Word: joseph
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fulfilled a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah that the Messiah would be born to a "virgin." (Isaiah's Hebrew actually talks of a "young girl"; Matthew was probably working from a Greek mistranslation.) Critics may also have alleged that Jesus' birth early in Mary's marriage to Joseph was the result of her committing adultery; much later Jewish sources named a Roman soldier called Panthera. Those accusations, some scholars believe, account for the verse in Matthew in which Joseph considers divorcing Mary before his dream angel allays his doubts. Related notions of Jesus' illegitimacy have never totally disappeared. Jane...
...Matthew's account, Joseph and Mary are Bethlehem residents and Jesus is born at home. But his very birth necessitates their flight to Egypt (and eventually Nazareth) because Jerusalem's vicious regent, Herod, is determined to murder the Bethlehem child he has learned will one day be King of the Jews. None of that gripping story, however, can be found in Luke. According to Luke, Joseph and Mary, Nazarenes, are on a brief if inconvenient visit to Joseph's ancestral home of Bethlehem, complying with a vast census ("All the world should be enrolled") ordered by the Roman Emperor Augustus...
...hometown. And in a confused 1st century theological landscape in which many Jews expected a mighty new leader but disagreed on his nature, David's biblical status as God's "anointed one" (or "Messiah") provided a potent precedent of divinely sanctioned kingship. Binding Jesus to him by family (through Joseph) and birthplace consolidated that definition, which then matured into Christianity's far grander messiahship. Says White: "No Bethlehem, no David. No David, no messianic prototype. Matthew and Luke both understood that." The way each Gospel writer got the Holy Family there, by contrast, reflected his particular preoccupations...
Luke would have remembered that slaughter. By documenting Joseph and Mary's compliance with Quirinius' census, he was broadcasting to Roman readers that his fellow Christians were not that kind of messianists, intent on armed revolt. But by framing Christ's birth in the context of that empire-wide tally, he was also suggesting that not just Jewish Palestine but also the entire known world was a possible horizon for Christ's kingdom. It was a delicate line. The adult Jesus would later put it nicely (although Luke may have inherited this particular phrase from the earlier-written Mark): "Render...
...star-studded Nativity scene at London wax museum MADAME TUSSAUDS elevated soccer god David Beckham to biblical status last week, exhibiting wax figures of him and his wife Victoria, a.k.a. Posh Spice, as Joseph and Mary. As pop singer Kylie Minogue hovers angelically, Hugh Grant and Samuel L. Jackson appear as shepherds while Tony Blair, George W. Bush and Prince Philip portray wise men in the display, which will stay up until January. The Vatican has called the scene blasphemous. And with Posh as the Virgin, the church may have a point...