Q: Was Joseph the father of Jesus?
A: Not physically. But Jesus -- by being born into the family of Joseph, who was descended from David, to Josephs wife Mary, who had not had intercourse with anyone -- qualified as a descendent of David. Jesus was a unique case -- not illegitimate (inasmuch as His mother had not committed fornication), and at the same time not the result of a conjugal union between Joseph and Mary.
Joseph was called Jesus father because Joseph functioned, during Jesus childhood at any rate, as the head of the family of which Jesus was a member. This was the normal practice in first-century Judaism (and earlier): if your mother was a remarried widow, your step-father was known as your father, and you (if you were male) were legally the heir of both your physical father and your step-father.
Theres no way to verify what sort of genetic structure Jesus body had. But extrapolating from Scriptures such as Acts 13:23 and Romans 1:3, it would make sense if the body (or zygote or blastocyst or whatever) which God caused to begin to exist and live in Marys womb had a genotype (or at least half a genotype, the other half possibly being based on Mary's) which a male descendant of David would be expected to have. This is, as I said, impossible to verify, but so are assertions to the contrary.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
A: Not physically. But Jesus -- by being born into the family of Joseph, who was descended from David, to Josephs wife Mary, who had not had intercourse with anyone -- qualified as a descendent of David. Jesus was a unique case -- not illegitimate (inasmuch as His mother had not committed fornication), and at the same time not the result of a conjugal union between Joseph and Mary.
Joseph was called Jesus father because Joseph functioned, during Jesus childhood at any rate, as the head of the family of which Jesus was a member. This was the normal practice in first-century Judaism (and earlier): if your mother was a remarried widow, your step-father was known as your father, and you (if you were male) were legally the heir of both your physical father and your step-father.
Theres no way to verify what sort of genetic structure Jesus body had. But extrapolating from Scriptures such as Acts 13:23 and Romans 1:3, it would make sense if the body (or zygote or blastocyst or whatever) which God caused to begin to exist and live in Marys womb had a genotype (or at least half a genotype, the other half possibly being based on Mary's) which a male descendant of David would be expected to have. This is, as I said, impossible to verify, but so are assertions to the contrary.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
