Matthew 1.18-21.
The idea of Mary being a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, doesn’t work for a lot of people nowadays. “She was a virgin? Yeah right. She totally had sex with somebody. And then lied about it, and said God did it, and that sucker Joseph believed her.”
Clearly they’ve not read the gospels, because Joseph clearly didn’t believe her.
- Matthew 1.18-19 KWL
- 18 The genesis of King Jesus is like this:
- His mother Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph,
- before coming to live together,
- is found to have a child in the womb
- from the Holy Spirit.
- 19 Her man Joseph, a right-minded man,
- not wanting to make a show of her,
- intends to privately release her.
Joseph knew you don’t just “have a child in the womb from the Holy Spirit.” He knew how babies are made.
Greek myths abound of stories where Zeus disguised himself so he could have sex with Greek women, and produce théhi-human hybrid spawn who grew up to be famous Greek heroes. And more than likely, all the women who contributed to this myth of a horny god raping various noblewomen in the Greek Empire, had simply had sex with somebody, and blamed Zeus rather than suffer the usual consequences of non-marital sexual activity.
Of course if you read the myths, you’ll notice when women claimed Zeus impregnated them, the Greeks didn’t believe ’em either. They took out their outrage upon their wives and daughters all the same. Banished ’em, imprisoned ’em, sealed ’em in a coffin and threw them into the sea. (Then, say the myths, Zeus had to smite them for their unbelief.) The ancients knew exactly how babies are made. The “Zeus did it!” story never worked.
And the “God did it” story didn’t work on Joseph either. To his mind, Mary clearly had sex—and not with him. And she was trying to blame the Holy Spirit, of all people. But the Spirit isn’t Zeus! He’s not gonna transform himself into bulls and geese so he can rape silly teenage girls. The very idea is the most ridiculous, offensive sort of blasphemy.
Mary’s apparent infidelity and outrageous excuse aside, Joseph was what Matthew calls δίκαιος/díkeos, which the KJV translates “just” and the NIV “was faithful to the law.” It means as I translated it: Right-minded. He’s the type of person who always seeks to do the morally right thing. He didn’t wanna be vengeful, and expose Mary to public ridicule. He simply wanted this relationship to be over with.
Betrothals among first-century Israelis were a contractual agreement between the husband and wife’s families. (The husband would provide this, the wife that.) But all it took to end these agreements, was for the husband to declare, “I divorce you” three times, and bam, the contract was null, the couple would stop living together, and the wife would go back to her parents. So Joseph figured he’d do that. Not in the town square; probably just in front of their parents.
So yeah, let’s put aside this idea that the ancients were naïve idiots who’d believe such stories. They didn’t. Devout Israelis in particular, whose God isn’t at all like that. Joseph didn’t believe the virgin-conception story any more than any pagan nowadays.
But something flipped him 180 degrees—so much so that he legally adopted Mary’s kid and raised him as his own. This something was a prophetic dream—and from what we know about prophetic dreams, it wouldn’t have worked on Joseph unless
- he was stupid, or
- he had multiple experiences with prophetic dreams, and his experiences taught him they were reliable.
Me, I’m pretty sure it’s that second thing.