This picture seems to approximate the Humility Theory from at least one angle (hopefully I don't get struck by lightning for this).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n2) Jesus’ teaching in Matthew intensifies<\/em> the Law, so why would a righteous character right at the start relax<\/em> it?<\/p>\nThis too is a weaker protest than it initially seems. The practice for those not caught in the act in the Rabbinic period was not to punish via execution but through other means. In addition, this isn’t really relaxing the Law anyway, since it could be just as reasonable to have assigned the conception to rape or some other cause that might not lead to execution even under Mosaic proscriptions.<\/p>\n
3) Matt 1:18 says not that Mary was simply “found to be pregnant” but “found to be pregnant of the Holy Spirit<\/em>,” which Barber reads as suggesting Joseph knew not only that she was pregnant but that the child was “of the Holy Spirit.” Barber asserts that to suggest Joseph didn’t<\/em> know the origin of the child “reads something into the text that is not there,” since “Joseph’s actions followed upon the discovery that Mary was “pregnant of the Holy Spirit,” indicating he must have known the child’s origin.<\/p>\nWhile it is true that the text says that Mary\u00a0 was “found to be pregnant of the Holy Spirit<\/em>,” what it does not<\/em> say is that Joseph knew<\/em> she was pregnant “of the Holy Spirit.” On the contrary, Joseph plans to send her away only until he is notified that the child is of the Holy Spirit<\/em>:<\/p>\nNow the birth of Jesus Christ was like this: after His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, \u201cJoseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit<\/em>. (Matt 1:18\u201320)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSo, if Barber (and Origen and Aquinas) are right, this verse makes no sense at all, as the very explanation the angel gives for why Joseph should not send Mary away is that the child “is of the Holy Spirit.” If Joseph already knew this (as the Humility Theory requires), why did the angel have to tell him this information? Even more damning for the Humility Theory is that the angel’s logic seems to work exactly reverse to that of the Humility Theory, which assumes that Joseph, once he knows that the child is “of the Holy Spirit,” will be afraid to take Mary for that reason. On the contrary, the angel seems to think that the fact that the child is “of the Holy Spirit” is exactly the reason<\/em> Joseph shouldn’t<\/em> be afraid to take Mary as his wife. So, if Matthew was trying to explain that Joseph was afraid to cohabit with Mary because of the holy nature of her conception, he does an awfully poor job of communicating this, since the logic of the passage works in exactly the opposite direction. (If the Humility Theory were correct, we would expect the angel to say, “although the child is of the Holy Spirit, you should not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” not “do not be afraid because<\/em> the child is of the Holy Spirit.” And in Matthew’s narrative, once Joseph is reassured by the angel that Mary’s conception was indeed “of the Holy Spirit,” far from having concerns about approaching Mary, he seems to have no qualms at all about taking her as his wife and giving her several other children in the normal manner (Matt 1:25; 12:46\u201347).<\/p>\nMy judgment is thus that the so-called Suspicion Theory remains the best and most natural reading of Matthew’s gospel. The Humility Theory is forced to read the text against the grain, to the point of making the angel’s message to Joseph redundant at best and backwards at worst. The Humility Theory also strikes me as anachronistic, striking me as more reflective of later centuries’ concerns with sexuality than of the context of early Judaism. It is far more plausible that Origen or Aquinas would feel “unworthy of being the spouse of a woman who had just conceived ‘of the Holy Spirit'” than that a standard Jew of the Second Temple period would share this feeling. In short, the Humility Theory seems to me to require later a later Christian theological perspective of which Matthew was unaware; the Suspicion Theory requires no such imposition on the text and is the better reading of Matthew’s Gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Barber over at the Sacred Page has brought up an old interpretive question of why Joseph, upon learning of Mary’s pregnancy, wanted to “send Mary away quietly,” not wanting to publicly shame her, asking whether Joseph actually thought the conception was the result of Mary’s unfaithfulness (which he terms the “Suspicion Theory”). Barber then…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[37,63,163,168,195,196,201,234,728,346],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Was Joseph Suspicious of Mary\u2019s Pregnancy? - Jason Staples<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n