Were Mary and Joseph Married or Engaged at Jesus’ Birth?
Mary and Joseph in the Bible
The atmosphere of our church service was pregnant with expectation: four candles of the Advent wreath and the colored lights from the tree and wreaths lit the darkened room. My wife and I were among the tens of millions gathered on Christmas Eve to rehearse the Nativity story again. As one of the readers read aloud Luke 2:5, I was struck by the New International Version (NIV) translation: “Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.” Chronologically, the narrative had advanced some eight months from Luke 1:26-27, where it stated that Gabriel was sent to a virgin named Mary “pledged to be married to a man named Joseph.” The Greek verb mnēsteuō was translated identically in both verses.
The translation suggested to me that an unmarried Jewish couple was traveling a long distance unaccompanied by other family members. And the woman—still only pledged in marriage—was in an advanced state of pregnancy. If such a situation is still scandalous in the Middle East, how much more in first-century Judea!1
Were Mary and Joseph married or engaged when they traveled to Bethlehem? Seen here is a mosaic of the Journey to Bethlehem from the Chora Church in Istanbul.
Later I checked other translations of Luke 2:5. The English Standard Version (ESV) uses “betrothed,” an archaic Middle English word. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) uses “engaged,” while the New Living Translation (NLT) says “fiancée.” Again, these English versions suggest that the couple’s marriage was incomplete. This discovery led me into an in-depth word study as well as a look at ancient marriage. And what I found was surprising.
Matthew’s Gospel seems to be clearer. In the genealogy, Joseph is called the “husband of Mary,” who gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1:16). Describing the background of their relationship, Matthew 1:18 reads, “His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph.” Here Matthew uses the same Greek verb as Luke. However, after Joseph decides to divorce Mary because of her unexpected pregnancy, an angel warns him in a dream not to do so. The angel advises him to “take Mary as his wife” (Matthew 1:20). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel commanded him: He took Mary as his wife (Matthew 1:24). Luke’s version seemingly contradicts Matthew’s, according to present English translations.
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The Greek verb mnēsteuō is used eight times in the Septuagint (the third-century B.C.E. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). Four uses in Deuteronomy (22:23, 25, 27, 28) deal with the legal issues surrounding an engaged woman having illicit sexual relations. If the incident happens in a city (22:23), both the man and the woman are to be stoned to death; if a rape happens in the country, only the man is to be stoned. The man is considered guilty because he has violated another man’s wife (22:24).
In the three uses in Hosea, God himself is speaking. Regarding Israel’s future day of redemption in 2:16, God declares: “You will call me ‘my husband.’” Then he states in verses 19–20: “And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.” The NRSV translates “wife” here, while the NIV, ESV and New King James Version (NKJV) all read: “I will betroth you.” Because of the context wherein God declares that he is a husband forever, it is clear that his relationship with Israel extends beyond an engagement stage; they will metaphorically be husband and wife.
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The Hebrew verb aras, translated mnēsteuō in Greek, refers to Jewish marriage practice in which the groom contractually pays a bride-price (mohar) to the bride’s father (Genesis 34:12). According to Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart, “This was the final step in the courtship process, virtually equivalent in legal status to the wedding ceremony.”2 According to the Mishnah Ketubbot 5.2, the betrothal would last a year, with the bride remaining in the home of her father. Recalling the legal texts in Deuteronomy mentioned earlier plus the equation of David’s betrothal to Michal as marriage (2 Samuel 3:14), we see that under Jewish law, a betrothed woman was considered to be married.
Returning to Joseph, he would have paid the bride price to Mary’s father at their engagement (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:27). Despite his misgivings, Joseph then obeyed the angel’s command to marry Mary (Matthew 1:20). The time of formal engagement, whether a full year or not, had passed between them. So Joseph and Mary had begun to live together except for sexual relations (Matthew 1:25). Luke’s understanding of mnēsteuō must be expanded to include both the betrothal/engagement as well as marital cohabitation. Therefore a better translation of Luke 2:5 would be: “Mary his wife who was expecting a child.” (The NKJV attempts a hybrid with “betrothed wife.”) English translations that suggest the couple was still only in the engagement stage of fiancé/fiancée must be discarded. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem as a full husband and wife under ancient Jewish law.
Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Study tours. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the author of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS’s Bible Fests.
Notes
1. Joseph Fitzmyer anticipated my questions by suggesting that readers and listeners should not be overliteral because the account does not intend to answer questions such as: “What was she doing on a journey with Joseph, if she were merely his fiancée or betrothed? And worse still, pregnant as well”; see Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 407. To ask such questions, according to Fitzmyer, is to miss the point of Luke’s story. But in liturgical use such authorial nuances are lost. He also notes that Luke never calls Mary the “wife” of Joseph and perhaps was not aware of Palestinian Jewish marriage customs. This blog post assumes that Luke, because of his knowledge of Jewish customs and possible interview with Mary herself (cf. Luke 1:2), used familiar marital language that had a broader semantic range than translators give it today.
2. Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 31 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), p. 59.
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 12, 2017.
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The marriage ceremony was not performed while Mary was Pregnant. How ridiculous. No one in all of Israel would have tolerated that. Jewish customs, as being interpreted today, don’t change the fact that Jesus was conceived in wedlock.
AI still gives an overview that says that sometime before the birth of Jesus that Joseph and Mary were married. This is a false statement.
Child brides were a common practice in many cultures before the law was given. They did this out of preservation of land rights and for securing the promise of virginity. The underage bride, or underage groom, (Ruth 1:13, Genesis 38:11, NOTE: Tamar remaining a widow at her fathers house meant that she was married to Shelah, but not to live together until the child was old enough to be a proper husband.)
So it was that if the child that was married was not old enough to bear, or to provide children, they were still married until the parents certified the child was of age.
The statement that the marriage ceremony was performed before Jesus birth is not credible. No scriptures say any thing of that timing. The scriptures say that Mary and Joseph were already Married before the conception of Jesus in the womb. The angel speaking unto Joseph said,” Take unto thee Mary, thy wife ” (Mathew 1:20 KJV). The statement “Thy wife” says that they were already married. The angel said this to Joseph because of Joseph’s concern for Mary”s fidelity. Mary was faithful. The child that was to be called Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb while the couple were legally married.
The Holy Bible is not an Israeli Book. The Bible was written to the world. Why, do you figure, it is that the Jews are the only nation on the planet that has this custom that engaged really means married?
Why do Jewish people have the corner on interpretation? Why do Jewish made up customs prevail over the good common sense of the rest of humanity. They Broke the First covenant, Jeremiah 31:32, They rejected Christ, so that disqualifies them from any interpretation of any thing Christian, or any thing to do with the truth of the Christian faith. The Bible says that Joseph and Mary were Legally married. Take a look at the older parallel translations on Bible hub. click additional translations. See: Geneva bible of 1587, Bishop’s bible of 1568, Coverdale bible of 1535, Tyndale bible of 1526. All say the angel said to Joseph ‘ Mary thy wife ‘ , not ‘to be thy wife,’ or ‘as thy wife’ most newer interpretation versions change the word of God.
And just a last note: why would Christians look to the Mishnah for falsehoods written by known practitioners of Kabbalah?