JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH WERE ROYALS, NOT PEASANTS



I have been bothered by the modern attempt to call Mary and Joseph peasants. It is usually done more with the Virgin Mary when contemporary writers and commentators stress she was a simple peasant girl, or that Jesus was from a peasant family.  But no matter how many times this is uttered, it does not make it true. It is, in fact, an untruth, or at best a misunderstanding. 

Joseph was a descendant of King David, and as such he was blue-blooded. It had been prophesied in the Old Testament that the Messiah would come from the House of David.  In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, it is shown that Joseph was from the lineage of Davidic Kings, and because Joseph was Jesus's legal father, he conferred on his Baby Boy, the title of "Son of David". This was known to Jesus's peers, Jesus is called, "Son of David" 17 times in the New Testament. Mary, as Joseph's wife was certainly the spouse of a man descended from the Davidic Kings. Mary and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem because Joseph, as a blood-relative of King David, claimed Bethlehem as his ancestral home and had to register on the census there. 

Mary's ancestry, however, is not shown in as much detail in the New Testament. But from ancient times, from the time she lived, it has been part of received tradition that Mary was of the Davidic line of Kings, too. Those who spoke of Mary's family tree would not have been so bold as to lie that she belonged to a line that she didn't; they would have been fabricating that she was of royal blood and in the ancient world this was despicable. There is circumstantial evidence; Mary was the only daughter of older parents, Joachim and Anne, and it was Jewish law that an only girl had to marry into the same house as her kith and kin, so she could secure her inheritance. By tradition, we understand that Mary and Joseph lived in the house she inherited from her parents; how could she have inherited this house had she not married within her own, that was the House of David? Also, Jesus is referred to as the "Son of David" many times, but He is never referred to as having a mother who belonged to a different house. 

There is no grounds for asserting that Mary belonged to any other family than the Davidic line of Kings. Yes, there is less theological support to substantiate that Mary was a daughter of David, but there is still overwhelming historical evidence to prove she was from the Davidic line of Kings, and this needs to be asserted lest her nobility be forgotten or dismissed. In the gap, comes the label that she was a peasant; this is baseless, even fraudulent. 

In the old European feudal system, the class structure had kings at the top, then nobles, next knights and at the very bottom, peasants. I am concerned that there is an attempt to impose this medieval social class system on the Holy Family. Yes, the Holy Family were not wealthy, but their lack of shekels owed more to the times they lived in, and did not detract from their noble Davidic blood. They were ruled over by the Romans, so they were not leaders in the political sphere, but the Roman occupation could not take from from their genetic inheritance.

To be fair to the people who emphasize (and who sometimes protest) that the Holy Family were peasants, they may wish to make Jesus, Mary and Joseph seem more humble, more relatable so they are accepted by the everyday man. Many of us (myself especially) had peasant roots and if we hear that the Holy Family were peasants, then the thinking goes that we may be more likely to feel at home with them. I'd be wary of this approach, even though I'm of peasant stock, because it isn't the truth, and falsehoods distance us from the real humanity of Joseph and Mary, if we cannot know them for their identities as people with royal blood, then we are more separate from them, not closer. 

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The painting, Marriage of the Virgin was executed by Jean-Baptiste Wicar. 

Comments

  1. Hello Mary, I used to be subscribed to your blog, but for some reason I stopped receiving emails in the summer. Is there a way to re-subscribe please?

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    1. Dear Beatrice, Thank you so much for being a faithful reader - I am so sorry but Blogger discontinued their subscription service whereby they sent my blog posts to readers' emails directly. I have not been able to replicate this subscription model myself. I am trying to post a few times a week and feel free to check in at any time. God bless you and yours

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    2. Dear Mary, thanks for letting me know, it's a shame but I'll be checking in regularly! :-) Thank for your time writing these posts, they are a consolation! God bless you!

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  2. Let's be realistic. King David reigned 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. He had at least eight wives and probably many more mistresses. He also had at least 20 named children but likely fathered many more since males born to wives were primarily the only ones acknowledged in the Torah. It is hard to imagine that ancient record keeping was sufficiently precise to track so many descendants 1,000 years after the king's death. In addition, even if Joseph and/or Mary were confirmed descendants, they would have been among 10s (if not 100s) of thousands of people eligible to identify as "descendants of David." The vast majority of those descendants would be far removed from "blue blood" status among the then-contemporary community.

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    1. Thousands of descendants, but only one heir in the male line. There are thousands of descendants of William the Conqueror, but only one King of Great Britain.

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  3. Anonymous, if St. Joseph were not the next in line for the throne of David, he could not have passed down to Jesus the throne of David. Of course, God knows this even if it was not known to human beings. It is no problem for God to have the Son incarnate of two people directly descending from David, and the father be the heir to that throne, while not ever officially crowned king. For all intents and purposes though, Joseph was the heir to the throne and the king uncrowned. Mary too was a descent of David and related to St. Joseph at some level--this can be seen what we know of Joseph and Mary's genealogy. They were on earth both royal--very poor temporally, but both truly royal. I'm not just giving my subjective personal opinion, I've been studying Mariology since 2013 and my MA and PhD work all specialized in Mariology (Franciscan University and Holy Apostles College and Seminary). There is good information out there if one knows where to look and will do some digging. Anyway, Mary is spot on in what she wrote. And Gilfy puts things in a nicely concise manner!

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  4. This is trivia, but ... Speaking of genealogy -- I am an O'Regan, and my husband's family of O'Regans came from Limerick, 200 or more years ago.
    Thank you for your conversion, and your work.

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    1. Thank you so much for your comment, wonderful that another O’Regan is reading my blog. I went to college in Limerick so I walked the same ground as your husband’s ancestors.

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  5. Judaism is conferred through the mother, because it might not always have been possible to identify the father. One might assume that Mary’s bloodline is unnecessary for publication because she would have to be a descendant of King David for her child to also be.

    Knowing this has always made it difficult for me to reconcile Elizabeth, being of the Priestly tribe of Aaron, to be a cousin of Mary. However, it’s not important for me to understand. And it hasn’t bothered me enough to try to understand 1st Century Judaic social customs and practices.

    SDavis, Abilene, TX, USA

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