It should be noted
that many other ancient documents differ in several ways from the Biblical
Gospels. One, for instance, is The Protevangelium or Book of James which some
researchers believe to have been written by Jesus’s brother, James, to whom he
left the leadership, or possibly the co-leadership, of his group of disciples
and the future of his mission.
Mary, mother of
Jesus, is described in The Protevangelium as an almah, one of the seven Temple
nuns of Jerusalem, translated in some places as “sacred virgin”, where virgin
did not, however, have its modern English sense. The contemporary meaning of
almah was closer to ‘young woman’. To claim that a ‘virgin’ conceived a child
can therefore be interpreted quite logically in this context and would not
offer evidence that Mary was literally a virgin. It was perfectly possible for
her to be called both an almah and the wife of Joseph.
The Book of Mark,
the earliest of the Gospels, makes no reference to a virgin birth, nor does the
Book of John, the last of the Four Biblical Gospels to appear. Although
published last, there is reason to believe that the actual script of the Book
of John was compiled prior to 40AD and that it is historically the most
accurate of the Gospels. But we have to be aware that all so-called historical
records reflect the bias and opinions of their writers which, as we can see,
leaves the door wide open to speculation.
Of interest is that
among the additional gospels found among the Nag Hammadi documents were gospels
written by Philip, Mary Magdalene and Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas states with
what appears to be an air of certitude that although some say that Mary
conceived by the Holy Spirit, they are wrong and do not know what they are
saying.
Doctrines are by no
means fixed, even within the same organisation. The doctrine of Mary’s own
“immaculate conception” was, for instance, formalised by the Church only in
1854, when Pope Pius IX issued a decree that Mary, too, had been immaculately
conceived and was therefore without Original Sin. And a further century was to
pass before Pope Pius XII issued the decree about Mary’s Assumption into
heaven.
It is generally
assumed that Mary, mother of Jesus, was born around 27-26 BC which would have
made her about 19 or 20 when Jesus was born. Joseph of Arimathea is popularly
referred to as her uncle but this was almost certainly not the case. The Bible
reveals nothing of Mary’s family background.
A version that seems
not without some supporting evidence has it that Jesus was born ‘at the wrong
time of the year’ to meet the religious requirements of the Essene group to
which his family seems to have belonged. His ‘legitimacy’ in the eyes of the
religious community was therefore a matter of debate.
According to the
dynastic rules meticulously practised by the Essene group at Qumran, married
couples were obliged to live a celibate life except at specific times set aside
for the procreation of children. And the times when sexual relations were
permitted were few and far between.
Three months after a
couple were betrothed, an ‘initial’ marriage ceremony took place. Held in
September, this was the espousal or formal marriage contract. Sexual
intercourse was permitted only during the first half of December in order to
ensure that if the awaited Messianic child were born, it would be in September,
the month of Atonement. If no pregnancy resulted from this brief period of
intercourse, the couple were obliged to wait until the following December
before resuming co-habitation.
Until she fell
pregnant, the wife was more or less on probation. When she did fall pregnant, a
second marriage ceremony took place at the end of her first trimester of
pregnancy. This allowed for any potential miscarriage.
This second marriage
ceremony therefore traditionally took place in March. If the wife proved
consistently barren, the man could legally put her aside and take a new wife.
Since there is evidence that Jesus was born in March, it is clear that Joseph
and Mary had not waited until December and had co-habited in June, which was
approximately three months before even the first marriage ceremony had taken
place.
Once Mary’s
pregnancy was established, Joseph had the choice of casting her aside by not
going through with the second and final marriage ceremony. Had he chosen to do
this, Mary would have disappeared into some monastic establishment (see Matthew
1:19), and the child would have been handed over to the priests to be raised as
an ‘orphan’ away from the family community.
But Joseph of Judah,
the father of Jesus, was the heir to the Davidic line of succession, and so
this serious infringement against Essenic tradition called for special
intervention because the unborn child was Joseph’s heir in this revered
bloodline. The ‘Angel Gabriel’ (a title, not an angelic being) sanctioned the
second marriage ceremony. (Refer to Matthew 1:20 for the Biblical description
of the event.)
Once the second
marriage ceremony had been performed, the couple were once more under the
sexual restraints of the order, the first of these being that, once pregnancy
had been established, there would be no further sexual congress between them
for a specific period that extended beyond the birth of the child.
That Mary and Joseph
went on to have other children is not questioned, and her continued completely
human fertility makes some of the Church’s later dogma concerning Mary highly
questionable. The sibling following Jesus was James, often known as James the
Good, and very close to Jesus, although apparently much more strict in his
observance of conventional religious rules. Of special interest is that there
is quite substantial evidence to support the contention that James was none
other than Joseph of Arimathea.
Contextually, this makes
sense. It also clears up several anomalies arising out of the idea that Joseph
of Arimathea was Mary’s uncle. Jesus left his mission in the hands of two
people he loved and trusted: Mary Magdalene and James (that is, Joseph of
Arimathea).
Laurence Gardner
explains in Bloodline of the Holy Grail that the ‘title’ of ‘Joseph’ was borne
by the eldest son of each generation in the Davidic succession, whatever his
personal name. When the heir succeeded to the ‘David’ title, his eldest son
became the ‘Joseph’. If he had no son or if his eldest son was under the age of
sixteen at the time of the accession, the title of ‘Joseph’ went to his oldest
brother. The oldest brother would relinquish this title if and when a son came
of age to inherit it. James was the oldest brother of Jesus and therefore the
next in line. He therefore inherited the Davidic title of Joseph of Arimathea.
There had been other Josephs of Arimathea, of course, since the name was
titular.
By the time of the
Crucifixion, Mary, mother of Jesus, would have been in her mid-fifties. Had
Joseph really been her uncle, he would very likely have been at least in his
middle seventies. Yet several sources record that some thirty years later he
was preaching Jesus’s mission in the West and that he died some twenty years
after that.
In terms of the hereditary succession, James the Just (born in 1 AD and often referred to as James the Good), was entitled to the title of Joseph of Arimathea until such time as the oldest son of Jesus came of age. He died in the West in 82 AD.
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