Joseph (brother of Jesus)

• Joseph (brother of Jesus)

138:1.4It had been ar­ranged that the six were to la­bor for two weeks, af­ter which they were to re­turn to the home of Zeb­e­dee for a con­fer­ence. Mean­time Je­sus went over to Naz­a­reth to visit with Joseph and Si­mon and other mem­bers of his fam­ily liv­ing in that vicin­ity. Je­sus did ev­ery­thing hu­manly pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with his ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will, to re­tain the con­fi­dence and af­fec­tion of his fam­ily. In this mat­ter he did his full duty and more.

• Joseph (brother of Jesus)

154:5.1May 22 was an event­ful day in the life of Je­sus. On this Sun­day morn­ing, be­fore day­break, one of David’s mes­sen­gers ar­rived in great haste from Tiberias, bring­ing the word that Herod had au­tho­rized, or was about to au­tho­rize, the ar­rest of Je­sus by the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin. The re­ceipt of the news of this im­pend­ing dan­ger caused David Zeb­e­dee to arouse his mes­sen­gers and send them out to all the lo­cal groups of dis­ci­ples, sum­mon­ing them for an emer­gency coun­cil at seven o’clock that morn­ing. When the sis­ter-in-law of Jude (Je­sus’ brother) heard this alarm­ing re­port, she has­tened word to all of Je­sus’ fam­ily who dwelt near by, sum­mon­ing them forth­with to as­sem­ble at Zeb­e­dee’s house. And in re­sponse to this hasty call, pres­ently there were as­sem­bled Mary, James, Joseph, Jude, and Ruth.

137:2.9They all re­mained overnight with Joseph in Je­sus’ boy­hood home. The as­so­ciates of Je­sus lit­tle un­der­stood why their new-found teacher was so con­cerned with com­pletely de­stroy­ing ev­ery ves­tige of his writ­ing which re­mained about the home in the form of the ten com­mand­ments and other mot­toes and say­ings. But this pro­ceed­ing, to­gether with the fact that they never saw him sub­se­quently write—ex­cept upon the dust or in the sand—made a deep im­pres­sion upon their minds.

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

123:4.9The fourth mem­ber of the Naz­a­reth fam­ily, Joseph, was born Wednes­day morn­ing, March 16, A.D. 1.

127:4.5James and Si­mon grew up try­ing to fol­low Je­sus’ plan of pla­cat­ing their bel­li­cose and some­times irate play­mates by per­sua­sion and non­re­sis­tance, and they were fairly suc­cess­ful; but Joseph and Jude, while as­sent­ing to such teach­ings at home, made haste to de­fend them­selves when as­sailed by their com­rades; in par­tic­u­lar was Jude guilty of vi­o­lat­ing the spirit of these teach­ings. But non­re­sis­tance was not a rule of the fam­ily. No penalty was at­tached to the vi­o­la­tion of per­sonal teach­ings.

127:4.7James was grow­ing up to be a well-bal­anced and even-tem­pered youth, but he was not so spir­i­tu­ally in­clined as Je­sus. He was a much bet­ter stu­dent than Joseph, who, while a faith­ful worker, was even less spir­i­tu­ally minded. Joseph was a plod­der and not up to the in­tel­lec­tual level of the other chil­dren. Si­mon was a well-mean­ing boy but too much of a dreamer. He was slow in get­ting set­tled down in life and was the cause of con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety to Je­sus and Mary. But he was al­ways a good and well-in­ten­tioned lad. Jude was a fire­brand. He had the high­est of ide­als, but he was un­sta­ble in tem­per­a­ment. He had all and more of his mother’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and ag­gres­sive­ness, but he lacked much of her sense of pro­por­tion and dis­cre­tion.

128:2.7It was by just such wise and thought­ful plan­ning that Je­sus pre­pared the way for his even­tual with­drawal from ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of his fam­ily. When James had had two years’ ex­pe­ri­ence as act­ing head of the fam­ily—and two full years be­fore he (James) was to be mar­ried—Joseph was placed in charge of the house­hold funds and in­trusted with the gen­eral man­age­ment of the home.

128:7.11James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat lit­tle home on the west side of town, the gift of her fa­ther. While James con­tin­ued his sup­port of his mother’s home, his quota was cut in half be­cause of his mar­riage, and Joseph was for­mally in­stalled by Je­sus as head of the fam­ily. Jude was now very faith­fully send­ing his share of funds home each month. The wed­dings of James and Miriam had a very ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence on Jude, and when he left for the fish­ing grounds, the day af­ter the dou­ble wed­ding, he as­sured Joseph that he could de­pend on him “to do my full duty, and more if it is needed.” And he kept his prom­ise.

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

127:6.11Joseph grad­u­ated at the syn­a­gogue school this year and pre­pared to be­gin work at the small bench in the home car­pen­ter shop. Al­though the es­tate of their fa­ther was ex­hausted, there were prospects that they would suc­cess­fully fight off pov­erty since three of them were now reg­u­larly at work.

128:1.14This year Je­sus went up to Je­ru­sa­lem with Joseph to cel­e­brate the Pass­over. Hav­ing taken James to the tem­ple for con­se­cra­tion, he deemed it his duty to take Joseph. Je­sus never ex­hib­ited any de­gree of par­tial­ity in deal­ing with his fam­ily. He went with Joseph to Je­ru­sa­lem by the usual Jor­dan val­ley route, but he re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the east Jor­dan way, which led through Am­athus. Go­ing down the Jor­dan, Je­sus nar­rated Jew­ish his­tory to Joseph and on the re­turn trip told him about the ex­pe­ri­ences of the re­puted tribes of Ruben, Gad, and Gilead that tra­di­tion­ally had dwelt in these re­gions east of the river.

134:1.6About the time Je­sus was prepar­ing to leave Naz­a­reth, the con­duc­tor of a large car­a­van which was pass­ing through the city was taken vi­o­lently ill, and Je­sus, be­ing a lin­guist, vol­un­teered to take his place. Since this trip would ne­ces­si­tate his ab­sence for a year, and inas­much as all his broth­ers were mar­ried and his mother was liv­ing at home with Ruth, Je­sus called a fam­ily con­fer­ence at which he pro­posed that his mother and Ruth go to Ca­per­naum to live in the home which he had so re­cently given to James. Ac­cord­ingly, a few days af­ter Je­sus left with the car­a­van, Mary and Ruth moved to Ca­per­naum, where they lived for the rest of Mary’s life in the home that Je­sus had pro­vided. Joseph and his fam­ily moved into the old Naz­a­reth home.

154:6.1It was about eight o’clock on this Sun­day morn­ing when five mem­bers of Je­sus’ earth fam­ily ar­rived on the scene in re­sponse to the ur­gent sum­mons of Jude’s sis­ter-in-law. Of all his fam­ily in the flesh, only one, Ruth, be­lieved whole­heart­edly and con­tin­u­ously in the di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. Jude and James, and even Joseph, still re­tained much of their faith in Je­sus, but they had per­mit­ted pride to in­ter­fere with their bet­ter judg­ment and real spir­i­tual in­cli­na­tions. Mary was like­wise torn be­tween love and fear, be­tween mother love and fam­ily pride. Though she was ha­rassed by doubts, she could never quite for­get the visit of Ga­briel ere Je­sus was born. The Phar­isees had been la­bor­ing to per­suade Mary that Je­sus was be­side him­self, de­mented. They urged her to go with her sons and seek to dis­suade him from fur­ther ef­forts at pub­lic teach­ing. They as­sured Mary that soon Je­sus’ health would break, and that only dis­honor and dis­grace could come upon the en­tire fam­ily as a re­sult of al­low­ing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude’s sis­ter-in-law, all five of them started at once for Zeb­e­dee’s house, hav­ing been to­gether at Mary’s home, where they had met with the Phar­isees the evening be­fore. They had talked with the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers long into the night, and all were more or less con­vinced that Je­sus was act­ing strangely, that he had acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not ex­plain all of his con­duct, she in­sisted that he had al­ways treated his fam­ily fairly and re­fused to agree to the pro­gram of try­ing to dis­suade him from fur­ther work.

137:3.2Be­fore leav­ing Naz­a­reth, the new as­so­ciates of Je­sus told Joseph and other mem­bers of Je­sus’ fam­ily about the won­der­ful events of the then re­cent past and gave free ex­pres­sion to their be­lief that Je­sus was the long-ex­pected de­liv­erer. And these mem­bers of Je­sus’ fam­ily talked all this over, and Joseph said: “Maybe, af­ter all, Mother was right—maybe our strange brother is the com­ing king.”