Why Mary & Joseph?

[WebersHome]

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Mary and Joseph were pious Jews, but that isn't the primary reason they were chosen to be Jesus' parents.

Jesus was on track to take David's throne (Luke 1:32-33). Men who take that position from God have to satisfy two mandatory requirements: they have to be biologically related to David, and legally related to David's son Solomon. (2Sam 7:8-17, 1Kings 1:13, 1Chron 22:9-10, and Ps 89:3-4)

In a nutshell: Mary provided Jesus' biological relationship with David, while Joseph provided his legal relationship with Solomon.

Joseph was a very key element in Jesus' status because David's throne doesn't pass down to his royal heirs thru women.
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[Athetotheist]

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Mary and Joseph were pious Jews, but that isn't the primary reason they were chosen to be Jesus' parents.

Jesus was on track to take David's throne (Luke 1:32-33). Men who take that position from God have to satisfy two mandatory requirements: they have to be biologically related to David, and legally related to David's son Solomon. (2Sam 7:8-17, 1Kings 1:13, 1Chron 22:9-10, and Ps 89:3-4)

In a nutshell: Mary provided Jesus' biological relationship with David, while Joseph provided his legal relationship with Solomon.

Joseph was a very key element in Jesus' status because David's throne doesn't pass down to his royal heirs thru women.
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According to some:

God assures that there will always be a male of paternal Solomonic descent with the right to reign upon David's throne.

( emphasis mine)

https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/ar ... of-solomon

[Difflugia]

Jesus was on track to take David's throne (Luke 1:32-33). Men who take that position from God have to satisfy two mandatory requirements: they have to be biologically related to David, and legally related to David's son Solomon. (2Sam 7:8-17, 1Kings 1:13, 1Chron 22:9-10, and Ps 89:3-4)

In a nutshell: Mary provided Jesus' biological relationship with David, while Joseph provided his legal relationship with Solomon.

Amusingly, the authors of Mark and John didn't seem to know the traditions that Jesus was either born in Bethlehem or descended from David. Mark's author turns Psalm 110 into a rhetorical question in 12:35-37 to refute the idea that the Messiah must be David's descendent. John's author uses a similar rhetorical question in 7:41-42 to imply that Jesus was neither descended of David nor born in Bethlehem.

[WebersHome]

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• Rom 1:1-3 . . . Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh

The Greek word translated "seed" in that passage is sperma (sper'-mah) which is a bit ambiguous because it can refer to spiritual posterity as well as to biological posterity; for example:

• Gal 3:29 . . If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed.

That seed is obviously spiritual posterity; whereas David's is biological because it's "according to the flesh" i.e. his physical human body.

Seeing as Jesus' dad Joseph played no role in his son's conception, and his wife was a virgin at the time, then Jesus' biological connection to David defaults thru his mother.
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[Athetotheist]

[Replying to WebersHome in post #4]

and his wife was a virgin at the time,

....according to a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14.

https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/ar ... rgin-birth

[WebersHome]

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According to Gen 1:27 and Gen 3:20, women propagate the human race equally as effective as men do; and here's why.

Eve was constructed with human material taken from Adam's body. That made her just as biologically human as Adam-- in point of fact, Gen 5:2 calls the female Adam just as the male is called Adam.

So then, were human material taken from Eve's body to construct another human-- either male or female --it would make the flesh of that other person's body Eve's flesh; and consequently Adam's too because his flesh has been the source of all human flesh from the very beginning. (Acts 17:26)

As a result; virgin-conceived human children are just as much related to Adam as their human mother if indeed she was in any way biologically related to Eve.

Was Mary biologically related to Eve? I think we can be reasonably certain that she was. So, if indeed she was, then we can easily trace Jesus' biological genealogy not only to David, but also to Adam.

NOTE: Most Christians will readily attest that Jesus Christ is fully Man while in reality a number of them are not fully persuaded he wasn't some sort of divine hominid implanted in Mary's uterus so that no part of her body was used to construct his, i.e. they honestly question whether Jesus' mom wasn't his surrogate mother rather than his biological mother
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[Athetotheist]

[Replying to WebersHome in post #6]

As a result; virgin-conceived human children are just as much related to Adam as their human mother if indeed she was in any way biologically related to Eve.

Unless you count in-vitro fertilization, there has never been a confirmed case of a virgin-conceived human child.

[WebersHome]

Joseph was a very key element in Jesus' status because David's throne doesn't pass down to his royal heirs thru women.

Jacob was the first among the people of Israel to practice adoption when he took Joseph's two sons Manasseh and Ephraim as his own (Gen 48:5-6) thus giving the two boys positions in Jacob's clan equal in rank and privilege to his two eldest biological sons.

A number of modern Jews refuse to accept Jesus' position in Solomon's royal genealogy via adoption, but they have no say in the matter because one of their own patriarchs set the precedent; and among pious Jews, the patriarchs are God, if you get my meaning. In point of fact, Jacob's spiritual name "Israel" is from Yisra'el (yis-raw-ale') which means: he will rule as God, i.e. rule in God's stead.
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[Athetotheist]

[Replying to WebersHome in post #8]

A number of modern Jews refuse to accept Jesus' position in Solomon's royal genealogy via adoption, but they have no say in the matter because one of their own patriarchs set the precedent;

A number of modern Christians refuse to accept Isaiah 7 the way it was written, but they have no say in the matter because it wasn't written to say that a virgin would give birth.

and among pious Jews, the patriarchs are God, if you get my meaning.

Pious Jews believe that God is God and man is man. That's why they don't believe that Jesus was God.