Note how, excluding cartoons and other silliness, they’re consistently portrayed as adults. However, more than once I’ve heard it suggested that Mary & Joseph were probably in their teens, on the basis that Palestinian Jewish girls in the Roman era were married off as soon as they were of child-bearing age.
Were Mary a well-nourished, hormone-laden-beef-and-chicken-fed North American girl, she could have gotten her first period at 11 or even earlier. But obviously things were different 2000 years ago, and AFAIK girls before the modern era didn’t start menstruating until age 14 or thereabouts. And even then, this assumes that the idea that she’d have been married off at her first period is true; does scholarship support that idea?
And what of Joseph? If the custom was to marry off girls as soon as they were of child-bearing age, would she have been married off to a grown man? Or would she have been paired up with a teen boy her own age?
Obviously, we can’t know for certain. But given what we do know about ancient Jewish marriage customs, is it possible to come up with a reasonable guess?
Girls could be married off young. As soon as they developed breasts and pubic hair. Very desirable girls from poor families were probably married young as a way of obtaining money for the parents. However the bride was also supposed to be aid a dowry by her parents. In more recent cultures that often results in younger, less desirable daughters of poorer parents marrying later because the parents have to save for the dowry of successive daughters.
Men were expected to be able to provide for their wives. So most men would have married later than women, though that probably meant early 20s, rather than necessarily middle aged. Since Joseph was poor and landless he would almost certainly have had to save to afford a wife. Many much older men would have married younger women of course, so we can’t rule out a much older Joseph.
The only vague hint we have is that Joseph is dead by the time Jesus reaches 33. If we assume, for no real reason, that the died of old age then he was probably over 30 when he married.
Not really. Mary would almost certainly have been under 20, but how much younger we can’t tell. Joesph could have been any age.
Well, I just looked up the average age of death during the Roman Empire and it show 20-30 years of age. So, even discounting for a high child mortality rate I’m not sure that counting on Joseph to make it into his 60s would be a safe bet.
Even with an average age of death like 20, if someone gets to the age of 30 they might have a life expectancy of 30 years. An average age of death below 30 is generally caused by very high infant mortality rates.
When I was a kid, Joseph was often portrayed as an Old Man. The reason for this is probably that lots of people wanted to hold that Mary was “ever virgin” (despite the Biblical references to Jesus’ “brothers and sisters”. It is arguable that the Greek words refer to “cousins” instead. To me it seems a reach, but it is defensible.), and that Joseph and Mary never had sex. The easiest way to account for this was to make Joseph an old guy, past his sexual prime. You can see lots of old Josephs in, for instance, Bosch and Brueghel. But he’s there in lots of other works, from the Renaissance on up.
It’s not universal, though. Our church’s art had a Young Joseph.
Mary is, of course, shown pretty young, typically late teens/early 20s. She’d have to be, in order to bear children. I’ve never seen a really young (12 years or so) Mary in any art.
Curiously enough, I’ve seen Old Mary. Pier Paolo Pasolini, in his film the Gospel According to St. Matthew, gave us a circa 20 year old Mary when Jesus is conceived and born, but at the Crucifiction he used his own mother to play Mary, and she looks a lot older than 50.
Which makes little sense, since he was engaged to Mary *before *she became pregnant. Presumably he thought he was going to get something from the marriage. Moreover an ability to provide children was one of a husband’s duties in Jewish culture, so it’s doubtful if anyone would have approved of the marriage of an impotent old man.
Women can bare children safely from the age of 14 to the age of 50 and plenty have done so across that age range. Many have done so outside that range as well, but those ages are all “normal”.
So why does Mary need to be in her late teens? Could a 15yo Mary or a 35 yo Mary not bare a child? Especially given that conception was a miracle?
Okay, first there is absolutely no information given, either in the Bible or any other reliable source, that answers the question definitively. Everything we can say is purely inferential.
Mary was most likely in her mid-teens at the time of her pregnancy and delivery of Jesus. The logic here is that she was betrothed (“espoused” in some translations) to Joseph but the wedding feast and formalized marriage had not yet been held. This accounts for her being ‘married’ to Joseph in terms of commitment but still (according to Scripture) a virgin. And no suggestion is made that this situation was unusual – which implies that she was the age when girls were normally betrothed. Modern usage is not clear on the Jewish custom at that time – a betrothal was much stronger than a modern engagement. Essentially they had contracted marriage with each other, but to be actually entered into at some future date. Compare two modern businesses entering into a contract in March for delivery and final payment in September – each can rely on the other to carry out the terms of that contract come autumn, and failure to do so would be a breach with attendant liability. You would not go far wrong in paraphrasing it that they were “married but not living together yet.” So we infer that Mary was of an age when she might, without it being regarded as unusual, be betrothed but not yet married – which would be her mid-teens by the customs of the time.
Joseph was likely older, fully adult and likely in middle age. There are at least four contributing factors to this inference:
Joseph plays a major role in the Infancy Narratives, the Flight into Egypt, and then, save for Luke’s brief note of the visit to the Temple when Jesus was 12, vanishes utterly from the story. Even when Jesus shows up in Nazareth early in His ministry, there’s no sign of His (human) father. The inference is that Joseph has died during the time between when Jesus was 12 and the start of His ministry, noted as “when he was about 30.” This is further bolstered by Jesus’s giving of Mary into John’s care on the Cross – which would be entirely right and proper for a dying man providing for his widowed mother, and entirely out of line in the behalf of a woman with a living husband. (The Mary/John thing has a second relevance; see 4 below.)
When Jesus is back in the Nazareth area, Mark calls Jesus “the carpenter” – though Matthew says “the carpenter’s son.” The implication is that He, not His father, was the tradesman in charge of the family business, i.e., that his father had passed on. Modern scholars tend to prefer Mark’s readings over Matthew’s, the latter seemingly having used Mark as the source of the frame story on which he hangs his teachings narrative. This again implies Joseph as dead and out of the picture (or else too enfeebled to work).
The Matthew Infancy Narrative, told from Joseph’s perspective, portrays him as a ca;m, judicious, mature man at the time of the Annunciation. The portrayal of his character prior to the angel’s message is of a man who truly loves someone who has hurt him, and is looking to do the morally right thing by her, not exact what the Law entitles him to do.
The Nazareth passage referenced in 1 and 2 above makes reference to four named adelphoi and unnamed adelphai of Jesus. Without stirring up a tangential hotly-disputed question, let’s note that adelphoi and -ai most commonly means “brothers” and “sisters” in the literal sense, but equally correctly and not uncommonly means “cousin” or “close kinsman.” While many regard these as Jesus’s younger brothers and sisters, Joseph and Mary’s later children, the idea of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity is one that is attested very early in Christian teaching – and note that in the cultural context, virginity is not a Big Deal: Mary would not somehow be ‘polluting herself’ by engaging in sex with her husband. Those who hold to this view most commonly see Joseph as a widower with at least six children, entering into a second marriage with Mary – another ground for seeing Joseph as an older man. The alternate reading sees them as the orphaned children of relatives, most likely Alphaeus and his wife (perhaps also named Mary), whom Joseph and Mary had adopted or fostered. (This equates “James bar Alphaeus” in the list of the 12 with the “James the Just, brother of the Lord” who became head of the Jerusalem Church after the death of James bar Zebedee and traditionaly wrote the Book of James.) In support of the latter view, people point to the John/Mary thing noted above – the idea being that if Mary had surviving adult children, her care would fall to them, not to John.
(or 4a.) Tying into the “second marriage” concept mentioned above is the consistent description of Jesus as Mary’s firstborn son. Modern readings of the use of “firstborn” here draw exactly the wrong conclusion here: they see “Mary’s firstborn” as implying that she had other children (which is reasonable, considering that his adelphoi are named as accompanying her). However, the proper inference is different, and relates to traditional Jewish inheritance: a man’s firstborn son inherits the ‘birthright’ from him, much like British male primogeniture. Jesus, conceived by a betrothed woman, would be the legitimate heir of his father, and be Joseph’s firstborn – which He is not described as. Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus (according to Scripture) would not affect this – he would still be Joseph’s legal heir as firstborn. To describe a baby boy as his father’s firstborn rathr than the mother’s in Jewish usage has the same matter-of-fact quality as assuming a child born in wedlock is going to get his father’s surname in our society. The implication is that one of the adelphoi, probably James, is Joseph’s firstborn.
In any case, there are logical reasons for seeing Mary as quite young and Joseph as substantially older, even though all are completely inferential
Given that much is made of Jesus’ heritage, which includes a recitation of Joseph’s line of descent, but not Mary’s, IIRC, what is modern scholarship’s thinking of why as important an issue as his family and his place in it is left entirely to inference?
nitpick – “bear” children. Women can bare children at any age.
And this was her first (and, by some lights, only) child. It’s extremely unlikely that she’d be having that at an advanced age. More than likely, Mary was a young mama.
My understanding is that the important issue is that Jesus is descended from David (legally if not biologically), as prophesied in scripture, hence the attention to his lineage. While you consider details of his nuclear family beyond his parents to be important, they were immaterial to the message of the Gospel writers.
I’ve heard the theory that Joseph was older than Mary and that Jesus’s “brothers and sisters” were Joseph’s children from a prior marriage. If this were true, this could make the Bible consistent with the Catholic position of Mary’s perpetual virginity. This age difference also could explain why Joseph is apparently nowhere to be found during Jesus’s ministry (generally accepted to have started when Jesus was 30). If we suppose that Mary was 13 and Joseph was 30-40 (old enough to have a few children), then at the Crucifixion, Mary would have been in her 40’s, and Joseph’s age would have been past 60, and might have already died. If Joseph was already dead, this could explain why he didn’t attend Jesus’s execution and why Jesus had his mother adopt one of his disciples (because she would have been alone otherwise).
Thank you for that in-depth post, Polycarp. I’d never before seen the argument pointed out that Jesus putting Mary into John’s care was an indicator that she didn’t have any other children.
I’d heard the broad outlines of what** Polycarp** said, but never with that detail and clarity before. Bravo!
There are two passages (Matthew 13:55 and John 6:42) that appear to speak of Joseph in the present tense during Jesus’ adult life. But the passage commiting Mary to John (John 19:26-27) pretty clearly implies that by the time of the crucifixion, Mary had no husband (or other children) to care for her.
40 year old men are almost all impotent? :dubious:
Even if Joseph was 40, Mary wouldn’t have remained a virgin unless Joseph consented to that. And if Joseph consented then it doesn’t matter what age he was.
The idea makes no sense under Jewish law and custom or even under commonsense. Joseph was already engaged to Mary *before *she became pregnant. Under Jewish law and custom, a man was *obligated *to provide children with is wife. This was as much for her sake as his, since children were the only social security available, and men almost invariably died before their wives. A man who was unable to impregnate his wife was essentially condemning her to a slow death by starvation when he died.
As Polycarp notes above, we can discern some things because they are *not *mentioned as being unusual. A girl’s parents marrying her to man who was physically incapable of of fathering children would have been highly unusual, not to mention cruel. Yet no such statement was made about Mary’s engagement. It seemed perfectly normal and mundane.
So we can assume that everyone, including Mary and Joseph, believed that Joseph would father her children. If he did not, then it was because he agreed to leave her untouched, not because he was physically incapable or had no desire to do so. He obviously desired to do so when he became engaged to her.
And if he willingly chose not to do so, then his age was irrelevant since a man of any age could make that decision.
But of course the whole concept has no basis aside from traditions invented at least a hundred years after Jesus was dead. Once again, as Polycarp notes, unusual things tend to get noted. It would have been highly unusual for a poor Jewish woman to have only one child and just as unusual for anyone to be an only child. Yet no such note was ever made. So for the same reasons that we can conclude that Mary was young we can conclude that she gave birth to numerous children.
I don’t think the suggestion is that Joseph couldn’t father children; it’s that as an older man who already had a family he didn’t have the same religious, social or personal need to father children. His primary motive in marrying again may have been for companionship, and to secure a stepmother for his motherless first family, and this is consistent with the idea that either he never intended a sexual relationship with Mary, or that he came to that view after she was conceived of the Holy Ghost - which, let’s face it, is the kind of altered circumstance that might cause a fellow to reconsider the terms of his relationship.
Once again, this would have been the worst crime against a wife conceivable in those days. To intend to leave her with no children. It would paint Joseph as a complete bastard as well as being so unusual as to be worth mentioning.
Exactly as I said above. And as likely to prompt the reaction in a man of 18 as in a man of 40.
Not if the man has a legal and social requirement to have children.
Don’t get me wrong–I think the perpetual virgin thing is just an attempt to deify Mary. The entire basis, as I understand, has to do with the Immaculate Conception and the idea that having sex is evil, neither of which being biblical concepts. Heck, I still don’t understand the need for the Immaculate Conception theologically: if God can make a woman sinless who was born from human parents, why can’t he make himself sinless being born from only one human parent? Why do the two miracles need to be separated by a generation?
