Did Joseph Marry Mary Before Or After Going To Register

Were Mary and Joseph Married or Engaged at Jesus' Birth?

Mary and Joseph in the Bible

Mark Wilson April 07, 2022 60 Comments 166054 views

The atmosphere of our church service was pregnant with expectation: four candles of the Advent wreath and the colored lights from the tree and wreaths lit the darkened room. My married woman and I were among the tens of millions gathered on Christmas Eve to rehearse the Birth story again. Every bit one of the readers read aloud Luke 2:5, I was struck past the New International Version (NIV) translation: "Mary, who was pledged to exist married to him and was expecting a child." Chronologically, the narrative had advanced some eight months from Luke 1:26-27, where it stated that Gabriel was sent to a virgin named Mary "pledged to be married to a human named Joseph." The Greek verb mnēsteuō was translated identically in both verses.

The translation suggested to me that an unmarried Jewish couple was traveling a long distance unaccompanied by other family unit members. And the woman—still only pledged in spousal relationship—was in an avant-garde country of pregnancy. If such a state of affairs is nonetheless scandalous in the Middle East, how much more in outset-century Judea!ⁱ

chora-church-mosaic

Were Mary and Joseph married or engaged when they traveled to Bethlehem? Seen here is a mosaic of the Journey to Bethlehem from the Chora Church building in Istanbul.

Later I checked other translations of Luke 2:5. The English Standard Version (ESV) uses "matrimonial," an archaic Center English language word. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) uses "engaged," while the New Living Translation (NLT) says "fiancée." Again, these English versions suggest that the couple's union was incomplete. This discovery led me into an in-depth give-and-take study every bit well as a look at aboriginal marriage. And what I found was surprising.

Matthew'due south Gospel seems to be clearer. In the genealogy, Joseph is called the "husband of Mary," who gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1:16). Describing the background of their relationship, Matthew 1:xviii reads, "His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph." Here Matthew uses the same Greek verb as Luke. However, after Joseph decides to divorce Mary because of her unexpected pregnancy, an angel warns him in a dream not to do and so. The angel advises him to "take Mary equally his married woman" (Matthew 1:twenty). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel commanded him: He took Mary as his wife (Matthew i:24). Luke'south version seemingly contradicts Matthew's, co-ordinate to nowadays English translations.

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The Greek verb mnēsteuō is used eight times in the Septuagint (the tertiary-century B.C.Due east. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). Four uses in Deuteronomy (22:23, 25, 27, 28) deal with the legal issues surrounding an engaged woman having illicit sexual relations. If the incident happens in a city (22:23), both the man and the woman are to be stoned to death; if a rape happens in the country, only the man is to be stoned. The man is considered guilty because he has violated some other human being's wife (22:24).
In the iii uses in Hosea, God himself is speaking. Regarding Israel's future day of redemption in two:16, God declares: "You volition phone call me 'my husband.'" Then he states in verses nineteen–twenty: "And I will take you lot for my married woman forever; I will have you for my married woman in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast honey, and in mercy. I will take y'all for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD." The NRSV translates "wife" here, while the NIV, ESV and New King James Version (NKJV) all read: "I will betroth y'all." Because of the context wherein God declares that he is a husband forever, information technology is articulate that his relationship with State of israel extends beyond an engagement stage; they volition metaphorically exist husband and married woman.

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The Hebrew verb aras, translated mnēsteuō in Greek, refers to Jewish marriage practice in which the groom contractually pays a bride-cost (mohar) to the bride's father (Genesis 34:12). According to Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart, "This was the final step in the courtship process, virtually equivalent in legal status to the wedding ceremony."^two According to the Mishnah Ketubbot v.2, the betrothal would last a year, with the bride remaining in the home of her begetter. Recalling the legal texts in Deuteronomy mentioned earlier plus the equation of David's betrothal to Michal as marriage (ii Samuel 3:xiv), we see that under Jewish police, a betrothed woman was considered to exist married.

Returning to Joseph, he would have paid the bride price to Mary's father at their engagement (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:27). Despite his misgivings, Joseph then obeyed the affections'due south command to ally Mary (Matthew ane:20). The time of formal engagement, whether a full year or not, had passed between them. So Joseph and Mary had begun to alive together except for sexual relations (Matthew 1:25). Luke's agreement of mnēsteuō must be expanded to include both the betrothal/appointment besides as marital cohabitation. Therefore a amend translation of Luke 2:5 would exist: "Mary his married woman who was expecting a child." (The NKJV attempts a hybrid with "betrothed married woman.") English translations that suggest the couple was still only in the engagement stage of fiancé/fiancée must be discarded. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem as a full husband and wife under ancient Jewish law.

Mark Wilson is the managing director of the Asia Minor Research Middle in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Written report tours. Marker received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research swain in Biblical archæology. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the writer of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS's Bible Fests.

Notes:

ane. Joseph Fitzmyer anticipated my questions by suggesting that readers and listeners should not be overliteral because the account does not intend to answer questions such as: "What was she doing on a journey with Joseph, if she were just his fiancée or betrothed? And worse still, meaning as well"; meet Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel Co-ordinate to Luke I–9 (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 407. To ask such questions, co-ordinate to Fitzmyer, is to miss the point of Luke's story. Only in liturgical use such authorial nuances are lost. He also notes that Luke never calls Mary the "wife" of Joseph and perhaps was not aware of Palestinian Jewish wedlock customs. This web log post assumes that Luke, because of his cognition of Jewish customs and possible interview with Mary herself (cf. Luke 1:2), used familiar marital language that had a broader semantic range than translators requite it today.

2. Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 31 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), p. 59.