There is a made-up part of the New Testament narrative that we sort of accept and then move on with the story. It has to do with Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph. Virtually everything we know about Joseph comes from the synoptic gospels. He was a carpenter, which necessarily meant he was a rugged man. He had a wife and was raising five sons and at least three daughters (Matt. 13:56 “… and His sisters, are they not all with us?”). We don’t know how old he was when Jesus was born, but somewhere between Jesus’ bar mitzvah at age 12 and the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry 18 years later, Joseph died.
Among the deepest griefs that people experience are the deaths of close family members. All of us know this from experience. It’s part of life to lose parents and siblings. In the nature of life, we expect to outlive our parents, and we expect our children to outlive us. We can let the professional psychologists and grief counselors unpack this. My point is that grief accompanies bereavement, and the closer the relationship, the deeper and more painful the associated grief.
For the sake of clarity, I’d mention that no one experiences grief when their car is stolen, their house burns down, or they lose a job. It’s painful and can be frustrating or can even cause anger and resentment. But not grief. At least, not normal or healthy grief. After all, “stuff” can be rebuilt or replaced. If someone is emotionally attached to their possessions, that’s a different problem.
The narrative that we’ve probably all heard is that Joseph was quite a bit older than Mary, and that’s the reason he died first. Some have suggested (allegedly based on Jewish tradition and first-century Roman culture) that he could have been 40 or even older, and Mary about 17 when they began their engagement. We know that Jesus was about 30 when He began His public ministry, so if Joseph died just before then, he could have been about 70, considered a fairly ripe old age in those days. There is, of course, not a shred of evidence for this age gap between Joseph and Mary. I suspect it was invented to take the edge off of Joseph’s decease. After all, we rather expect elderly people to die, and they had Psalm 90 before we did.
But I would submit that their culture, like ours, would have a problem with a 40-year-old man taking a 17-year-old girl as wife. It makes much more sense that Mary and Joseph were close in age, maybe just a few years apart. If this is true, then Joseph may have been in his early or mid-30’s when he and Mary took the family to Passover in Jerusalem (Luke 2:31).
If they were about the same age, we can zero in on Joseph’s age by considering the age of Mary. One tradition says that Mary died in AD 43 and another in AD 48, but we have no way of confirming either date. Both Polycarp and Papias lived in the greater vicinity of Ephesus in western Asia Minor, the location to which the apostle John is said to have fled at about the time when the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem (AD 70), allegedly taking Mary the mother of Jesus with him. This, to me, seems unlikely.
Luke most probably wrote his gospel between 55 and 60 AD. It seems fairly clear from his own testimony and internal evidence that he interviewed Mary, since he disclosed things that only Mary and Joseph would have known firsthand (Luke 2:51). Per Psalm 90:10 and an outer limit of 80, I’d suggest it reasonable to believe that both Mary and Joseph – if about the same age – were born about 20 BC and Joseph was younger that 50 when he died. Luke interviewed Mary when she was about 75 – not unreasonable.
Carpentry in Jesus’ day was risky and rugged. They did lumberjacking, stone masonry, heavy construction – and they did it all with shoulders, backs, and relatively basic hand tools. There was no OSHA and probably not any real building codes. As we know, the tower at Siloam collapsed and killed 18 men (Luke 13:4). The tower of Siloam may have been part of an aqueduct system or a construction project that Pilate had begun. This was hazardous work.
In addition, Nazareth was a hotbed of simmering resentment against the Roman occupational government. The Romans thought the Jews were dogs, and the feeling was mutual. In 4 B.C., the Roman general Varus crucified 2,000 Jews, and there were mass crucifixions during the first century A.D., according to the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus. And of course there’s the incident mentioned in Luke 13 about “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices,” a well-known atrocity of that day. Life for young blue-collar Jews in those days was hazardous.
My point is simply to support the idea that it is more likely that Joseph did not live a long and full life. I think he died in his prime, and his death was a shattering experience for Jesus. God the Father knows what it’s like to lose a Son in the prime of life. Similarly, God the Son knows the human grief and pain of losing His father, also in his prime. Is it possible that some angry Roman soldiers decided to “make an example” of a few Jews and got carried away? Is it possible that a 17-year-old Carpenter apprentice and His 35-year-old father went to work, and a construction accident snuffed out the life of the elder? Both of these scenarios are possible – surviving history does not shed any light. But to me, either seems more likely than the story we’ve received, that elderly Joseph “died of old age.”
And either seems more comforting. If one of us loses a parent, sibling or child due to tragedy, we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus has personally felt our grief. He didn’t watch others experience it, or read about it somewhere. He has experienced it. As the first-born son of Joseph, and as a “miracle child” besides, He was undoubtedly VERY close to His earthly father. I personally cannot imagine how close they were or the very special bond they shared. To have that bond suddenly shattered …. well, use your imagination. It does not matter WHAT you may be going through. The “man of sorrows” has been there, and He understands. Completely.
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