Joseph, or Christmas from the outside

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The Christmas story always has been my favorite. To this day I can recite the verses from the second chapter of Luke: "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night . . ."

The cast of characters is a big reason for its attraction. The pageantry of the story of Christ's birth presents us with a lot of them, some vividly illustrated.

There is Mary, presented either as a paragon of purity or a frightened, puzzled girl (the most likely portrayal). There are the shepherds, simple, earthy and thunderstruck by how a peaceful night exploded and without a hint as to their being thrust into history's spotlight.

The Magi amble into view atop their camels, carrying their significant gifts to lay before the one they have traveled so far to see. Lurking in the shadows is the sinister Herod, who will commit mass murder to eliminate a baby he would not see.

There are peripheral characters, too: Zacharias and Elizabeth, kin to Mary, whose son would be John the Baptist. There is the innkeeper, who in pageants and plays usually is depicted as surly, although he may have been sympathetic enough to direct the couple to the barn they used for shelter that night.

But the most enigmatic member of the cast is the man without whom none of it would have been possible.

No one seems to have a clear picture of Joseph. There even is a minor disagreement as to what he did for a living. The King James Bible says he was a carpenter, but other versions insist the word used for his occupation is better translated as "stonecutter."

To many who study the Bible - especially to many who don't - Joseph seems to be a cipher, a plot device and a blank slate on which they etch their assumptions about Jesus' early life. And that takes some strange turns.

I remember reading in late 1999 a story within an article in an edition of Time magazine that looked forward to 2000 as an anniversary of Christ's time on earth. The story was written by author Reynolds Price, who, before making some salient points about his belief in Jesus, offered some fictional vignettes.

One of them was about the Temptation, when Satan confronted Jesus in the wilderness. Price, in exercising his literary license, presented Satan in the character of Joseph and offered the possibility that Jesus' earthly father may have been skeptical of his eldest son's bent toward a spiritual vocation.

I was surprised. I had to read that part twice. Joseph? Are you sure?

I had to go back to the mentions of Joseph in the gospels to see where Price could have found the basis for such a characterization. I found that, as far as the Bible is concerned, few people are portrayed as being as dutiful and compliant as Joseph.

Even Mary does not come off as well. She argued to the face of an angel about the possibility of the pregnancy the messenger said she would undergo. Joseph only had a dream and, by the account, did exactly as he was told, without question or comment.

Joseph is never quoted. Mary has a lot to say, especially in the first chapter of Luke, when she utters the Magnificat.

And Mary did bear the child, but Joseph accepted her pregnancy although he had every legal right to renege on their marriage and even have her punished. Further, he may have done his part to help keep her condition a secret. Rather than leave her to the care of Nazarene midwives, who would be sure to gossip, he took the risk of bringing her to Bethlehem, where either he aided in her birth or hired local midwives.

And then, after another dream, he undertakes a longer, even riskier trip to Egypt to escape Herod's plot. Again, no argument or question from him is found in the record. As a sign of his discretion, he steers clear of Judea on his return and goes to live in Nazareth when he learns that Herod's son has succeeded to office.

Even years later, when he and Mary are forced to double back to Jerusalem to find the missing adolescent Jesus, it is the mother who is quoted as asking about the boy's behavior.

This may be because Joseph had been long dead by the time Luke's and Matthew's gospels were written and only Mary and perhaps some of Jesus' siblings were available for interviews.

And perhaps it is because we gather only the barest facts about Joseph that we, including Price, speculate as to what sort of man he was and how he reacted to his son for however long he lived.
And Price may be right, for all we know. His family apparently demonstrated some skepticism - his brothers did not believe in him for some time. Still, the record does not attribute that to Joseph.

As for his dutifulness in the face of tasks and indignities he had every reason not to accept, Joseph provides an example of the quiet believers who seem not to be interested in publicity, self-importance or even the understanding of others. As his son would later, he risked everything he had for the job he had been given.

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