Wouldn't Joseph have known?

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In Matthew Chapter 2:19-23, the author writes how Joseph returns from Egypt with Mary and Jesus intending on going back to Israel. He finds out one of Herod’s sons rules and avoids Israel and goes on to Nazareth, fulfilling the prophecy of the Savior coming from Nazareth, or being from a place that is despised. (Can anything good come from Nazareth? John 1:46)
Why would Joseph need a dream to tell him where to live? Wouldn’t Mary have told him she was carrying the Savior (Emanuel)? Wouldn’t he have known his scriptures?
 
Ovation said:
Wouldn’t he have known his scriptures?
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I would guess not. While he was a good man, he wasn’t a rabbi or scribe of one of those people who read a lot of scripture. And even Jesus’ disciples couldn’t see all the scriptural connections without Jesus explaining it to them, as he did on the road to Emmaus.
 
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Joseph and Mary were holy people, but they weren’t highly educated rabbis and they had a lot to do all day just taking care of day-to-day livelihood and survival. It’s likely they did not, at this point, fully understand or pick up on all the implications of Jesus’ birth and the prophecies he would fulfill. Mary did a great deal of “pondering” things in her heart. It certainly wasn’t a case of them looking up all the OT prophecies and saying, “Okay, gotta fulfill this one now…check that box, Next!” They wouldn’t have had the time or the resources to be doing that.
 
Why would he need a dream?

Well, God was the one that sent him the dream, so he must have wanted Joseph to know by that way, don’t you think? 🙂
 
Ovation said:
In Matthew Chapter 2:19-23, the author writes how Joseph returns from Egypt with Mary and Jesus intending on going back to Israel. He finds out one of Herod’s sons rules and avoids Israel and goes on to Nazareth, fulfilling the prophecy of the Savior coming from Nazareth, or being from a place that is despised. (Can anything good come from Nazareth? John 1:46)
Why would Joseph need a dream to tell him where to live? Wouldn’t Mary have told him she was carrying the Savior (Emanuel)? Wouldn’t he have known his scriptures?
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  1. The Holy Family was not “going back to Israel”. The angel of the Lord in the dream told Joseph to “go to the land of Israel”. In those days, there were 2 kingdoms; Israel and Judaea. Bethlehem was in the southern kingdom of Judaea, and Nazareth was in the northern kingdom of Israel. The Holy Family departed Judaea for Egypt, and from Egypt (as commanded by the angel) moved to (not back to) Israel.
  2. Mary did not have to tell Joseph that she was carrying the Savior. He already knew that, having had his own annunciation from the angel of the Lord well before the birth (see Matthew 1:18-25).
  3. There was no prophesy that the Messiah would “come from” Nazareth, but from Bethlehem (see Micah 5:2).
 
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He would have needed to be told that Herod had died and it was safe to return.

As for knowing the Old Testament scriptures and prophesies. Knowing them would be one thing, but I think piecing them all together would be another matter.
 
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Ovation said:
Why would Joseph need a dream to tell him where to live? Wouldn’t Mary have told him she was carrying the Savior (Emanuel)? Wouldn’t he have known his scriptures?
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As we come to See in the Gospel,
when considering all the events which occurred during Jesus’ time on Earth on up to His Crucifixion, there were many - even very studied persons - who did not Know Scriptures…

What Mary may have or not said… is merely open to conjecture only…

Joseph was informed during this Dream given by an angel of the Lord - BEFORE he married Mary… !

“Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
 
Joseph has exactly ZERO recorded words in Sacred Scripture. What we know of him is related by the Evangelists, who explain what his thinking was.

God chose, for a specific reason, to communicate to Joseph in an extraordinary way - through a Messenger (Angel) in his dreams. God did that three separate times for Joseph.

I would imagine each time the angel spoke to him in a dream, it was easier to understand and obey than the previous time.

How blessed are we that St. Joseph listened to the angel, on every occasion!

Deacon Christopher
 
Your number 3, it does come from a prophecy ‘they shall call him Nazarene’. It is mentioned in Matt that it comes from the prophets (2:23) . Theres no specific ref to the OT as being Nazareth but to people who are rejected , scorned and despised so Isaiah 11.1 and 53.3 and psalm 22.6-7. Where Matt had in mind Jesus would be mocked and scorned as in nothing good in Nazareth.
 
Mary grew up in the temple and should have been well instructed in scripture/torah there. But because Mary was extremely humble, most people reading the bible or living at her time would not realise indeed how much she knew about scripture. But there are hints: the Magnificat is one of them.
By the way, it seems (according to tradition, if I am not mistaken) Mary homeschooled Jesus and his 2 cousins Judas Thaddeus and James. She could have been able to do that only if she was well instructed in scripture.

As for Mary not telling Joseph about the origin of her pregnancy, I can imagine she was burning to tell Joseph, because he of course came to know about it by observing her when she came back from Hebron after visiting Elizabeth. Scripture tells us that Joseph wanted to secretely and honorably cancel the engagement. She sould have been suffering very intensely feeling accused or regarded with contempt by Joseph her fiancee, and would have loved to clear out the misunderstanding by talking directly to Joseph.
So why did she not say anything? The Holy Spirit told her to remain quiet and trust God in all things. That act in itself of trusting God with her suffering against all logic in that dark night of hers gave her alot of merit and favour in the eyes of God as she always had from her conception and her behaviour is consistent with what the Angels (e.g. Gabriel) already knew about her, i.e. a woman full of Grace.

At the end we all know how that part of the story ended - Mary, despite being pregnant without comitting adultery/fornication remained quiet and did not justify herself. God justified Mary by sending an Angel to Joseph in a dream and he got to know the truth in the most supernatural of ways. We should all learn from this beatiful lesson of trust in God.

It does not matter what people think about us, all that matters is what God thinks about us.
 
Leferdion said:
God justified Mary by sending an Angel to Joseph in a dream and he got to know the truth in the most supernatural of ways. We should all learn from this beatiful lesson of trust in God.
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And this most likely occurred immediatly after Mary found out…
Including occurring before they married.
 
We can only speculate. It is possible that St Joseph grew up in Bethlehem, and had a preference to go and settle there. But God made his will known to him through the angel.
 
I usually get shot down when i bring this up, but according to the genealogy of Matthew Joseph was a royal descendent of David. Biblically, he was the King of Israel. This undoubtedly brought with it special graces to act as he did.
 
Both Joseph and Mary are descendants of David. Actually Joseph was chosen for Mary as spouse because he was a descendant of David.
 
I think Joseph was based in Nazareth (I am not sure though) because his brother Alphaeus (father of apostles James and Judas) was in Nazareth too.
 
The apparition of the angel to Joseph happened some time after Mary got pregnant.
Proposed course of events:
  1. Mary gets engaged with Joseph and they both live in Nazareth, but in accordance to the law, in separate homes
  2. Annunciation - Mary says her yes to God and gets pregnant of the Holy Spirit
  3. Visitation - Upon hearing from Angel Gabriel that her cousin Elizabeth is 6 months pregnant, Mary leaves Nazareth where she is bethroted to Joseph and leaves for Hebron where Zacharias and Elizabeth live (which is not far from Jerusalem).
  4. Mary returns from Hebron to Nazareth. It is not said exactly how long Mary stayed with Elizabeth in Hebron but it seems (on accounts of tradition and how old Elizabeth was) that Mary stayed with Elizabeth 2-3 months till John the baptist was born. Elizabeth was old and needed some help in the pregnancy, which Mary offered (just speculating here). So assuming this is true, then Mary would have gone back to Nazareth about 3 months pregnant with Jesus.
  5. All this while (from annunciation till return of Mary to Nazareth) Joseph does not know she is pregnant. Then when she gets back, he observes she is pregnant (people can notice changes in a 3 month pregnancy). Joseph, because he is an honorable man and doesnt wish his fiancee to be stoned to death for adultery, decides to end their relationship secretely. Of course Mary now knows Joseph knows about the pregnancy. But does not tell him anyway the truth about the origin of the pregnancy. She suffers silently.
  6. Angel appears to Joseph and Joseph learns the truth.
 
Bluebright said:
Your number 3, it does come from a prophecy ‘they shall call him Nazarene’. It is mentioned in Matt that it comes from the prophets (2:23) . Theres no specific ref to the OT as being Nazareth but to people who are rejected , scorned and despised so Isaiah 11.1 and 53.3 and psalm 22.6-7. Where Matt had in mind Jesus would be mocked and scorned as in nothing good in Nazareth.
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Well, not quite, but a common misconception.

Isaiah 11:1, 53:3, and Psalm 22:6-7 are not speaking of a resident of Nazareth, but a member of a Jewish conservative religious sect that was often misunderstood and persecuted.

The English term “Nazarene” is commonly used to translate two related Greek words that appear in the New Testament: Nazarēnos (“Nazarene”) and Nazōraios (“Nazorean”). A Nazarene is a person from Nazareth, and a Nazorean is a person of the religious sect mentioned earlier.

The references (Isaiah 11:1 and 53:3, and Psalm 22:6-7) were clearly discussing a person scorned for religious convictions and not their place of origin.

And finally Nathaniel was how something as great as the promised messiah could come from a small backwater town in Galilee like Nazareth…had he known the ancestral lineage of Jesus, and the fact that he was from Bethlehem and not Nazareth, his initial assessment may have been quite different.

Peace!
 
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Leferdion said:
I think Joseph was based in Nazareth (I am not sure though) because his brother Alphaeus (father of apostles James and Judas) was in Nazareth too.
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I have never seen any evidence St Joseph and Alphaeus were brothers. I suppose one can speculate that.
 
I think we should go a little easy on what someone before the resurrection, “Should have known.” We live in a time with the benefit of hindsight and there are no writers before the resurrection who said that all the prophecies taken together meant that the messiah would literally be God, die, and be raised on the third day. Even Peter dislike the idea of Jesus’ death when it was explicitly stated to him.

The New Testament writers had decades to pour over scripture and put this all together. Paul says even with the knowledge of scripture and a millennium of time that the demons did not know the plan and wouldn’t have killed Jesus if they did (1 Cor 2:8).
 
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