How old were Mary and Joseph at the time of Christ's birth?

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crowcounty said:
i get it its a gift but its lame that we were so bad at sacrifice that he has to suffer it himself and yeah i think if things had been different maybe mary would have got to be a child briefly, when my daughter turned twelve she learned how to rollerskate she was not required to save the world.and i am glad of that.
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You don’t understand why Christ needed to be sacrificed. I’ll try to explain it the way my priest explained it. An action can incur different degrees of punishment based on who you are doing the action to; for example, if I punched a kid at school, I’d get suspended, if I punched the president of the United States, I’d get a worse punishment. Now, sin is a rebellion against God, an infinite being; this means no finite being can make amends for that sin. For this reason, God had to come down to earth, and suffer the sins of all mankind to make it possible for us to be with Him in heaven. I hope that helped.

You still fail to understand the culture during Mary’s childhood; children of that age were expected to be married, this practice continued into the late 18th century and possibly the 19th century. The idea that children younger than, say, 23-24 years old were supposed to be free and have a childhood is an EXTREMELY new idea. You may think it was horrible and a waste of a child, but the culture, God, and myself do not think so.
 
The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen called Mary the Mother of all Mothers.
Because; {“Mary”} is what God wanted us all to be, she speaks of herself as the eternal blueprint in the mind of God, the one whom God loved “before” she was a creature of God.
She is even pictured as being with Him not only at the beginning of Creation, but before Creation. She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers. The closer one is to God, the greater the purity. But since (“no one”) was even closer to God than the woman whose human portals he threw open to walk this earth; then “no one” could have been more pure than she being entirely Full of Grace.

This special purity of hers we call the Immaculate Conception. "The word “immaculate” is taken from two Latin words meaning (“not stained”) “Conception” means that, at the first moment of her conception, the Blessed Mother in the womb of her mother Saint. Anne, and in virtue of the anticipated merits of the Redemption of her Son was preserved free from the stains of original sin.

("Taken from “The Worlds First Love”)
Archbishop Fulton Sheen
 
Is it just my computer or did a whole bunch of posts get deleted from this thread?
 
Crimson_Soldier said:
Does Scripture give any answer to this question? I read on a “christian.” website that Mary was 12 and Joseph was around 80 and went on to say it was found in the Catholic encyclopedia. Is this true?
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We don’t know. Scripture gives no information.
 
diggerdomer said:
We don’t know. Scripture gives no information.
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Since scripture is quite incomplete (i.e. John 20:30, 21:25; Luke 3:18, Acts 2:40 and others), it is a blessing that we have Church tradition, otherwise we would know even less about such things.
 
zach_dunn said:
The Catholic Encyclopedia says that Mary was 12-14 and that Joseph was around 90 . . .

That’s just my two cents.
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But it qualifies that by saying these ages are found in UNRELIABLE apocryphal writings.
 
Mary will have been around 15, that was a normal age at that time for girls to get married.

I don’t know about St. Joseph but 80/90 sounds a bit bonkers to me.
 
thistle said:
But it qualifies that by saying these ages are found in UNRELIABLE apocryphal writings.
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“Apocryphal” writings are those which are not considered “inspired”, but all the same may be historically or factually accurate. From the lead of the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Apocrypha.—The scope of this article takes in those compositions which profess to have been written either by Biblical personages or men in intimate relations with them.
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oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Apocrypha

Thus,the term “unreliable” may be undeserved. They are certainly not “inspired”, or else they would be scripture. The following is from the Encyclopedia regarding Mary:
“Jewish maidens were considered marriageable at the age of twelve years and six months, though the actual age of the bride varied with circumstances. The marriage was preceded by the betrothal, after which the bride legally belonged to the bridegroom, though she did not live with him till about a year later, when the marriage used to be celebrated.”
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It is supposed that Mary was thirteen or fourteen years of age at the time of the Nativity, although this is stated from usual cultural practices, and is not otherwise documented.

oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Mary%2C_The_Blessed_Virgin
 
Crimson_Soldier said:
Does Scripture give any answer to this question? I read on a “christian.” website that Mary was 12 and Joseph was around 80 and went on to say it was found in the Catholic encyclopedia. Is this true?
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There is no actual “proof” of either of their ages, although understanding customs of that day, a girl would be in her early to mid teens when she would be married and a man would be close to/or around 30-35.
 
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