Nativity Scene Painting With Joseph Holding Jesus While Mary Reads
The Hidden Man of Christmas
Putting St. Joseph back in the picture show.
Illustration past Charlie Powell
Equally far equally biblical figures become, St. Joseph—the man who married the female parent of Jesus—frequently gets short shrift: His life isn't prominently featured in the Gospels, and he's rarely depicted on Christmas cards. Yet Joseph did fulfill an astonishingly important task: raising the son of God. In 2008, James Martin explored what we do and don't know about St. Joseph'due south identity. His article is reprinted below.
Christmas cards tend to fall into three categories: the family bill of fare (cheerful children in ruby-red and light-green sweaters), the secular carte du jour (snowmen, snowflakes, snowy villages), and the religious bill of fare. The religious card usually bears a portrait of the Virgin Mary gazing beatifically at the crib of her newborn son, Jesus. Behind her, the picture is just as some of the Gospels draw: shepherds, animals, perchance fifty-fifty the three wise men, though they actually were late on the scene.
Only where'southward St. Joseph? Where is the human to whom, according to the Gospel of Matthew, an angel announced the birth of Jesus? Where is the guy who married Mary fifty-fifty though she was already "with child," the man who helped to heighten Jesus, the carpenter who taught Jesus his craft?
He's off to the side or stuck in the back, backside a shepherd. And he'southward old, balding, and stooped, looking more like Mary's male parent than her hubby. Sometimes, he's non in that location at all. Many Christmas cards show just Mary and Jesus. And how many carols fifty-fifty mention Joseph? He is at the Nativity scene and in American Christmas traditions. That's a loss since Joseph tin be a powerful figure not only for fathers but also for the boilerplate laic.
For a number of reasons, Joseph has presented something of a problem for the Catholic Church building over the past ii millennia. The miracle of Christmas was not only that God became human merely besides that this was achieved through a virgin. Naturally, Mary is i of the stars of the story. But the emphasis on her virginity may have meant that her marriage to Joseph may accept been an uncomfortable reality—after all, if they were married, didn't they, well, have sex? That flew in the face of what became an early tradition in the Catholic Church—Mary's "perpetual virginity."
Better, and so, to have Joseph in the groundwork. Some scholars take posited that this is too the reason that he is portrayed equally elderly in all those paintings, even though some experts estimate he was around xxx years old at the time of Jesus' birth. Lawrence Cunningham, a professor of theology at Notre Dame and author of A Cursory History of the Saints, told me, "Ix times out of 10 in Christian art, Joseph takes on more of male parent-protector function rather than a hubby. That was a fashion of solving the sexuality trouble." Cunningham points out that in some paintings, Joseph is shown dozing off in the corner of the stable or even leaving the scene of the Nativity entirely, "out of modesty."
But don't blame Western artists for giving Joseph short shrift. They didn't have much fabric to proceed. Joseph is given no lines to speak in any of the Gospels, and he disappears entirely after Jesus' childhood. Significantly, he is absent during Jesus' public ministry and fifty-fifty at the Crucifixion, where Mary is featured prominently. This has led some scholars to believe that he must accept died before the stop of Jesus' earthly life.
So what practise we know about Joseph? Autonomously from his trade—he's called a tekton in the Gospels, which is usually translated equally carpenter but is more than likely a general craftsman—not much. Only Pheme Perkins, a professor of the New Testament at Boston College and the author of the widely used textbook Reading the New Attestation, says you tin can draw some interesting conclusions if you read the Gospels advisedly.
"The most obvious supposition in artifact would have been that Joseph had been married before and was a widower," she said. "Most likely, an arrangement was made for him to find a young wife." This is the basis for the Catholic tradition that Jesus' "brother and sisters," who are mentioned in the Gospels, were from Joseph's commencement marriage. (Mainline Protestant churches are more comfortable with the possibility that Mary could have given nativity to other children afterward the birth of Jesus.)
And given that Mary seems not to take been forced to remarry afterwards her hubby's death—the tradition in first-century Palestine—Joseph must take been a proficient provider, as well. "He must have left them well-off," Perkins said. However, she'due south not certain that his portrayal as an elderly homo in then many works of Christian fine art necessarily had to practise with sexuality. "We usually brand revered figures older," she said. "If yous await at most of the paintings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they look older, no thing what stage of life they're in."
Though most of Joseph'southward life goes unmentioned in the Gospels, he carried out an astonishingly important chore: raising the son of God. For the commencement years of Jesus' life, and perchance into young adulthood, he would have learned much of what he knew near the Jewish organized religion from his female parent and his foster father. Perhaps the practices Jesus learned alongside Joseph in the carpentry shop—patience, hard work, creativity—were put to good use in his subsequently ministry. Joseph represents the holiness of the "hidden life," doing meaningful things without fanfare.
Perkins and Cunningham both run into Joseph equally a central figure in the Nativity story, one who tin can speak to contemporary men and women. The Gospel of Matthew makes clear that he is a "righteous man" who does what God asks of him. Afterwards discovering Mary's pregnancy, Joseph thinks of "quietly" ending their marriage plans, so equally not to "disgrace" her. Only an affections reassures him in a dream. "Do not exist afraid to take Mary as your wife," says the affections, who explains the unusual circumstances of the birth. Joseph's "righteousness" enables him to listen to God and carry out his difficult task.
His personality shines through wordlessly. "Here is a model of someone who represents all the virtues in the Hebrew Bible," says Perkins. "He is asked to exercise something shocking, but because he's righteous, he follows God's guidance. And it'southward no fun—not just to bargain with that, only with the rest of the story—the flight into Arab republic of egypt, too."
During that latter part of the Christmas story, when the holy family unit flees from the murderous King Herod, Joseph was responsible for protecting Mary and her son in extreme conditions. Moreover, says Perkins, "To have to take your family into Egypt—that's non a direction that Jewish stories want to go. Information technology's the wrong way." She calls him a "model for how people tin follow God through difficult times."
Perhaps it'due south time to take a fresh look at this "model" and restore him to his rightful identify in the Christmas story. Recall his natural age. Reimagine him in our art. And recollect his very human example of "following God through difficult times." That's something that can offering encouragement not just to fathers merely to every believer.
At the terminate of our conversation, Cunningham told me most one of his favorite paintings, by a Coptic nun, portraying the flying into Egypt. "It depicts the infant Jesus sitting on the shoulders of a young, robust Joseph," he said. "Mary is really continuing at one side and a retainer on the other." St. Joseph is at the heart of the picture.
Source: https://slate.com/human-interest/2008/12/putting-st-joseph-back-in-the-picture.html
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