How old was Jesus when Joseph died?

[Nelka]

I know we cannot know but we know Joseph was around when jesus was 12 due to finding Jesus in the Temple.

What age would Jesus have to have been in Jewish law for Him to live with Mary without any problems? If Joseph died when Jesus was 13 would they have had to live with another relative? I’m sure Jesus was a master carpenter even at that age but financially would they have had to live elsewhere with a cousin or other?

I’m thinking the oldest Jesus would have been would be 30 as Joseph isn’t mentioned as being around during Jesus’ ministry.

What do you think?

Thanks.

 

[GEddie]

I know we cannot know but we know Joseph was around when jesus was 12 due to finding Jesus in the Temple.

What age would Jesus have to have been in Jewish law for Him to live with Mary without any problems? If Joseph died when Jesus was 13 would they have had to live with another relative? I’m sure Jesus was a master carpenter even at that age but financially would they have had to live elsewhere with a cousin or other?

I’m thinking the oldest Jesus would have been would be 30 as Joseph isn’t mentioned as being around during Jesus’ ministry.

What do you think?

Thanks.

We just don’t know.

S. Joseph could have died anytime after the Finding in the Temple.

The general idea is that he died soon afterward, necessitating our LORD’s financial support of Mary. But it works equally well if he lived until our LORD was 30, so having HIM to comfort him in old age.

ICXC NIKA

 

[patrick457]

I know we cannot know but we know Joseph was around when jesus was 12 due to finding Jesus in the Temple.

What age would Jesus have to have been in Jewish law for Him to live with Mary without any problems? If Joseph died when Jesus was 13 would they have had to live with another relative? I’m sure Jesus was a master carpenter even at that age but financially would they have had to live elsewhere with a cousin or other?

I’m thinking the oldest Jesus would have been would be 30 as Joseph isn’t mentioned as being around during Jesus’ ministry.

What do you think?

Thanks.

You also have to remember that at time they still mainly thought of family in extended terms, not nuclear, back then. (The process of the breakdown of the family from an extended unit into nuclear units - caused by the population booming and the Jewish custom of dividing the family land - was just starting to occur.) It wouldn’t have been uncommon for members of an extended family to live near each other, or even in the same house complex. In fact, that was kind of the norm. (You can still see this in some cultures today.) That’s because you really can’t afford to be a small family back then: you really needed to have your relatives close at hand just in case you needed to turn to someone.

I personally like to think that Jesus’ ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ and some of their other relatives at least also lived in the same house with them. (You might notice in the gospels that Jesus’ mother and His ‘brothers’ were once mentioned together: “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.”) So even if Joseph died, it’s probably not like Jesus and Mary were the only ones left in the house.

 

[marymary1975]

The answer is that we don’t know.

However I have heard that it may be possible that saint Joseph died when Jesus was very young and because this would have left the virgin and Jesus on the street st Joseph’s brother , believed to be Clopas, took them into his family. Hence why Jesus was seen as a “brother” of his cousins.

 

[petra22]

Hmmm. We just don’t know.

 

[GEddie]

Hmmm. We just don’t know.

Although, the image of a grown LORD holding Joseph’s aged head is a beautiful one, too.

ICXC NIKA

 

[patrick457]

You also have to remember that at time they still mainly thought of family in extended terms, not nuclear, back then. (The process of the breakdown of the family from an extended unit into nuclear units - caused by the population booming and the Jewish custom of dividing the family land - was just starting to occur.)

I’m just gonna elaborate on this a bit.

As per Jewish inheritance laws, the eldest son inherited the family home and a double share of the land, while the rest was divided among the other sons. (Deuteronomy 21:15-17) Dividing the property was fine in theory, but as you go further down the family line, the land that will be inherited will get smaller and smaller until the individual plots become too tiny to support even one person - in other words, pretty much worthless. In those cases, the younger siblings had no other choice but to sell their land for cash and consider other options: work someplace else, rent, beg, steal.

The other way was for brothers to (continue to) live together and keep a smallholding undivided as the joint property of the ‘father’s house’, rather than divide it. (cf. Psalm 133:1 “How good and pleasant it is that brothers dwell together in unity” - the term “dwell together” there is actually the legal term for joint tenancy.)

The two grandsons of Jude, one of Jesus’ ‘brothers’, Zoker/Zechariah and James, were said to have been farmers who jointly owned thirty-nine plethra (depending on how you interpret plethra, it could either be something as small as nine to ten acres or at the maximum, around twenty-five acres) of land with which they supported themselves. Of course, Jesus and His relatives were not wealthy people, but IMHO the fact that these grandsons still owned some land show that Jesus’ family were not exactly destitute either. Two generations back, the farm that they owned would have probably been owned by Joseph and his brother Clopas as well.

That being said, thirty-nine plethra of land was not much to support two families. In fact, that might explain Joseph (and Jesus) became artisans/‘carpenters’ (tekton): not as an alternative to working the land, but to supplement the family income because the land they tilled was not enough.

 

[GEddie]

Our LORD never claimed to work the land, though.

When the Gospel states that Joseph left Egypt, but afraid to return to Judaea, settled in Nazareth, that suggests that he was not from there and possibly owned no farmland.

ICXC NIKA

 

[patrick457]

Our LORD never claimed to work the land, though.

Well, He did use farming imagery in some of His parables (the sower, the growing seed, mustard seed, the growing seed, the wheat and the tares). If anything, He never claimed to work wood.

When the Gospel states that Joseph left Egypt, but afraid to return to Judaea, settled in Nazareth, that suggests that he was not from there and possibly owned no farmland.

ICXC NIKA

That’s the thing. Luke 2:39 states that Nazareth was “their own ‘city’.” I think Joseph, being a Davidid, would have had roots in Bethlehem, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was/had to have been born in Bethlehem himself. The family was still living in the Galilee even after Jesus: Julius Africanus states that the Desposynoi (“the Lord’s people;” the descendants of Jesus’ ‘brothers’) in the late 2nd century were based in the villages of Nazareth/Nazara and Cochaba. (They also had a base in Jerusalem: cf. James the Just.)

This is just my imagination here, but who knows? Maybe Joseph did plan to settle down in Bethlehem and consider his options there, but Herod pretty much messed his plans and so after going to Egypt, he eventually winded back to Nazareth and eked out a living by co-owning the family land with Clopas and his tekton-ship.

 

[patrick457]

Well, He did use farming imagery in some of His parables (the sower, the growing seed, mustard seed, the growing seed, the wheat and the tares). If anything, He never claimed to work wood.

I should add: many artisans in those days were not just artisans - to the exclusion of other jobs, nor were many farmers just farmers and nothing else. They were not stuck to one single kind of job: a lot of working peasants would have multitasked, because after all it helps bring food to the table. Farmers, for instance, also functioned as an occasional artisan or laborer (especially in villages). They farmed for food and they practiced some other trade on the side.

The Galilee was the most naturally fertile agricultural region in all of Palestine, and many people around Jesus would have been subsistence farmers. We know Jude’s grandsons were; it’s not unlikely others in the family were too. IMHO it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Joseph or Jesus working the family plot at some point in their lives in addition to their artisanry.

You might note that the word used to describe Joseph and Jesus, tekton, doesn’t really describe a specific type of job: it just meant ‘artisan’ or ‘craftsman’, someone who made something. Which could really be anything: stone houses, wooden yokes, boats, farming tools.

 

[Pilsen]

According to the Mystical City of God, by Venerable Mary of Agreda, St Joseph was 60 when he died.

stjames-church.com/book5c4.html

Edit: While it doesn’t say exactly how old Jesus was at this time, it does say that St Joseph was espoused with our Blessed Mother Mary for 27 years at the time of his death. So Jesus would’ve been 27 or 28 years then?

 

[thistle]

I know we cannot know but we know Joseph was around when jesus was 12 due to finding Jesus in the Temple.

What age would Jesus have to have been in Jewish law for Him to live with Mary without any problems? If Joseph died when Jesus was 13 would they have had to live with another relative? I’m sure Jesus was a master carpenter even at that age but financially would they have had to live elsewhere with a cousin or other?

I’m thinking the oldest Jesus would have been would be 30 as Joseph isn’t mentioned as being around during Jesus’ ministry.

What do you think?

Thanks.

We don’t know when Joseph died or how old he was and neither do we know how old Jesus was when he died.