Joseph – Husband of Mary

When I quoted (and made my subsequent commentary on) F.F. Bruce’s article regarding Bible theology, what immediately came to mind was the non-scriptural, extremely bloated, teachings of the Catholic Church. When I started studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1970, my mother got worried that I’d leave the Catholic Church. After one of my visits, she handed me a Catholic bible. At the time, I had not yet committed to either staying Catholic or becoming something else. The Bible she gave me was the (get ready for this because it’s long) “Confraternity-Douay, Saint Joseph Textbook Edition,” copyright 1963.

Without even needing to get past 2 pages from the inside cover, here is what I found:

Although Joseph (husband of Mary, mother of Jesus) was an honorable man, out of the 12 listed qualities, six have absolutely no scriptural evidence. When I first started studying the Bible, I just assumed that the quotes appearing below each image were directly taken from scripture. After all, it is bound into the Bible, surely it must be part of the Bible. Spoiler alert, it is NOT. Not even one of those quotes is found in scripture. So where did they come from? Throughout the 17-page letter from Pope Pius 12^th, followed by a 15-page “General Introduction,” no explanation is made of the image shown above. Bottom line, it is not in the text of the Bible, some cleric made it all up.

Model of righteousness: The Bible indicates that when Joseph discovered Mary was pregnant, in spite of the fact they were engaged to be married, he didn't bitterly humiliate Mary but planned on divorcing her secretly. However, the quote that Joseph was "most just, make us relish what is right" isn't a passage in the Bible canon.

Patron of priests and seminarians: Nope. Joseph was a carpenter. He was not part of the Jewish priestly class nor was anything ever spoken in scripture about him being such an example.

Protector of Children: It’s a stretch. Joseph did protect the infant Jesus when he escaped to Egypt before Herod had all the boys up to age 2 killed. Since the Catholic Church doesn't recognize that Joseph and Mary had children after Jesus (through normal means), that he protects children is contradictory. Now, if they want to finally concede that Joseph and Mary did indeed have other children as the scriptures bear out, then yeah, okay, I'll agree to this designation.

Solace of the Afflicted: Once again, No evidence in scripture.

Hope of the sick: Once again, No evidence in scripture.

Model of Christian workmen: Joseph was a humble carpenter. About his work, there is nothing else officially revealed in scripture.

Consolation of the poor:  Once again, No evidence in scripture. (Boy, when the Catholic Church grabs at straws, they grab deep!)

Patron of the happy death: Happy (?!) death. Nope.

Guardian of virgins: Once again, on the trek to Egypt, Joseph obviously looked after his wife. Indeed, at that time, she was virgin. However, once again it is a huge stretch of the imagination to say he is guardian of all virgins.

Rescuer of sinners: Now this is a blatant lie. Jesus is the rescuer of sinners.

Safeguard of families: (See Protector of children and Guardian of virgins.)

Model of single and married men: (Someone was really straining the brain to come with 12 pictures. Pretty much the same as a number of the other ones above dealing with family, children, virgins, and workers.)

By the way, as much as they extol Joseph here, I’m surprised they dare to stick figurines of him in the ground upside-down and then try to extort profit from him.

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Forget Shovel, Bring In the Backhoe

In my Blowing Smoke article, I highlighted the value of digging deeper into the original Biblical languages. In that vein, it is interesting to read what F.F. Bruce wrote on the inside front flap of the dust cover for my Vine’s dictionary.

“There can be no true biblical theology unless it is based on sound biblical exegesis, and there can be no sound biblical exegesis unless a firm textual and grammatical foundation has been laid for it.”

Admittedly, when I first read that back in the mid 1980’s, I had to whip out the Webster Collegiate English dictionary. (Yet another huge volume to clutter my desk!)

Biblical theology: The teaching about God as advanced by the Bible, untainted by the philosophies of personal preferences.

Exegesis: A critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture

To put the above into easily understood terms, I wrote a note to myself: “We cannot correctly understand who God is and what he wants of us (according to the Bible) unless the original-language words are correctly translated and their context is accurately rendered. Indeed, both are a challenge because even if the word is correctly translated, it can still be contextually wrong. This can readily be seen by looking at many of the verbs and adjectives used in both Hebrew (and Aramaic) and Greek and note that several English words are used. In fact, this is the whole basis of the Amplified Bible – that it parenthetically includes various English words to help the English-speaking reader get a more well-rounded idea of what was being conveyed by the Bible writers.”

So more than a cursory reading of the Bible is necessary to build strong faith.

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Vine’s Dictionary

As part of building up my Bible versions library, 30 years ago (1987, at age 36) I bought W. E. Vine’s “An Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words” (copyright 1984). The first 500+ pages contains the Hebrew dictionary, but the larger section, another 1300+ pages, is the Greek dictionary.

(Actual image of my personal book. You’ll notice the dust jacket for the book is still in relatively good shape for a book that is 30 years old.)

I used it extensively for the first 20 years I owned it, but recently I use the online versions (1, 2, 3) just because it makes my research less cluttered with books all over the table. (Yes, the third link is not Vine’s, but it is what I use when I need a Hebrew/Aramaic dictionary.)

However, last night I awoke at 11PM (after only sleeping 2 hours) and was wide awake. So I took the book off the shelf and flipped through it looking for notes I had made. (I used “sticky notes” and made my notations on them and then placed them on the corresponding page.) Although I had several sentence-fragment, thought-fragment marginal notes, I only came across two that were worth developing as articles for my blog. They are:

Hebrew, A Vibrant Language

Blowing Smoke

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Blowing Smoke

It is said that one picture is worth a thousand words. Likewise, a well-crafted, simple illustration can teach volumes of ideas. At 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers. Mental pictures like this immediately get me running for my Greek dictionary. I am always curious if there is anything deeper that would help me appreciate what the Bible is saying. The Greek word used here is “tuphloo.” In explanation, Vine’s states: “to burn, smoke;… is used metaphorically, of the dulling of the intellect.” (This online interlinear rendition of the passage shows the word “etyphlōsen.” However, clicking on the word-number reference (5186) above the phrase “has blinded” helps the reader appreciate that the phonetic spelling agrees with what Vine states.)

Enough of a language lesson. The more important thing is understanding the point. When I first learned the scripture, I imagined that Satan blinds people like living in darkness – like stepping outside at night without any street lights, without a moon, in the middle of a dark forest. However, that is not what Paul meant by his use of the Greek word “tuphloo.” The image he is drawing is more akin to getting smoke in your eyes. Many people experience this when they are barbequing. Others living in grassy areas may have driven through smoke being blown onto the road from a summer’s grass fire. It is blinding, but in a different way. (The third type of blinding is a “blinding light.” That also is not the intent here as used by Paul.)

Just like smoke can irritate our eyes and obscure clear vision, Satan’s use of God-hating propaganda obscures and irritates spiritual vision. First Satan convinces people that God doesn’t care, then he introduces the idea that God doesn’t even exist. This thick smoke permeates our society today, not just in atheism and evolution, but also in the teachings of religions claiming to represent God but their teachings actually make no sense so people are repulsed.

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Hebrew, A Vibrant Language

In the Forward written by Merrill F. Unger (one of the two editors), Merrill states (paragraph 4): “As the language divinely chosen to record the prophecies of Christ, Hebrew possesses admirable qualities for the task assigned it. The language has a singularly rhythmic and musical quality. In poetic form, it especially has a noble dignity of style, combined with vividness that makes it an effective vehicle for expression of sacred truth. The ideas behind its vocabulary give Hebrew a lively, picturesque nature.”

I made a couple of observations about the above. First the positive:

(“This would make it appear that God gave this well-developed language to man because God wanted us to understand him. The language was exquisitely and masterfully designed by Jehovah so that the original perfect man would find it easy to communicate with his maker freely, uninhibited. Its “picturesque nature” made it ideal for Jehovah to teach spiritual truths to physical man.”)

Second, a bit of a refinement. Mr. Unger’s phrasing that Hebrew was “the language divinely chosen…” would, to me, indicate that God chose it out of other languages. The Bible indicates that up to the time of the Babylon, the “earth continued to be of one language.” Further, the Bible states that God spoke to Adam and that he allowed Adam to name the animals. These two facts would seem to indicate that, as I mentioned in my sticky note comment, the language wasn’t “chosen” but rather designed and developed for easy communication between God and man. (Yes, I am making an assumption that Hebrew was the original language prior to the confusion. Too long a subject to go into here.)

This is just one more piece of evidence that counters the claim that God is not interested in mankind. To the contrary, he is fully committed to a rich and deeply loving relationship.

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Names(?!) of God

This article struck me odd on so many points. I don’t fault the author, he was merely relating the facts as they are currently promoted by Judaism. But I do want to comment on a few segments from that article.

Before I do though, I want to explain why I even went looking for such an article. Sometime between the printed copy of the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) that I have in my library (copyright 1985) and the online version found here, (with cross-reference to here), the Jewish publishers decided to make some changes that seemed very wrong to me. The one that “stuck in my craw” was that my printed edition has no problem printing the word “God.” However, the online version changed it to “G-d.” I must admit, the first time I saw this, I thought they were abbreviating “god damn,” which was very offensive to me. Therefore, I performed an internet search for “G-d” and found the article in the first link.

Ok, so now lets get into the article. Under the heading “The Names of God,” the writer states: “I have often heard people refer to the Judeo-Christian God as "the nameless God" to contrast our God with the ancient pagan gods. I always found this odd, because Judaism clearly recognizes the existence of a Name for God; in fact, we have many Names for God.”

Indeed, the majority of religions claiming to be Christian have eliminated the name of God from their Bible, thus becoming the main contributors to the ignorance of the masses today regarding the fact that God does indeed have a name. Although later in the article, the writer argues against the English form of the Tetragrammaton rendered “Jehovah” and/or “Yahweh,” it was, nonetheless, in common usage for centuries, which the writer recognizes. I’ve proposed/argued before that now more than ever it is imperative that people know and differentiate the God of the Bible from false gods.

Continuing under the above heading, the fourth paragraph starts: “God is also known as El Shaddai. This Name is usually translated as ‘God Almighty,’” Again, that statement struck me as very odd. Both “god” and “almighty” are not names, they are titles. Just because God referred to himself using numerous titles, does not make it a name. A man named John can be “father, president, chief, chef” and numerous other titles and even be called by those titles as a sign of respect, but that doesn’t mean any of those titles are his name.

Under the heading “Writing the Name of God,” the author states: “It is worth noting that this prohibition against erasing or defacing Names of God applies only to Names that are written in some kind of permanent form. Orthodox rabbis have held that writing on a computer is not a permanent form, thus it is not a violation to type God's Name into a computer and then backspace over it or cut and paste it, or copy and delete files with God's Name in them. However, once you print the document out, it becomes a permanent form.”

I really don’t mean to be disrespectful, but quite honestly this made me laugh. The notion that printing something makes it permanent is ludicrous. Shredding paper has become so common today there are companies that make a profit from picking up and recycling paper that their business clients have shredded. Before the proliferation of office computers, white-out was commonly used. Point being, nothing is permanent, especially things manmade. And as far as backspacing on a computer to be something that current-day rabbis actually considered, well it reminds me of Jesus’ words about piling on rules but neglecting the more important matters. But coming back to the point about printing it. It is a good thing that Moses and the other ancients didn’t feel the way modern-day rabbis feel – we would have never known any specifics about God’s name. Yes, Moses both spoke and wrote God’s name and his titles, even as the author notes (under the heading “Pronouncing the Name of God”) “Nothing in the Torah prohibits a person from pronouncing the Name of God. Indeed, it is evident from scripture that God's Name was pronounced routinely.” (So why did the Jews stop using it and represent even the title “God” as “G-d,” it was due to the evolving oral tradition which began to supersede the original Word of God. See second paragraph under the “Pronouncing” heading.)

All things considered, I thought the writer of the article was very well spoken. I respect that he merely stated the facts of Jewish belief. I also have a deep respect for the origins, roots, foundations of Jewish beliefs as solidified in the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures. Without the history of the Jews, Christians would have no history themselves. Although strictly speaking Judaism considers Jesus to be the worst false prophet to ever arise, still that Jesus was a Jew and that his lineage is preserved in the Bible, is enough for anyone who claims to be Christian to have some level of respect for them.

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Education and Truth

Down through history, truthful education of the masses has been the bane of some ruling powers. Although you might think of even an earlier example, one of the earliest I can remember is the Catholic Church and its oppression, suppression of truth and knowledge from the public. Martin Luther (founder of the Lutheran church) is prominent in my mind because I just finished watching a BBC YouTube video about him. But there were others. It is interesting that for the most part it was the educated clergy themselves that recognized and exposed the Catholic Church for its evils. It wasn’t long before the suppression of how the Bible condemns the practices of the complicit clergy came bursting onto the scene. Even though the Catholic Church attempted to prevent the Bible being printed in the common, native tongues of the peoples, thankfully they failed.

Even today there are tyrannical governments that want to control the flow of information. Sadly, it appears that truth is being suppressed even in what was once thought of as the custodian of truth, justice, and freedom. This however has not stopped those who readily recognize falsehood, no matter how many try to becloud it with “alternate facts” and “personal realities.” But why keep the general populous ignorant? The reason is simple, control. When people are allowed to learn and begin to think, they can see things more clearly – which may not align with what the ruling power wants them to believe.

But some may charge even the God of the Bible with suppressing knowledge. They cite the phrase “you must not learn,” but they fail to read the context. Deuteronomy 18:9-12 gives the noble reason for the injunction. Jehovah was aiming to keep his people and his worship elevated above the debased practices of the people around them. Like a father that would want to raise his children to live honorable and responsible lives, Jehovah was aiming to accomplish the same. Cautioning against morally bankrupt ways of life is something we would expect from a loving parent. So far from this false charge against the Bible, education in every aspect of life was encouraged.

But getting back to the discussion of oppressive rulerships (be they secular or religious), one result was an extreme swing of the pendulum to the opposite side. Now, some take whatever measure of freedom of speech they have and decide to attack the Bible, even in the most flippant, disrespectful ways possible, covering it up as mere humor. One such article I read (and no, I won’t give the link) characterized God as a “jerk” and gave as one of several examples the direction God gave Ezekiel to cook his food on dung. As expected, the writer made no attempt to explain the real situation –showing how biased the writer was. He didn’t mention that as a prophet to the people, Ezekiel was to demonstrate through a very strong object lesson, that their continued disobedience to God would result in being taken captive. Milder notices had dropped on deaf ears. This was one final push. As cruel as it sounds, it may be likened to the parent that repeatedly warns that touching the stove is dangerous. Finally, in desperation, the parent allows the child to learn through the stark object lesson of getting burned. Ezekiel was illustrating that the disobedient Israelites would experience a prolonged siege that would cause such dire situations that people would indeed resort to using their dung as fuel and other things most people would consider too graphic to want to hear. In fact, the nation didn’t heed the warning and did suffer a humiliating defeat. This was not God’s fault. It was the people’s fault for not listening. Even with graphic illustrations, the people refused to change their ways. (They were even more stupid than the kid that insisted on touching the stove. Usually after one time, the child learns their lesson.)

Truth in information requires an objective, careful consideration of all sides of a matter. Sadly, we seem to be going through another period in human history where truth is skewed, twisted, convoluted and perverted. It shouldn’t surprise those who do believe in the Bible. Satan the devil is spoken of as the father of the lie and the ruler of this world. True to his character, he has told half-truths throughout mankind’s history. In stark contrast, God has always been truthful with mankind. Indeed, he cannot lie.

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