Joseph's Relationship to Mary

Alice C. Linsley

The tools of kinship analysis have rendered value information about the marriage pattern of Joseph and Mary’s ruler-priest ancestors.  Here are the pertinent facts:

• The Horite ruler-priests were a caste.  One trait of castes is strict endogamy.  The Horites exclusively intermarried.  These are the men who are listed in the Genesis genealogies.

• The marriages were arranged between the sons and daughters of 2 main priestly lines.

• Each ruler had 2 wives at the time of his ascent: one was a half-sister and the other was a patrilineal cousin wife. There are numerous examples of exactly this pattern in Genesis and Exodus.

• The priestly lines are traced from brother patriarchs: Cain and Seth; Ham and Shem; Peleg and Joktan, and Nahor and Abraham.

• It is by the cousin bride that the ruler-priest lines are identified. The cousin wife names her firstborn son after her father. So Namaah’s firstborn son Lamech is named after her father Lamech the Elder.

Now, we may ask if this pattern explains the relationship of Joseph and Mary, who are said to be cousins.  Here is the pertinent information:

• Joseph and Mary are descendants of Abraham. As such they have Horite blood.

• Both are of priestly lines. Matthew 1:15 tells us that Joseph is of the priestly line of Mattai (Matthan/Matthew). Further, Luke 2 tells us that Joseph has to register in Bethlehem which was originally a Horite settlement.

• Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:23-38) lists the names of Horite ruler-priests like Mattai, Joseph, Er, Levi, David’s son Nathan, Jesse, Aram, Terah, Nahor, Eber, Arphachsad, and Lamech and Enoch. Tradition tells us that Mary’s father, Joachim, was a shepherd priest, like Jesse. The Chronicler calls David's sons "priests" and the Er listed here is the maternal grandfather of Tamar's husband Er, whose offense of onanism cost him his life.

• Joseph is said to have had another wife. If Mary is his cousin wife, then his first wife, by whom he had sons and daughters, was his half-sister.

• Mary would have been Joseph’s cousin wife, as Tradition claims.

• It is by the cousin wife that the ruler-priest line is identified.

The alignment of the data indicates that Jesus was born to the very people to whom God made the original promise in Eden (Gen. 3:15).  Mary’s only Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, is the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise, according to both Matthew and Luke.

Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; The Genesis King Lists; Mary's Priestly Line; The Lines of Ham and Shem Intermarried