Some apocryphal accounts state that at the time of her betrothal to Joseph, Mary was 12–14 years old .
The Bible offers no evidence that Joseph was older than Mary . “We know virtually nothing about Joseph , and no age is mentioned for either Joseph or Mary in the Gospels,” says Paula Fredriksen, professor emerita of scripture at Boston University, and author of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, which names Joseph’s first wife as Salome, holds that Joseph was a widower and merely betrothed, but never married , to Mary , and that references to Jesus’ “brothers” are to children of Joseph and Salome.
The Gospel of Luke says Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph , while the Gospel of Matthew says Jesus ‘ virginal conception happens before Mary lives with Joseph in his house, because, in a Jewish wedding, by being betrothed to a man, the woman is already his wife, yet she does not start living in his house until the
Jesus ‘ brothers and sisters The Gospel of Mark (6:3) and the Gospel of Matthew (13:55–56) mention James, Joseph/Joses, Judas/Jude and Simon as brothers of Jesus , the son of Mary .
Summary of Jesus ‘ life He was born to Joseph and Mary sometime between 6 bce and shortly before the death of Herod the Great (Matthew 2; Luke 1:5) in 4 bce. According to Matthew and Luke, however, Joseph was only legally his father .
Elizabeth was in the sixth month before Mary came (Luke 1:36). Mary stayed three months , and most scholars hold she stayed for the birth of John. Some Catholic commentators have maintained that the purpose of this visit was to bring divine grace to both Elizabeth and her unborn child.
Mary Magdalene as trusted disciple For its part, the Bible gave no hint that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife . None of the four canonical gospels suggests that sort of relationship, even though they list the women who travel with Jesus and in some cases include their husbands’ names.
Mary did not ride to Bethlehem on a donkey . Nowhere in any Gospel does it say that Mary did anything but walk. The whole journey is given in three lines: Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem and while they were there, she went into labour. No mention of transportation.
Jesus was an only child. But Catholicism has long declared that when the Gospels described Jesus ‘ siblings , or the apostle Paul mentioned the “ brothers of the Lord,” the words–translated from the Greek–really meant “cousins” or “relatives.”
Gospel references The term is chiefly notable for New Testament commentators’ discussion of the employment of Jesus and his adoptive father Joseph, both described as “tekton” in the New Testament. This is translated as ” carpenter ” in English-language Bibles.
Mary Magdalene’s life after the Gospel accounts. According to Eastern tradition, she accompanied St. John the Apostle to Ephesus, where she died and was buried. John the Evangelist to Ephesus (near modern Selçuk, Turkey), where she died and was buried.
(The pollsters did not, apparently, think of putting the question to Muslims, although the Koran states—no less clearly than the New Testament—that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus; the difference, of course, is that for Islam Jesus was an inspired prophet but not the son of God .)
The angel told her that God had made her pregnant through a miracle. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph , of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, favored one!