Christmas is approaching, so there will be a lot of talk about this unique family. I see this is a rather controversial topic based on the comments I’m receiving. I’ll try to address them and add something to this topic.
The Holy Family—Mary, Joseph, and Jesus—are held up in today’s world as role models for families. But what was this family really like? What can we learn from the pages of Holy Scripture, what can we infer from the times in which they lived? After all, they lived in a specific place and time that influenced them. They were meant to be an ordinary family that received the extraordinary gift of raising the Son of God. Therefore, the cultural context and what families looked like at that time are important. Holy Scripture says little about Jesus’ childhood, yet it existed. It is largely silent about his family, yet he did have one.
So, what did the average family look like in those times? Surprisingly, it was often a patchwork family with many children (with children from different relationships). Women died in childbirth, and infants and small children died from various diseases much more often than today. Men died in accidents at work or from various diseases. The party remaining with the children often entered into a second marriage, which also produced children. Families were truly large and multi-generational. Very often, there were children from previous relationships and from the current one. The father passed his profession on to his sons, and the mother taught the girls everything women should know and be able to do.
The Holy Family was no exception. Mary was a young woman, a teenager, when she married Joseph. Joseph was older than her. It was likely his second marriage, and he already had children. He saved Mary from people, accusations, and perhaps an inglorious death due to an illegitimate child like Jesus. In light of what people of the time saw, Jesus was an illegitimate child, one might say a bencarnate. People living nearby did not experience visions, visitations from angels, etc. They only saw what was happening: that Mary had become pregnant before their marriage, which was strictly forbidden and punishable. Joseph decided to marry Mary and raise Jesus, even though he wasn’t his biological son, and as we know, he had no real desire to do so. He decided not to send Mary away only after angelic intervention. In today’s terminology, he was Jesus’ stepfather; he was the only earthly father he knew and had. He took over his profession from him.
As has already been demonstrated, he likely had half-siblings (the legal relationship also counts here, not just the biological one) on Joseph’s side from his previous relationship. He also likely had younger siblings from his mother, who later gave birth to them. I know some will argue that this is inconsistent with dogma. But firstly, after giving birth to Jesus through natural means, Mary could no longer be a virgin. Secondly, this would contradict the Bible and God’s commandments previously given to humanity, such as the commandment to reproduce, that is, to have intercourse with one another and to love one another. God is love, so why would he defend love, including the physical love of Mary and Joseph? Did the young people living together, sharing a bed, truly never have any desire to show each other tenderness and have sex? Were they deprived of human reflexes? Human instincts? Were they not fully human? If they weren’t, what human nature did Mary pass on to Jesus? He saved everything, but not human sexuality? That would be pointless. Mary simply wasn’t curious, humanly speaking, about what it was like to have sex? After all, she had a legal husband; she could have done so. Scripture never states that she was a virgin until death.
However, we can read in the Bible that Jesus had brothers and sisters. As I’ve already pointed out, there are passages that state this explicitly, even mentioning them by name (at least brothers). Some have argued that Jesus extended the understanding of brother and sister to every neighbor. True, he did. But to extend something, you first need to know it—that’s the first step. Secondly, there’s a passage in Holy Scripture where the people listening to Him call out to Him, saying that His mother and siblings have arrived, but they can’t get near Him because of the crowd surrounding Him. Did these people also expand this concept (of brother and sister) before Jesus himself did? Something doesn’t add up for me. Perhaps it’s better to accept one interpretation as correct than to simply read, search, and use logical thinking?
Here are the passages I referenced above: Matthew 3:31-35: „And his mother and brothers came, and standing outside, they sent for him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, 'Behold, your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’ He answered them, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?'” So we first have the voice of the people speaking about his mother and siblings, and only then the expansion made by Jesus. A parallel passage is in Matthew 12:46-50. In Matthew, it is even titled „true relatives of Jesus” [translated after the Millennium Bible]. How could people who had trouble understanding the teachings he preached have themselves extended the meaning of close relatives to all people? They simply told him who had come because they knew them. No subtext, no deeper meaning.