JOSEPH
1019
JOSEPH
sent the infant according to the law, and there heard the prophetic words of Simeon as he held him in his arms. When the wise men from the East came to Beth- lehem to worship Christ, Joseph was there ; and he went down to Egypt with them by night, when warned by an angel of the danger which threatened them ; and on a second message he returned with them to the land of Israel, intending to reside at Bethlehem, the city of Da- vid; but, being afraid of Archelaus,he took up his abode, as before his marriage, at Nazareth, where he carried on his trade as a carpenter. When Jesus was twelve years old Joseph and Mary took him with them to keep the Passover at Jerusalem, and when they returned to Naz- areth he continued to act as a father to the child Jesus, and was alwaj's reputed to be so indeed.
Josepli was by trade a carpenter, in which business he probably educated Jesus (Thilo, Apoc?: i, 311). In Matt, xiii, 55, we read, "Is not this the son of the car- penter ?" and in IMark vi, 3, " Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" The term employed, T-ffcrwi', is of a general character, and may be fitly rendered by the English word artificer or urtizan, signifying any one that labors in the fabrication (faher in Latin) of arti- cles of ordinary use, whatever the material may be out of wliich they are made. See Carpenter. Schlens- ner (in voc.) asserts that the luiiversal testimony of the ancient Church represents our Lord as being a carpen- ter's son. This is, indeed, the statement of Justin IMar- tyr {Dial, cum Tryplione, § 88), for he explains the term riKTiDV, which he applies to Jesus, by saying that he made dpoTpa ku'i Zvy a, ploughs and ijokes ; but Origen, in replying to Celsus, who indulged in jokes against the humble employment of our Lord, expressly denied that Jesus was so termed in the Gospels (see the passage cited in Otho's Justin Martyr, ii, 30(5, JeniB, 1843) — a declaration which suggests the idea that the copies which Origen read differed from our own •, while Hila- rius, on Matthew (quoted in Simon's Dictionnaire de la Bible, i, G91), asserts, in terms which cannot be mistak- en, that Jesus was a smith {ferrum ifjne rincentis, mas- samque formantis, etc.). Amo:-g the ancient Jews all handicrafts were held in so much honor that they were learned and pursued by the first men of the nation. See Artificer,
Jewish tradition (Ilieros. Shaph. c. 14) names the fa- ther of Jesus XT^njS, Pendira, or Penthira (K~|irD3, Midrash, Kohel, x, 5 ; Ilciv^r)p, Thilo, Ajwcr. i, 528), and represents him (Orig. c. Cels. i, 32) as a rough soldier, who became the father of Jesus after Mary was be- trothed to Joseph. Another form of the legend sets him forth (Toled. Jeshu, p. 3, ed. Wagenseil ; comp. Epiphan. Hm: 78, 7) under the name of Joseph Pandera (Z\'0'*-'' i<"n3E). Cliristian tradition makes Joseph an old man when iirst espoused to Mary (Epiphan. H<er. 78, 7), be- ing no less than eighty j-ears of age, and father of four sons and two daughters. Theophylact, on jMatt. xiii, 55, says that Jesus Christ had brothers and sisters, all children of Joseph, whom he had by his sister-in-law, wife of his brother Cleophas, who having died without issue, Joseph was obliged by law to marry his widow. Of the sons, James, the brother of the Lord, was, he states, the Iirst bishop of Jerusalem. Eusebius {Hist. Ecck's. ii, 1) agrees in substance with Theophylact; so also does Epiphanius, adding that Joseph was fourscore years old when he married Mary. Jerome, from whom it appears that the alleged mother's name was Escha, opposes this tradition, and is of opinion that what are termed the brothers of Jesus were really his cousins. See James ; Mary. The painters of Christian antiq- uity conspire with the writers in representing Joseph as an old man at the period of the birth of our Lord — an evidence which is not to be lightly rejected, though the precise age mentioned may be but an approximation to fact. Another account (Niceph. ii, 3) gives the name of Salome as that of Josejih's first wife, who was related to the family of John the Baptist, The origin of aU the
earliest stories and assertions of the fathers concerning Joseph, as, e. g., his extreme old age, his having sons by a former wife, his having the custody of Mary given to him by lot, and so on, is to be found in the apocryphal Gospels, of which the earliest is the Protevangelium of St.tfames, apparently the work of a Christian Jew of the 2d century, (juoted by Origen, and referred to by Clement of Alexandria and Justin RLirt j'r (Tischendorf, Prolerj. xiii). The same stories are repeated in the oth- er apocryphal Gospels. The ]\Iono|ihysite Coptic Chris- tians are said to have first assigned a festival to St. Jo- seph in the Calendar, viz., on the 20th of July, which is thus inscribed in a Coptic Almanac : " Requics sancti se- nis justi Josephi fabri lignarii, Deiparaj Virginis Marire sponsi, qui pater Christi vocari ])romcruit." The apoc- ryphal Ili.itoria Josephi fabri lif/narii, which now exists in Aral)ic (cd. WaUing, Lips. 1722; in Latin by Fabri- cius, Pscudipiiir. i,300; also by Thilo and Tischendorf), is thought by Tischendorf to have been originally writ- ten in Coptic, and the festival of Joseph is supposed to have been transferred to the Western churches from the East as late as the year 1399. The above-named his- tory is acknowledged to be quite fabulous, though it be- longs probably to the 4th centur\% It professes to be an account given by our Lord himself to the apostles on the Mount of Olives, and placed by them in the library of Jerusalem. It ascribes 1 1 1 years to Joseph's life, and makes him old, and the father of four sons and two daughters before he espoused ]\Iary. It is headed with this sentence : " Benedictiones ejus et preces servant nos omnes, o fratres. Amen." The reader who wishes to know the opinion of the ancients on the obscure subject of Joseph's marriage may consult Jerome's acrimonious tract Contra Ilelvidium. He will see that Jerome high- ly disapiiroves the common opinion (derived from the apocryphal Gospels) of Joseph being twice married, and that he claims the authority of Ignatius, Polycarp, Irc- nreus, Justin Jlartyr, and " many other apostolical men," in favor of his own view, that our Lord's brethren were his cousins only, or, at all events, against the opinion of Helvidius, which had been held by Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentine, that they were tlie chil- dren of Joseph and IMarj-. Those who held this opin- ion were called Antidicomarianitee, as enemies of the Virgin. (Epiphanius, A dv. Hceres. 1. iii, t. ii ; Ilceres. Ixxviii, also Han: Ii. See also Pearson, On the Creed, art. Virgin Mary; Mill, Ore the Brethren of the Lord; Calmet.Z'e St. Joseph. St. Mar. Virg. conjuge ; and, for an able statement of the opposite view, Alford's note on Matt, xiii, 55.) See Gospels, Spurious.