Word: heroding
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...life seems rich: after an initial moment of stunned disbelief at Mary's condition, he receives his own Annunciation in one of four angelic dreams; he marries her and gets her to Bethlehem; spirits mother and child off to Egypt when they are threatened by the murderous King Herod; then settles them in Nazareth. Yet there are strange omissions and truncations. Joseph is not described as present at Jesus' birth or the reception of the shepherds. The Egyptian trip is not actually recounted. The last reference to Joseph as a living person--a single sentence--occurs when Jesus...
...storytelling principle at work in Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, which is her version of the Holy Family's return from Egypt's Alexandria to Nazareth and a Holy Land rocked with violence following Herod's death. Rice is Catholic, but when she focuses on Joseph, she is writing not hagiography but a modern description of his leadership of a sizable clan and his reluctance to tell the boy Jesus too much of his backstory until he is more mature. "I think he was a resolute man, an unshakable man, but he had no need to make...
Matthew was once again trying to tie his Nativity ever tighter to the Old Testament so that potential Jewish converts could feel comfortable with the new religion. The clue is Herod, whose failure to track down Jesus leads him to order the death of all local children under age 2. That "Slaughter of the Innocents" is a near replay of a much earlier infanticide: Pharaoh's murder of all the male infants of Israel in Exodus. Jews would recall that Pharaoh's most famous escapee (via those bulrushes) was Moses, who eventually received the Law from God at Sinai. Through...
...pagan background, he at least had some knowledge that stellar displays had meaning to non-Jews as well. In fact, stars were associated with the founding of Rome and the fall of Jerusalem, plus the birth of the usual suspects: Alexander the Great and Julius and Augustus Caesar. Even Herod reportedly...
...accident, since it expressed Matthew's growing frustration at the majority of fellow Jews who dismissed his messianic claims for Jesus and may have ostracized and persecuted some of his co-believers. Thus it was the Magi rather than Jews who followed the star to Jerusalem and innocently alerted Herod. In a dire foreshadowing of Christ's Passion, Matthew reports that rather than being helpful, the half-Jewish King and his Jewish "chief priests and scribes" conspired to kill the Christ Child. The Gospel has the Magi briefly co-opted into his scheme as advance scouts. But on finally locating...