Things took a turn for the religious in the bizarrely still-ongoing scandal that is the Roy Moore political campaign for U. S. Senate last week. In a defense of Moore’s alleged sexual contact with minors, Alabama state auditor Jim Zeigler compared Moore’s predatory exploits to the relationship between the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph. In what would amount to a major plot twist in the current format of the nativity story, Zeigler told the Washington Examiner, “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”
To be sure this is a pretty atrocious reading of a biblical story that is entirely predicated upon the fact that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, but for Protestants who do not subscribe to the Roman Catholic belief that Mary and Joseph never had sex there’s still the question of the nature of their relationship after the birth Jesus. There are a number of passages in the Gospels that refer to Jesus’ siblings and a man known as “James the brother of Jesus” plays a key figure in leading the church in Jerusalem. Roman Catholics argue that these were either older step-siblings or cousins (who were often raised together in the ancient world) but Protestants are happy to read these passages literally, as evidence that Joseph and Mary had children after the birth of Jesus.
It’s in this context that the ages of Joseph and Mary come to be relevant to the Moore debacle. Zeigler is not alone in thinking of Joseph as an adult or even geriatric carpenter, everyone from Zeferelli to Christmas card artists does the same, but how much do we actually know about the ages of Mary and Joseph? Neither the Gospel of Luke nor the Gospel of Matthew, the only canonical Gospels to include infancy stories, tell us how old they were.
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But there are non-canonical texts, most of which were written in the second century and beyond, that might be able to help here. First up is the Protoevangelium of James, a sort of prequel to the Jesus story, which discusses the conception of Mary and Jesus’ grandparents, Joachim and Anna. It is from this infancy gospel that we get our traditional portrait of the holy family, Mary is 12 years old and Joseph is an elderly widower. In an article on the subject, Christopher Frilingos, author of Jesus, Mary and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels, points out that there are some key differences between the version of the birth of Jesus found in the Bible and the one in the Protoevangelium. For one thing, Jesus is born in a cave outside of Bethlehem rather than in a manger in the city. For another Joseph is only betrothed to Mary after he is selected to look after her in a lottery. Strangest of all, Mary suffers temporary amnesia after her encounter with the angel Gabriel. Then, when she discovers that she is pregnant, she (like Joseph) is somewhat confused.
A somewhat different version of the Virgin Birth to be sure, but the author of the Protoevangelium goes to great pains to prove that there was absolutely no sexual contact between Mary and Joseph before the birth of Jesus.
If Zeigler was looking for biblical examples of age-inappropriate relationships there were many he could have found because the Bible is a world in which victims must marry their rapists, sexual slavery was a frequent consequence of war, and vulnerable women could be forced into prostitution in order to support themselves. But by selecting the holiest of biblical families, Moore’s champions not only attempt to shroud his predatory conduct with a mantle of sanctity, they misread the Bible and expose how unbiblical our nativity stories are.
