Subject: The Urantia Book. Part 2. April 28, 2008.
This talks about the linage of Joseph and Mary.
.....................................................
.....................................................
Upon her return, Mary went to visit her parents,
Joachim and Hannah. Her two brothers and two sisters,
as well as her parents, were always very skeptical
about the d-vine mission of Je--s, though, of course,
at this time they knew nothing of the Gabriel
visitation. But Mary did confide to her sister Salome
that she thought her son was destined to become a great
teacher.
Gabriel's announcement to Mary was made the day
following the conception of Jes-- and was the only
event of supernatural occurrence connected with her
entire experience of carrying and bearing the child of
promise.
"4. JOSEPH'S DREAM"
Joseph did not become reconciled to the idea that
Mary was to become the mother of an extraordinary child
until after he had experienced a very impressive dream.
In this dream a brilliant c-lestial messenger appeared
to him and, among other things, said: "Joseph, I appear
by command of Him who now reigns on high, and I am
directed to instruct you concerning the son whom Mary
shall bear, and who shall become a great light in the
world. In him will be life, and his life shall become
the light of mankind.
He shall first come to his own people, but they will
hardly receive him; but to as many as shall receive him
to them will he reveal that they are the children of
G-d." After this experience Joseph never again wholly
doubted Mary's story of Gabriel's visit and of the
promise that the unborn child was to become a di-ine
messenger to the world.
In all these visitations nothing was said about the
house of David. Nothing was ever intimated about --sus'
becoming a "deliverer of the J-ws," not even that he
was to be the long-expected M-ssiah.
J--us was not such a Me-siah as the Je-s had
anticipated, but he was the `world's deliverer.' His
mission was to all r-ces and peoples, not to any one
group.
Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had
more of the Davidic ancestry than Joseph. True, Joseph
did go to the City of David, Bethlehem, to be
registered for the Roman census, but that was because,
six generations previously, Joseph's paternal ancestor
of that generation, being an orphan, was adopted by one
Zadoc, who was a direct descendant of David; hence was
Joseph also accounted as of the "house of David."
Most of the so-called Messianic prophecies of the Old
Testament were made to apply to J--us long after his
life had been lived on earth.
For centuries the H-brew prophets had proclaimed the
coming of a deliverer, and these promises had been
construed by successive generations as referring to a
new J-wish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David
and, by the reputed miraculous methods
Page 1348
of Moses, proceed to establish the -ews in Palestine as
a powerful nation, free from all foreign domination.
Again, many figurative passages found throughout the
Heb-ew scriptures were subsequently misapplied to the
life mission of Je--s.
Many Old Testament sayings were so distorted as to
appear to fit some episode of the Master's earth life.
Jes--s himself onetime publicly denied any connection
with the royal house of David. Even the passage, "a
maiden shall bear a son," was made to read, "a virgin
shall bear a son." This was also true of the many
genealogies of both Joseph and Mary which were
constructed subsequent to Michael's career on earth.
Many of these lineages contain much of the Master's
ancestry, but on the whole they are not genuine and may
not be depended upon as factual. The early followers of
Jes-- all too often succumbed to the temptation to make
all the olden prophetic utterances appear to find
fulfillment in the life of their Lord and Master.
"5. JESUS' EARTH PARENTS"
Joseph was a mild-mannered man, extremely
conscientious, and in every way faithful to the
re-igious conventions and practices of his people. He
talked little but thought much.
The sorry plight of the J-wish people caused Joseph
much sadness. As a youth, among his eight brothers and
sisters, he had been more cheerful, but in the earlier
years of married life (during Je--s' childhood) he was
subject to periods of mild sp-ritual discouragement.
These temperamental manifestations were greatly
improved just before his untimely d-ath and after the
economic condition of his family had been enhanced by
his advancement from the rank of carpenter to the role
of a prosperous contractor.
Mary's temperament was quite opposite to that of her
husband. She was usually cheerful, was very rarely
downcast, and possessed an ever-sunny disposition. Mary
indulged in free and frequent expression of her
emotional feelings and was never observed to be
sorrowful until after the sudden death of Joseph. And
she had hardly recovered from this shock when she had
thrust upon her the anxieties and questionings aroused
by the extraordinary career of her eldest son, which
was so rapidly unfolding before her astonished gaze.
But throughout all this unusual experience Mary was
composed, courageous, and fairly wise in her
relation****p with her strange and little-understood
first-born son and his surviving brothers and sisters.
--sus derived much of his unusual gentleness and
marvelous sympathetic understanding of human nature
from his father; he inherited his gift as a great
teacher and his tremendous capacity for righteous
indignation from his mother. In emotional reactions to
his adult-life environment, J--us was at one time like
his father, meditative and wor****pful, sometimes
characterized by apparent sadness; but more often he
drove forward in the manner of his mother's optimistic
and determined disposition. All in all, Mary's
temperament tended to dominate the career of the
div-ne Son as he grew up and swung into the momentous
strides of his adult life. In some particulars Je--s
was a blending of his parents' traits; in other
respects he exhibited the traits of one in contrast
with those of the other.
From Joseph J--us secured his strict training in the
usages of the Je-ish ceremonials and his unusual
acquaintance with the He-rew scriptures; from Mary he
derived a broader viewpoint of rel-gious life and a
more liberal concept of personal spiri-ual freedom.
Page 1349
The families of both Joseph and Mary were well
educated for their time. Joseph and Mary were educated
far above the average for their day and station in
life. He was a thinker; she was a planner, expert in
adaptation and practical in immediate execution. Joseph
was a black-eyed brunet. Mary, a brown-eyed well-nigh
blond type.
Had Joseph lived, he undoubtedly would have become a
firm believer in the divi-e mission of his eldest son.
Mary alternated between believing and doubting, being
greatly influenced by the position taken by her other
children and by her friends and relatives, but always
was she steadied in her final attitude by the memory of
Gabriel's appearance to her immediately after the child
was conceived.
Mary was an expert weaver and more than averagely
skilled in most of the household arts of that day; she
was a good housekeeper and a superior homemaker. Both
Joseph and Mary were good teachers, and they saw to it
that their children were well versed in the learning of
that day.
When Joseph was a young man, he was employed by
Mary's father in the work of building an addition to
his house, and it was when Mary brought Joseph a cup of
water, during a noontime meal, that the court****p of
the pair who were destined to become the parents of
J--sus really began.
Joseph and Mary were married, in accordance with
Je-ish custom, at Mary's home in the environs of
Nazareth when Joseph was twenty-one years old. This
marriage concluded a normal court****p of almost two
years' duration. Shortly thereafter they moved into
their new home in Nazareth, which had been built by
Joseph with the assistance of two of his brothers. The
house was located near the foot of the near-by elevated
land which so charmingly overlooked the surrounding
countryside. In this home, especially prepared, these
young and expectant parents had thought to welcome the
child of promise, little realizing that this momentous
event of a universe was to transpire while they would
be absent from home in Bethlehem of Judea.
The larger part of Joseph's family became believers
in the teachings of Jes--, but very few of Mary's
people ever believed in him until after he departed
from this world. Joseph leaned more toward the
spi-itual concept of the expected Mess-ah, but Mary and
her family, especially her father, held to the idea of
the Messi-h as a tem****al deliverer and p-litical
ruler. Mary's ancestors had been prominently identified
with the Maccabean activities of the then but recent
times.
Joseph held vigorously to the Eastern, or Babylonian,
views of the J-wish relig-on; Mary leaned strongly
toward the more liberal and broader Western, or
Hellenistic, interpretation of the law and the
prophets.
Part 2.
John Winston. johnfw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
