed for the day.

Mary would have been forced to go early to the well before anyone else was there, or wait until they all left. The other women would not have tolerated her presence without making snide remarks about her, deliberately loud enough for her to hear. They would have snubbed her and turned their backs on her. How alone Mary must have felt!

The gossip, the acerbic comments, the vitriol she would have experienced. She, the girl who got pregnant out of wedlock! Joseph probably didn’t have a very easy time of it either, but somehow men are more readily excused in these situations than are women.

Perhaps Mary tried to explain the situation; how she got pregnant while she was still a virgin. That would have made things worse! A fornicator and a liar, or just touched in the head with her wild imaginings!

To escape the shunning, she fled to the house of her kinswoman Elizabeth (maybe a great-aunt?), in another city in Judah.

Mary would not have traveled there alone. Joseph, being her husband, would have taken her. They probably had the idea of Mary staying there at least until the baby was born, while they tried to figure out what to do next.

I think Mary was adamant that she did not want to go back to Nazareth, where she was an outcast. In view of the census facts I explain below, I hypothesize that after Joseph made sure Mary was settled, he went looking for work, which he found in Bethlehem. Then he came back to get Mary.

Whatever the exact situation, they got word of the census and had to get to Bethlehem, where Joseph presumably had a job, but no house yet.

Here I need to interject with an ongoing controversy. No Roman records have been found of this particular census, and Rome kept records of everything!

As Luke 2: 1-3 says:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirin′i-us was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city.

Jesus was born during Herod’s reign. Herod died in 4 BC. Quirinius didn’t come into power until 10 years after Herod died. So Luke must have named the wrong governor. Gaius Sentius Saturninus was a senator and consul during the correct time period, and conducted several censuses while in office, so he could have been the one who called for the census in question. The full name of the Syrian governor Luke referred to was Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, nickname Cyrenius. All the Roman names were so long and complicated, it’s understandable that anyone would have difficulty keeping straight who was who.

Another problem arises: Rome did not require subjects to return to their ancestral homes to be counted in a census, as Luke seems to imply. A census was taken for taxation purposes, and those being counted and recorded needed to be in the city or province where they made their living, whether or not it was their “home town”. This is why I think Joseph had ended up there and found a job while Mary was in Judah waiting for him to come back and get her.

If that was the case, Joseph would need to be in Bethlehem to be counted because he presumably had a job there. So that’s where they went.

Luke 2:6 says:

And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered.

Did you catch that?

All the movies, the nativity stories, the paintings and the frescoes in churches have given the impression that Mary was in labor as they arrived in Bethlehem and Joseph went frantically looking for a place for her. But that’s not what the scripture says.

Mary went into labor while they were in Bethlehem.

She may not have been 9 months along when they made the trip. It’s possible they were there for days or weeks first.

Of course the baby wasn’t born on December 25. Many Biblical historians think it was in the spring. Some have a good argument for the fall. But we’ll probably never know for sure.

Obviously, Joseph hadn’t rented a house yet, since they didn’t initially move into one. Farmers and shepherds from outlying regions would have swelled the town as they arrived to be counted in the census, and there were no extra rooms to be had anywhere.

But wait- no room at the inn? What inn? This is one of the mis-translations into English from the Greek manuscripts. The word needed here is something closer to “guest room”. Some Bible scholars think this may have been the ground floor of a house. This would have been a type of pantry for things like wine, oil and grain, with maybe a stall for a donkey. Maybe they even had a milk goat.

Could it be that this was a temporary room that Joseph rented until he found a house? There’s just no way of knowing. But these nativity scenes showing a stable full of farm animals are very unlikely to reflect reality.

I’m dropping a lot of information here, and lest the reader is confused, let me give a brief summary of my educated guesstimation based on the Gospels and my knowledge of Ancient Roman history and the Jewish culture of that time:

1. Joseph took Mary to Elizabeth’s house, then went looking for work.
2. He found work in Bethlehem, but he couldn’t find a house to rent, so he rented a room
3. He went back and got Mary and took her to Bethlehem.
4. They moved into the room he rented
5. Some days, weeks, even a few months after they got there, she had the baby.

I could be all kinds of wrong, but it’s the most logical hypothesis I’ve come up with.

But to continue…

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem attracts millions of visitors to view the spot where Jesus was supposedly born. Constantine’s mother Helena is said to have determined this grotto as “The Place”. There are some big problems with accepting this legend as fact.

To begin with, Helena’s pilgrimage was some 300+ years after Jesus was born. Furthermore, the Roman Emperor Hadrian had destroyed Bethlehem in the second century AD. It wasn’t rebuilt until Constantine came into power. That leaves a long gap in history in which there would have been nobody around to keep up with the past details of a particular infant’s birth, assuming anyone had remembered in the first place.

Mary and family would have been just another family to their Bethlehem neighbors. Nobody outside the family would have suspected that baby was anything other than an ordinary baby. Mary wouldn’t have spoken of the unusual circumstances of the conception. She would not have wanted a repeat of the shunning that she had already experienced. That’s why she and Joseph had moved to a different town.

Mary and Joseph also would have been extremely careful not to call the attention of the Roman authorities to themselves. They would have made every effort to keep the unusual birth circumstances as secret as possible. They did a good job of it, because when Jesus took off down the road and started his ministry, the people who knew Him and His family were so shocked at this turn of events. (see Matthew 13:53-56 and Mark 6:1-3). They probably thought He’d plumb gone off His rocker.

It follows that nobody would have “marked the spot” where Jesus was born, and it would have passed into a forgotten memory. It’s extremely unlikely that anyone will ever know where the true birthplace was.

(Helena also claimed to have found a piece of the true cross in Jerusalem. I seriously doubt it. She was probably duped by some shyster who learned of her mission).

So anyhow, the baby was born, and some shepherds visited that night, or more likely, the next day.

Sometime after the baby was born Mary and Joseph found a house in Bethlehem and stayed there. Then, before Jesus was 2 years old, the wise men or whoever they were visited the house where the family was living. A house. Not a stable with an infant Jesus like the nativity scenes show. I need to note, many scholars think these men were astrologers, which is not what we think of as astrology in today’s term. They were closer to what we now call astronomers, with some astrology and general science (aka “philosophy”), thrown in.

How many wise men? Nobody knows. Maybe two of them. Maybe a dozen. All we know is, there was more than one of them. Where did they come from? In those days, the “east” or “Asia” generally referred to the region of Mesopotamia roughly corresponding to the area that we now call Iran.

I’ve often wondered what the neighbors thought about these rich men who showed up at the humble dwelling of the little family. What did Joseph and Mary tell them? They would have probably hated the attention it brought them, and they would have just wanted to explain it away somehow.

So, to continue the story, Herod gave the order to kill the boy babies 2 years and under in Bethlehem.

I’ve seen people dispute this, because no large number of dead baby skeletons from that time period has been found. Well, that makes sense. The regular population of Bethlehem was very small at the time. It’s been estimated to have had only a few hundred permanent residents to possibly as many as 2000. It’s doubtful there would have been more than a small handful of babies to kill.

Furthermore, even if a large number of babies were killed, why would anyone expect to find a mass grave of baby skeletons? The families would have had funerals, and each skeleton would be in it’s own ossuary in the family tomb. No mass grave of Herod baby victims will ever be found because there never was one.

It does sound exactly like something Herod would have done, but there’s no record of it outside of the Gospels.

Mary and Joseph then fled to Egypt. This resulted from a warning dream, but it must have been a relief to flee from the neighbors’ questions about the wise men.

We’ve all seen pictures of Mary and Joseph traveling to Egypt, Mary on a donkey holding the baby. Joseph walking alongside. There must be hundreds of paintings with this theme dating from medieval times to the present, like this one by Giotto, painted some 650 years ago.

This is an extremely unlikely scenario. Traveling overland in that way would have been a long, arduous and dangerous journey.

Back in that time period, THE way to travel, if there was water available to cross, was by ship. And remember, Joseph and Mary had the gold given them by the wise men, so they could well afford passage. And anyway, it would have been foolhardy to carry gold on a long trip across the desert by foot.

All the way around the shores of the Mediterranean were large, busy, amazingly modern and sophisticated ports. Shipping was a major industry, and there were about as many classes of ships then as there are now.

I’m almost certain the little family would have taken passage to Egypt by water. It was the most sensible, the fastest and the safest way to travel.

The first large city they would have come to was Alexandria, so that’s probably where they stayed. Large cosmopolitan city to get lost in with a sizable Jewish population. Plenty of work for Joseph. That would have been the most perfect place to make a fresh start while staying under the radar.

It’s hard to know exactly when they returned from Egypt. We know they didn’t return to Israel until after Herod died, which occurred in 4 BC.

Herod’s son Archelaus ruled over Judea from 4 BC to 6 AD, and Joseph avoided going back to Judea because he was afraid of Archelaus. So he led his little family to the district of Galilee; most likely in 4 or 3 BC. By then, Mary had probably had at least one of her next children.

(Contrary to the popular legend, Mary was not a virgin the rest of her life. The gospel of Matthew says that Joseph didn’t know his wife “until after” the baby was born. That certainly implies they had a normal marital relationship!)

How old was the young child Jesus on that return trip? Scholars can’t agree on the exact year Jesus was born. There are a number of clues in the Gospels and historically which point to a possible birth date between 7 BC and 4 BC. Jesus may have been between 2 and 5 years when they left Egypt, but there is no way of knowing for sure, unless new evidence is uncovered at some future date by archaeologists.

When Joseph and Mary got back to Israel, they must have been weary of all the craziness of their first few years together. They would have been homesick and missing their families. They went back to Nazareth. Enough years had passed that the gossip would have died down and the scandal had dimmed. Mary was now firmly established as a married woman, and her former girl friends would be busy with their own new families.

Joseph had worked in Galilee before his life turned upside down. He would have no problems resuming his trade.

Here’s where another mis-translation comes in. I seriously doubt that Joseph was a carpenter who worked with wood. The correct word (téktōn) is closer in meaning to “builder” or “craftsman”. Some scholars interpret it as “stone mason”, but it has a broader meaning than that.

Wood was imported and very expensive. A minimal amount was used for supporting the roofs of houses. Houses were built with a stone foundation, and the walls were constructed with mud bricks. Nazareth was a hick one-donkey town with a population of about 400. There would not have been enough construction work for Joseph to make a living.

Sepphoris was a rich, bustling and rapidly growing city in walking distance from Nazareth. That’s where Joseph would have found plenty of work- but without wood. The construction work available would have involved things like marble and stone, tile-work and wall plastering. Some of these skills are what Joseph would have had. And Jesus also, as soon as he was old enough to apprentice.

So, how did Jesus become a teacher? This is often translated as Rabbi, but the concept of Rabbi was not the same then as it is now. The modern meaning of Rabbi came about after the time of Jesus, as the religious practices and aspects of the Jewish culture was restructured. But I won’t get into that. It’s a whole ‘nuther story.

In Jesus’ time, Priests were in charge of the temples. They officiated at offerings, organized Holy Day events, and had all sorts of duties. Rabbis were those who taught the Hebrew scriptures to others. A teacher. They had far fewer responsibilities than do modern Rabbis. Jesus would have learned to read from the priests or another Rabbi. They often taught the boys in their congregations to read and write, so it’s not surprising that Jesus was educated in that way.

Beyond all that, I hope you know the rest of the story.

Oh, and another point to make. Jesus wasn’t Caucasian, or any other form of white. And he wasn’t black. He was Hebrew. A Hebrew was and is one of several Semite groups. Hebrews arose from the Canaanites. The Greeks called the Canaanites Phoenikes (Phoenicians). Actually, there were several branches of Canaanites, of which Hebrews were one. But one thing they all had in common- they originated in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. Yes, the Asian continent, but very close to Europe and Africa. Look at a map and you’ll see how Europe, Africa and Asia all come together around the Mediterranean. I’d like to go on about all that, but I’ll save it for future posts.

(Disclaimer: the above is based on a combination of the Gospels, historical written records of the time, archaeological findings, and logical reasoning. Any mistakes are my own. You’re free to have your own opinions and ideas about the subject, which you can comment about below, if you wish.