Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary and the legal father of Jesus, shares his name with the most common place name in the world. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency identifies that name as the Spanish form, San Jose. Yet the man behind it leaves only a faint trace in the New Testament. What do the texts actually say about him? Why did later writers feel the need to fill in what the Gospels leave out? And how did such a thinly sketched figure come to be honored by so many churches, feast days and families?
Matthew and Luke, often dated to around 80-90 AD, gave Joseph his first appearance in writing. Each opens with a family tree reaching back to King David, yet the two trees run through different sons. Matthew follows the royal line through Solomon. Luke follows another line through Nathan, a son of David and Bathsheba. Every name between David and Joseph therefore differs. Matthew 1:16 says "Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary," while Luke 3:23 calls Joseph the son of Heli.
Julius Africanus offered one explanation for the mismatch: that Joseph and his father were both sons of levirate marriages. Augustine of Hippo suggested that Joseph was adopted, so the two lists follow his biological family and his adoptive one. A third view holds that Matthew gives Jesus' legal descent through Joseph under Jewish law, while Luke gives his physical descent through Mary.
In Matthew, Joseph obeys the direction of an angel to marry Mary. After Jesus is born in Bethlehem, an angel warns Joseph in a dream to take the family to Egypt. Herod, the ruler of the Roman province of Judea, is planning a massacre of the children of Bethlehem. When Herod has died, an angel tells Joseph to return but to avoid Herod's son. The family settles in Nazareth in Galilee.
Moses and an earlier Joseph haunt this telling. Like Moses, the infant Jesus is in peril from a cruel king. Like the Old Testament Joseph, who also went down to Egypt, this Joseph has a father named Jacob and receives dreams that foretell the future.
Luke tells the story differently. His Joseph already lives in Nazareth, and he and Mary travel to Bethlehem to be counted in a census, where Jesus is born. No angel visits Joseph here, because Mary and various others receive those visitations instead. Luke also leaves out the Massacre of the Innocents and the flight into Egypt. Only Luke goes on to give Joseph one final scene in person.
A Passover visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, when Jesus is 12 years old, is the last time Joseph appears in person in any canonical Gospel. Only Luke tells it. Jesus speaks to Mary and Joseph of "my father," meaning God, and they fail to understand. After that scene, the Gospels never mention Joseph again.
The Wedding at Cana, which opens Jesus' mission, has no Joseph, and neither does the Passion. Under Jewish custom, a father present at the Crucifixion would have been expected to take charge of Jesus' body. That duty fell instead to Joseph of Arimathea. The same reasoning applies to Jesus entrusting his mother to John the Apostle, a choice that would be odd if her husband were alive.
Nazareth's townspeople supply the only echoes of the family during Jesus' adult ministry. The synoptic Gospels share a scene in which they doubt that Jesus is a prophet because they know his relatives. In Mark 6:3 they call him "Mary's son" instead of naming a father. In Matthew they call him "the carpenter's son." Luke 3:23 says Jesus was, "so it was thought," the son of Joseph. Luke's townspeople sound positive, while those in Mark and Matthew sound disparaging. John has no such incident, but a parallel story has neighbors speak of "Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know."
The Pauline epistles, the oldest extant Christian writings, mention Jesus' mother without naming her and never refer to his father. Mark, believed to be the first Gospel written, followed Paul by about two decades. It, too, does not mention Jesus' father.
Ho tou tektonos huios, "the carpenter's son," is the single place where the Gospels name Joseph's trade. The Greek word tekton has traditionally been translated as "carpenter," but it is a general term, from the same root as "technical" and "technology." It could describe makers of objects in wood, iron or stone. Still, early Christian tradition constantly links it with woodworking. Justin Martyr, who died around 165, wrote that Jesus made yokes and ploughs.
Other scholars argue that tekton could equally mean a highly skilled craftsman in wood or in the more prestigious metal, perhaps running a workshop with several employees. They point to sources recording a shortage of skilled artisans at the time. Géza Vermes notes that the Jewish Talmud uses the terms "carpenter" and "son of a carpenter" for a very learned man. He suggests that calling Joseph a naggar, meaning a carpenter, may mean he was thought wise and highly literate in the Torah.
Joseph's workplace was Nazareth, an obscure village in Galilee about 130 km from Jerusalem. Surviving non-Christian texts barely mention it. Later building prevents archaeology across most of the site. From the excavated parts and the tombs nearby, scholars estimate a population of at most about 400.
Sepphoris, a city about 6 kilometers away, was destroyed and depopulated by the Romans in 4 BC and then extensively rebuilt. The landscape suggests that in Joseph's lifetime Nazareth was oriented toward that city. Its people were overwhelmingly Jewish, though with many signs of Hellenization. Historians have speculated that Joseph and later Jesus might have traveled there daily to work on the rebuilding. The large theatre has been suggested as a site, but dating and other issues make that controversial. Other scholars picture father and son as general village craftsmen, taking on a wide variety of jobs in wood, stone and metal.
John and Matthew describe Jesus unambiguously as "Joseph's son" and "the carpenter's son," and that wording created a theological puzzle. The Gospels state clearly that Mary conceives Jesus virginally, so Joseph is not his father. Yet Joseph's paternity was essential to establish Jesus' descent from David. The Gospels also mention brothers of Jesus. They may have been sons of Mary and Joseph, sons of Mary the wife of Clopas and sister of Jesus' mother, or sons of Joseph by a former marriage.
Eusebius and Epiphanius stand behind the Eastern Orthodox answer: Joseph was a widower betrothed to Mary, and the brothers were his children from that earlier marriage. The Catholic Church, drawing on Jerome, holds that Joseph was Mary's husband and that the word "brothers" means cousins. Defenders of that reading note that Abraham's nephew Lot is called his brother in Genesis 14:14. So is Jacob's uncle Laban, in Genesis 29:15. Most Protestants believe the brothers were children of Mary and Joseph.
The doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary sits behind the debate. It teaches that she was a virgin "before, during and after" the birth of Christ, so she and Joseph never had sexual relations. The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches adhere to it, as do some Lutherans, Anglicans, Reformed and other Protestants. Jewish marriage law adds a wrinkle. The term kiddushin, the first part of a two-part marriage, is often translated as "betrothal," yet couples who fulfill its requirements are married until death or divorce.
The Gospel of James, also called the Protoevangelium of James and written about 150 AD, presents Joseph as an old man chosen by God to watch over the Virgin. It names an earlier marriage as the source of Jesus' brothers. The History of Joseph the Carpenter, written in the 5th century, is framed as a biography dictated by Jesus. Here Joseph is 90, a widower with four sons, Judas, Justus, James and Simon, and two daughters, Assia and Lydia. He takes charge of the twelve-year-old Mary, who lives in his household and helps raise his youngest son, James the Less, until she is ready to marry at age 14½. Joseph dies aged 111, attended by angels and asserting the perpetual virginity of Mary. His death takes up roughly half the story.
The Panarion, written by Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, in AD 374-375, gives its own family tree. Joseph fathers James, the eldest, along with Joses, Simeon, Judah and two sisters. They are not Mary's children. After Joseph's first wife dies, many years later, at the age of eighty, he takes Mary. Eusebius of Caesarea reports in Book III of his Church History that Hegesippus recorded Clopas as a brother of Joseph and an uncle of Jesus. Epiphanius adds that Joseph and Cleopas were sons of Jacob, surnamed Panther.
Celsus, a Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity, told a darker story around 178 AD in On the True Doctrine. According to Origen, who quotes him, Celsus claimed that the carpenter turned Mary out when she was pregnant, accusing her of adultery. Celsus said her child's father was a soldier named Pantera. Origen answered that Celsus had fabricated the tale.
The New Testament records nothing about Joseph's death. Some eastern traditions also made him 90 years old, a detail meant to protect Mary's perpetual virginity. Mauro Gagliardi has offered a hypothesis that Joseph was assumed into Heaven in body and soul, because he is among the few saints who left no bodily relics.
The year 800 holds the earliest records of a formal devotional following for Saint Joseph. In the 9th century he began to be called Nutritor Domini, meaning educator or guardian of the Lord, and references to him kept growing until the 14th century. Thomas Aquinas argued that Joseph's presence was necessary to the Incarnation. Had Mary not been married, the Jews would have stoned her, and the young Jesus needed the care and protection of a human father.
Bernardine of Siena, Pierre d'Ailly and Jean Gerson took major steps in the 15th century. Gerson wrote Consideration sur Saint Joseph and preached sermons on Joseph at the Council of Constance. In the 17th century François de Laval began the formal veneration of the Holy Family, which joins Joseph, Mary and the Child Jesus. Because Joseph appears only in the birth narratives, Jesus is shown as a child whenever he is pictured with him.
Teresa of Ávila credited Saint Joseph with her recovery of health and recommended him as an advocate. Francis de Sales included Joseph alongside the Virgin Mary among the saints to invoke, in his 1609 book Introduction to the Devout Life. Therese of Lisieux said she prayed daily to "Saint Joseph, Father and Protector of Virgins" and felt protected from danger as a result. Pope Pius X composed a prayer that begins "Glorious St. Joseph, pattern of all who are devoted to toil."
On the 8th of December 1870, Pope Pius IX proclaimed Joseph patron of the Universal Church. In 1889 Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Quamquam pluries, urging Catholics to pray to Joseph as the church's patron in a time of challenges. Leo described Joseph protecting his spouse and the Divine Infant with a mighty love and earning their food and clothing by his work. In 1962 Pope John XXIII inserted Joseph's name in the Canon of the Mass, right after that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 2013 Pope Francis had it added to the three other Eucharistic Prayers.
Josephology, the theological study of Saint Joseph, is one of the most recent theological disciplines. Centers for studying it have formed since the 1950s, alongside the growth of Mariology. In 1989, a century after Quamquam pluries, Pope John Paul II issued Redemptoris Custos, which presented Joseph's role in the plan of redemption.
Catholic tradition holds that Joseph died in the arms of Jesus and Mary, which makes him a model of the believer who receives grace at the moment of death. He is therefore the patron of a happy death. He is also patron of fathers, families, virgins, workers, especially carpenters, and expecting mothers and unborn children. Attorneys and barristers, emigrants, travelers and house hunters look to him as well, and he is invoked against hesitation. As a patron of virgins he is venerated as "most chaste." Devotion to his chaste heart, unlike that to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, has no liturgical cultus and remains a private devotion.
Just as there are prayers for the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of Mary, Catholics pray the seven joys and seven sorrows of Saint Joseph. A novena is prayed before his main feast. People invoke him for employment, daily protection, vocation and happy marriage. One Catholic tradition says that burying a statuette of Saint Joseph on the grounds of a home will help to sell or buy it. The custom spread so widely through the World Wide Web that some American realtors bought the statuettes by the gross.
Since the 10th century, the 19th of March has been the principal feast day of Saint Joseph in Western Christianity, and the whole month of March is dedicated to him in Catholic tradition. Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and other denominations celebrate it. In the Catholic Church it is a solemnity, first class under the Tridentine calendar, and it moves if it falls on a Sunday or in Holy Week. The Church of England and the Episcopal Church remember him on the same day. Eastern Orthodoxy keeps several days: the 26th of December, the First Sunday after the Nativity, the 19th of March, and the two Sundays before the Nativity devoted to the Holy Forefathers and the Holy Fathers, when he is commemorated with other ancestors of Jesus.
In Sicily, where many regard Saint Joseph as their patron, San Giuseppe receives thanks for ending a famine in the Middle Ages. According to legend, a severe drought struck, and the people prayed for rain. They promised a great feast if God answered through Joseph's intercession. The rain came, and the fava bean was the crop that saved the population from starvation. Many Italian-American communities keep the tradition today. Dried fava beans, blessed and carried, are part of the day. So are Mass or the Divine Service, red clothing and home altars dedicated to Joseph.
A typical altar holds flowers, limes, candles, wine, fava beans, specially prepared cakes, breads, cookies, meatless dishes and zeppole. Bread crumbs in the food stand for the sawdust of a carpenter's shop. Because the feast falls during Lent, meat was traditionally kept off the table. The altar usually has three tiers, representing the Trinity. Giving food to the needy is a custom of the day. The Neapolitan pastry called a zeppola, created in 1840 by Don Pasquale Pinatauro in Naples, is a favorite. Maccu di San Giuseppe is a traditional Sicilian dish built on maccu, an ancient fava bean soup.
The pope who named Joseph patron of the Universal Church also instituted a solemnity on the third Sunday of Eastertide. Pope Pius X moved it to the Wednesday in the second week after Easter and gave it an octave. In 1955 Pope Pius XII introduced in its place the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, on the 1st of May. It stands as a church counterpart to International Workers' Day on the same date. Pius XII wanted both to honor Joseph and to make people aware of the dignity of human work. Some liturgical calendars, such as that of the Oblates of Saint Joseph, also mark the Espousals of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 23rd of January.
On the 8th of December 2020, Pope Francis released the apostolic letter Patris corde to mark 150 years since that proclamation. He also declared a Year of Saint Joseph, running from the 8th of December 2020 to the 8th of December 2021.
San José in Costa Rica and San Jose in California are probably the best-known places named for the saint, both by Spanish colonists. Joseph is patron saint of the New World and of many countries. Austria venerates him especially in Carinthia, Styria and Tyrol. On the 9th of June 1687 the Croatian Sabor proclaimed him a patron saint of the Kingdom of Croatia. He is patron of the city of Karlovac and of Karlovac County.
Saint Joseph's Oratory is the largest church in Canada, with the largest dome of its kind in the world after that of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Other churches carry his name in other languages, such as San Giuseppe dei Teatini, the Metropolitan Cathedral of San José, and São José in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The Sisters of St. Joseph were founded in 1650 and have about 14,013 members worldwide. The Josephite Fathers were created in 1871 to work with the poor, and their first American members devoted themselves to ministry within the newly emancipated African American community. Joseph Marello founded the Oblates of St. Joseph in 1878, and their Shrine of Saint Joseph the Guardian of the Redeemer, named in 1999, takes its title from Redemptoris Custos.
The mosaics of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, made in 432-40, show Joseph young, bearded and dressed as a Roman of status. Later images mostly give him a beard, in keeping with Jewish custom, and later legends tend to present him as an old man at his wedding to Mary. Earlier writers thought that imagery necessary to support belief in her perpetual virginity. Jean Gerson nonetheless favored showing him younger. In recent centuries Joseph has become a focal figure in depictions of the Holy Family, often portrayed as a younger or even youthful man, perhaps especially in Protestant art. He works as a carpenter or takes part in daily life as an equal and openly affectionate member of the household.
Art critic Waldemar Januszczak, a self-proclaimed atheist, emphasizes how often Joseph is shown as an old man. Carolyn Wilson challenges the long-held view that images made before the Council of Trent were often meant to demean him. Charlene Villaseñor Black writes that seventeenth-century Spanish and Mexican artists reconceived Joseph as an important figure, a youthful, physically robust and diligent head of the Holy Family. In Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities, Joseph has the same prominence as the Virgin, as both belong to the "Earthly Trinity," and Jesus lays his hands on both.
Full cycles of Joseph's life are rare in the Middle Ages, though scenes of the Virgin or of Christ that include him are far more common. The Mérode Altarpiece of about 1425 gives him a panel to himself, where he works as a carpenter making mousetraps. That is a rare depiction of Joseph in the context of the Annunciation. The mousetraps are attributed to an interpretation by Augustine of Hippo, in which Jesus Christ is the mousetrap for the devil.
Some statues show Joseph's staff topped with flowers. The image recalls the Gospel of James, in which Mary's spouse is chosen by collecting the walking sticks of the widowers of Palestine, and only Joseph's bursts into flower. The Golden Legend, which draws on the much older Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, tells a similar story. It adds that the High Priest ordered all marriageable men of the Davidic line to present their rods at the Temple. Religious iconography often pairs him with lilies or spikenard. Several Eastern Orthodox Nativity icons show the Devil, drawn as an old man with furled wings, tempting Joseph to break off his betrothal while Joseph resists. A few paintings give him a Jewish hat.
In 1690 Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed the Motet de St Joseph, H.368, for soloists, chorus and continuo.
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Common questions
Who was Saint Joseph in the Bible?
According to the canonical Gospels, Saint Joseph was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. He appears mainly in the genealogies and infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke.
What was Saint Joseph's job?
Saint Joseph is described in the Gospel of Matthew only once by occupation, as a tekton, traditionally translated as carpenter. The Greek word is general and could also cover craftsmen working in iron or stone.
When is Saint Joseph's Day?
Saint Joseph's Day is the 19th of March, the principal feast day of Saint Joseph in Western Christianity since the 10th century. Eastern Orthodoxy also commemorates him on the 26th of December and on several Sundays around the Nativity.
Why is Saint Joseph the patron saint of workers?
In 1955 Pope Pius XII introduced the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker on the 1st of May, as a church counterpart to International Workers' Day. He established it to honor Saint Joseph and to make people aware of the dignity of human work.
Why is Saint Joseph the patron of a happy death?
Catholic tradition holds that Saint Joseph died in the arms of Jesus and Mary. Because of that belief he is considered the model of the believer who receives grace at the moment of death.
What are the differences between the genealogies of Saint Joseph in Matthew and Luke?
Matthew traces Joseph's line from David through Solomon and names his father as Jacob, while Luke traces a line through Nathan and calls him the son of Heli. All the names between David and Joseph are different in the two lists.
Why are so many places named after Saint Joseph?
Many cities, towns and locations carry Saint Joseph's name, including San José in Costa Rica and San Jose in California, both named by Spanish colonists. He is also patron saint of the New World and of several countries, including Austria and Croatia.
All sources
117 references cited across the entry
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- 31Sanders terms it a "minor village." Sanders, E. P. The historical figure of Jesus. Penguin, 1993. p. 104
- 32Laughlin, 192–194. See also Reed's Chapter 3, pp. 131–134.
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- 6919 March is observed as the Feast of Saint Joseph, Guardian of Jesus, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod, and the Evangelical Lutheran
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- 113Meyer Schapiro, 'Muscipula Diaboli', The Symbolism of the Merode Altarpiece In: Art Bulletin 27, 1945
- 114John Bosco, Life of Saint Joseph, spouse of Mary Most Holy, earthly father of Jesus Christ, Chapter 3. Marriage of St Joseph
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