Talk:Saint Joseph/Archive 4

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Requested move 27 December 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure)  sami  talk 08:42, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Saint Joseph → Joseph, husband of Mary – Move per MOS:SAINTS, which states the following Saints go by their most common English name, minus the word "Saint", if such a title is available and the saint is the primary topic for that name. It is clear that we do not use the word saint for a biblical figure when there is a natural and unambiguous title available. Joseph, husband of Mary is neutral, common, and concise. This is why we have Mary, mother of Jesus and not Saint Mary or Virgin Mary, and Jesus and not Jesus Christ. We need to have consistent article names. The current tile does not reflect WP:NPOV or the MOS:SAINTS guidelines. Not all Christian denominations, as well as Islam, do not refer to Joseph as a saint. However, all Christian denominations, as well as Islam, believe Joseph to be the husband of Mary, mother of Jesus. In addition, there are many people named Saint Joseph or simply, Joseph. The current title is not appropriate, when there is other unambiguous and common titles available. CookieMonster755✉ 03:03, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose Per common he is absolutely not known as Joseph, Husband of Mary but is almost universally known as St. Joseph. Most mainline Christian denominations refer to him as St. Joseph. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 03:21, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Comment given a google search of Joseph, Husband of Mary almost every search still came up with Saint Joseph. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 03:23, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Er, not when I search... That certainly isn't so in GBooks: "Joseph, Husband of Mary" -"saint -joseph" About 4,450 results vs "saint Joseph, Husband of Mary" about 1,110 results. Even on the phrase, which is not how we assess WP:COMMONNAME, the whole string is still 4x more common without saint than with. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
The stats seems to swing the opposite way (back to 'Saint Joseph') in editor Egsan Bacon's comments below. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
You can't use searches on the couple in this way! Obviously "Mary and Saint Joseph" will be rare. The proposal is not plain Joseph, but a made-up descriptive term that nobody uses. Johnbod (talk) 18:53, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose, as the legal father, protector, caretaker, and life-events teacher of Jesus he was much more than "Mary's husband". I'd personally pop him in as primary for 'Joseph', but the 'husband of Mary' doesn't describe his role in the history of religion. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:45, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
@Randy Kryn: husband of Mary probably does describe his role in the history of religion, I'm not away of anything else he did. But in any case problem is there is a Joseph (Old Testament character) after which Joseph (New Testament character) is named, so he'd have difficulty in being primary for Joseph. What solution then do you propose for "Saint" not being WP:COMMONNAME by any stretch of results? Such as the 100-to-1 result above. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:52, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Joseph is not the primary topic for "Joseph", considering Jopseph of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible is important to the Abrahamic faith. However, we need to move the current title to something else, per the MOS:SAINT policy, as well as WP:CONSISTENCY, and WP:NPOV. He is best known as the husband of Mary according to the biblical narrative. CookieMonster755✉ 19:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose WP:COMMONNAME does not apply here. His sainthood is a non negotiable part of the article and needs to be shown in the title. Certain other saints do not have "saint" in the title but there is pretty much no reason to leave it out here.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 14:32, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
@Zxcvbnm: actually Joseph isn't a Saint to most readers, including most Christian readers, and certainly not to non-Christians, so not sure why his sainthood is non-negotiable. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:41, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
.. Catholics alone have 1.2 billion members and they refer to him as St. Joseph. Not to mention the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Anglican Communion all refer to him as such. As do most mainline Protestants (Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian). That is the majority of Christians. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 19:31, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
@Zxcvbnm: The same reason why we have Jesus Christ at Jesus is the same reason why we should have Saint Joseph at Joseph, husband of Mary or some other form of his name. Policy is clear that we omit saint when other disambiguation is available. Islam believes Joseph to be the legal father of Jesus, and they don't refer to him as saint. I believe it would be best to move the title way from its current form per WP:CONSISTENCY and WP:NPOV. The policy is clear at MOS:SAINTS, which states the following: Saints go by their most common English name, minus the word "Saint", if such a title is available and the saint is the primary topic for that name. If the base name (for example, "Timothy") requires disambiguation due to lack of primary topic for the saint, natural disambiguation has been preferred at Wikipedia. This leads to titles like Saint Timothy and Matthew the Apostle. As the word "Saint" can lead to controversy (depending on who considers whom to be a saint) and possible non-neutrality, other forms of natural disambiguation are typically preferred, all other things being equal. We generally avoid the word "saint" due to WP:NPOV policy, and I want to emphasis the last part of the MOS:SAINTS, which states As the word "Saint" can lead to controversy (depending on who considers whom to be a saint) and possible non-neutrality, other forms of natural disambiguation are typically preferred. If disambiguation is needed, we generally prefer natural disambiguation, and disambiguation that is common and readers will recognize. Joseph, husband of Mary is WP:RECOGNIZABLE and WP:NATURAL. CookieMonster755✉ 19:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
  • There are very good 'oppose' points being made in this discussion, but yours seems to me to be determinative. "...he may not be the only Joseph on Wikipedia who had a wife called Mary", and from then on the mental-image of the names changed to just two very common names. And yes, "Saint Joseph" is his most familiar name, it's pretty straightforward and gives him a pat on the back (or, in this case, a Saint Patrick (primary) on the back). Randy Kryn (talk) 23:48, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The name is natural, and the most notable Joseph/Mary couple is the biblical one per long term significance criteria. CookieMonster755✉ 01:17, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
I don't have a huge problem about referring to people as "saint", in some cases it would be highly artificial to use any other disambiguator e.g. Saint Patrick (who I don't think Muslims regard as a saint). We could assume that "Mary" refers to the Virgin Mary, an even more biased assumption. "Joseph of Nazareth" implies that he spent most of his life in Nazareth or came from there originally, I don't think we can conclude this from the biblical account. PatGallacher (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Support but still prefer Joseph of Nazareth from earlier RMs to either the current title or the proposed version. As a note, I believe the claims above are incorrect that the Presbyterians use "St. Joseph"; most Presbyterian Churches don't use "St. Name" much at all, aside from vague references to the saints collectively. It's really mostly Catholics & Anglicans. SnowFire (talk) 16:01, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Unfortunately, that title has not gained enough support as much as the proposed one. CookieMonster755✉ 01:01, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the very many previous discussions. We really need a time-bar on this and a few others. Johnbod (talk) 18:44, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Totally agree with you that there needs to be a temporary time restriction on future RMs. CookieMonster755✉ 19:11, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment – as nominator, I would support a six-month moratoria. Others have expressed support for a moratoria after this discussion has been closed. CookieMonster755✉ 05:48, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose the stated guideline of MOS:SAINT seems to contradict this. It says preferable to omit, but when need to disambiguate, natural disambiguation like saint are allowed, it is preferred to use some other natural disambiguator (this ain't one) all other things being equal (it isn't). So this doesn't seem true: Policy is clear that we omit saint when other disambiguation is available. The searches seem pretty poorly done. Mary and Saint Joseph isn't going to be used - it's going to be "mary and joseph" - doesn't mean saint joseph won't be used seperately. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:38, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Fiance

Ancient Jews did not have fiances, they only had the ceremony of marriage (mistranslated as engagement) and the ceremony of consummation of marriage. So, a man and a woman were either married or not married, no in-between. So, what has been described as raping a virgin engaged (betrothed) to another man, was in fact raping another man's wife, thus deserving death penalty for adultery. So, as far as we can tell, the historical Joseph was legally married to the historical Mary. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:08, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Sounds convincing :) PiCo (talk) 10:55, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Jewish law

"Matthew's genealogy traces his legal descent, according to Jewish law, through St. Joseph". What? Under Jewish law, legal descent is traced through the mother, not the father.PiCo (talk) 11:50, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

they agree in establishing his ancestral connection with King David through Joseph, who would have to have been Jesus's father for the genealogical link to be valid.

— Michael Coogan, God and Sex, 2010, p. 38
Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:14, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
In Antiquity all people believed that all heredity is contained by the sperm, source: Nelson, James (2003). "Homosexuality and the Church". In Laderman, Gary; León, Luis D. (eds.). Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio. p. 884. ISBN 9781576072387. OCLC 773527161. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help) Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:21, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
What they believed was that the mother contributed the flesh via her blood and the father the "spirit", the soul. Jewishness was inherited via the mother, and still is - to be a Jew you have to be born of a Jewish mother (converts excepted), and the child of a Jewish father by a goy woman is not a Jew. Inheritance of property, family name and so on is of course by the father, but the point of the heavenly conception genealogies is to establish that Jesus was a Jew via his Jewish mother while being of the family of David by Joseph. Sperm, by the way, wasn't thought to play any role at all, which is why the idea of the divine conception could work at all for ancient people - Joseph wasn't needed, biologically speaking. There's an good explanation of this in a fairly recent book by Andrew Lincoln, "Born of a Virgin?", reviewed by Larry Hurtado here.PiCo (talk) 01:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
You should both be far more cautious about such sweeping statements about what "in Antiquity all people believed" (and possibly so should the authors you mention). There's ample evidence beliefs varied hugely on this sort of issue. Johnbod (talk) 17:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
We have to stick to reliable sources, and Lincoln is a well-credentialed scholar (and his book has been well received). What are these other sources? PiCo (talk) 01:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Here is an argument that in the Bible lineage was decided by the father, but in late antiquity the situation was reversed, being decided by the mother. Source quotes Shaye J. D. Cohen. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:28, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Wright Knust, Jennifer (25 January 2011). "Chapter 5 - Strange Flesh". Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-201082-7. As property, the accumulation of wives, foreign or otherwise, did not threaten the genealogy of Israel, which passed exclusively through the male line well into the second century CE.51 51. As Shaye J. D. Cohen has ably demonstrated, the rabbinic view that in cases of intermarriage Jewish identity passes through the female line cannot be found prior to the codification of the Mishnah. See Beginnings of Jewishness, 283–307. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:11, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Bart Ehrman made the point of his blog that speaking about what ancient Jews believed is like speaking about what 21st century Americans believe. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:36, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

It's called Matrilinear descent Degen Earthfast and the relevant Wikipedia article is at Matrilineality in Judaism. I suggest some people here need to read it. (talk) 23:47, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Saint Joseph in art

I'm researching how St. Joseph has been depicted in statues and came across a lot of images of Saint Joseph (the Worker) with a saw in one hand and a carpenter's square in the other. Can someone with more knowledge than I have explain this in the article? DBlomgren (talk) 19:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Joseph as the Parent of Jesus

Joseph was the step-father of Jesus not the foster-father of Jesus. As the duly married husband of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Joseph became His step-father. A foster parent(s) exists when there are no blood-parents of the child around and the child has been, usually legally, placed with others.--Degen Earthfast (talk) 20:39, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Identified as the 'legal father' of Jesus in the text, phrasing which 'covers all the bases' in encyclopedic language. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:43, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Legal father of Christ

@Hazhk: Thanks for your help. But I have NEVER heard that Joseph was the 'legal father' of Christ. Who ever said that? I would like to see that quote on page 34 of Boff, Leonardo (2009). Saint Joseph: The Father of Jesus in a Fatherless Society. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781606080078. Please add that quote here or in the citation. Geographyinitiative (talk) 03:59, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Missing links?

Searching for "St. Joseph" takes me to this page. There are links to pages about other St. Josephs and other Biblical Josephs, but no link that would let me find place names such as St. Joseph, Missouri. Seems like a miss... Ajb61 (talk) 03:15, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I added 'and uses' in the hatnote so that may be enough to relieve readers confusion (the link leads to Saint Joseph (disambiguation). Randy Kryn (talk) 03:24, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

The Most Chaste St. Joseph

A very limited number of sources is available on Google with regards to the official title of Most Chaste St. Joseph, which logically derives from the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. Tha title is testisfied by the devotion to the Most Chaste Hearth of St. Joseph and to the one of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, which were often worshiped together. The first is sourced by an book of prayers dated back to 1884, while the latter is connected with her title New Eve and Co-Redemptrix. No pages on Wikipedia are using this highly important Roman Catholic title. So it has been sourced on WP.

The complete and more correct title is Most Chaste and Pure Earth, given that chastity and purity can stay together and strenghten each other. They are something like preconditions of the other seven virtues.

Hope an uniquie and more recent source could be found and made available, possibly with some photographic or documental references related to the 19th century backwards, which would be useful to demonstrate the ancient and traditional nature of this Roman Catholic title. The role of chasitity and purity in relation to the seven virtues needs to be better clarified, with the aid of other more expert contributors. I wish to thank them in advance for any eventual improvement.Theologian81sp (talk) 14:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

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