Two Fathers of Jesus: A New Perspective

Interview Transcript

Shirley Paulson

This is going to be a fun conversation today. I just met my guest today, Nathan Houstin, at the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) meeting in Boston a couple of months ago. And I was intrigued with the paper he presented there. The title of his paper was “Daddy Trouble in Paradise?” He’s referring to the two fathers of Jesus. And I don’t think I’d ever thought about Jesus and his two dads. But of course, they’re right there in the New Testament.

Let me introduce you a little bit to Nathan. He’s a doctoral student in New Testament and early Christianity at Loyola University in Chicago. He holds a Master of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. And prior to his theological studies, Nathan worked in healthcare as a respiratory care practitioner, and he continues to practice this profession besides his doctoral work. His scholarly interests range from gender studies, health and medicine in antiquity to infancy gospels and Nag Hammadi Texts. So I think you fit really well in our Bible and Beyond conversations. So welcome Nathan.

Nathan Houstin

Thank you, thanks for having me

Shirley

You bet. All right, so when I heard your paper at SBL (Society of Biblical Literature), you made me realize I hadn’t thought too much about Joseph since most of the attention does seem to go to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Why don’t we start with maybe the more common ideas of the father of Jesus, and then we’ll move on to some of your newest research. Like, how would you characterize the most common ways that people have envisioned the father of Jesus? Let’s start there.

Nathan

Yes, well, like you just said, Joseph is traditionally the father of Jesus, right? I think it’s the most simple way that we’ve thought about Joseph. And it all comes mostly in our canonical scriptures from the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, which have the infancy narratives of Jesus. What’s interesting, though, is that both in Matthew and in Luke, we have the story of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, all the stories of Christmas that I think we all know, but Joseph is not explicitly called Jesus’ father. But for example, in Matthew, he’s called Mary’s husband. In Luke, he’s engaged to Mary. And in both Matthew and Luke, if you read it, it’s always Mary and her child and Joseph. Or, Mary and Joseph and the child. So it’s never Mary and Joseph and his child. They’re always the three of them together, but he’s not really explicitly described as the father. The only thing I think in the Gospel of Matthew that kind of shows this fatherly role would be that Joseph is the one naming Jesus after receiving this dream from the angel that he is to call Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. So I think here he kind of fulfills this fatherly role. But then what’s interesting too is in the Gospel of John, we don’t really think of the Gospel of John when we think about Joseph, because we don’t have this infancy narrative. We have the prologue, but it’s a different kind of infancy narrative. But here in the Gospel of John, we have two references to Joseph.

In John, in 1:45, Jesus begins his mission, he’s gathering his disciples, and there is Philip that describes Jesus as “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” And then a little later in chapter 6, the Jews that are gathered are wondering about the identity of this Jesus, and they’re asking, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”

So here Joseph is actually, right. Jesus is the son of Joseph. It’s actually this father-son relationship in the Gospel of John that seems more explicit, but it’s not really developed at all either. So I think it’s kind of confusing. Because of course the canonical scriptures are telling us that Jesus is God’s son. And that’s the foundation of the Christian faith.

Joseph cannot technically be Jesus’ biological father. But then some ancient texts maybe try to explore this concept of fatherhood, I think, in a different way. And we’ll have some time to talk about this. And one, I think mostly—except for Joseph simply being the father of Jesus—has become more of the adoptive father, the stepfather has become this image that maybe is easier to explain. That still makes him this integral part of the holy family,  while also showing that he’s not the biological father, but still can be part of the family.

Shirley

So already you bring Joseph alive for me because you’re right, you’re referencing things I’ve heard before but never thought about them before. So this is very helpful.

All right, so in our Bible and Beyond conversations, we’ve talked about the Infancy Gospel of Thomas sometimes. That book, which sounds so very strange to us today—with the odd behavior of little Jesus—was quite popular in antiquity and it seems to have strengthened the image of Jesus’ father. But how does that differ from the canonical writings in terms of like understanding this father of Jesus?

Nathan

So the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, like you said, is this dramatic ancient text with these stories of Jesus ranging from age five to 12. This Infancy Gospel kind of bridges the gap of Jesus’s childhood because we don’t really know what happened between his birth and when he was 12. Right in the Gospel of Luke, we have this little passage where Jesus is 12 and is teaching the religious authorities in the temple in Jerusalem.

But here we see Joseph in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas really taking a more prominent role next to the child Jesus with a strong character, this temper, who is not easy to deal with. And Joseph is really there almost in all through the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And he’s actually named the father and Jesus is the son.

There is no clear explanation of any biological relations between Joseph and Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, but there is this…I mean, they’re named father and son. And I think it’s more of a sociological understanding of the father. And it becomes more and more evident that Joseph is not the greatest of fathers.

I think, in the gospel, in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas—that’s my take on it—I really feel bad for the poor, poor Joseph. But in the canonical gospels, like I said earlier, Joseph is chosen, right? He receives those divine dreams to kind of indicate his next course of actions, to know what he has to do with Jesus, to care for Jesus, to care for Mary.

In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Joseph doesn’t really have this divine connection and he’s very much the earthly father trying his best to understand and to control his son Jesus, because Jesus is really out of control, and this is because of all his extraordinary powers. He’s beyond all human rules really. And so I think Joseph is really depicted in maybe a more negative light in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the way that he’s failing to discipline his son, Jesus. The villagers are coming and confronting him and he cannot really defend himself and defend his son. He’s trying to make a bed, and as a carpenter, he doesn’t have the right length for the wood, and Jesus fixes it with his powers and all of this. So he’s the one who’s supposed to teach all of this to Jesus, but in the end, Jesus teaches Joseph everything. So I think in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Joseph keeps failing to be this real strong father that we would have expected him to be in antiquity. And my hunch is that at the end of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Mary kind of appears more and takes on center stage—in this little passage, where Jesus is in the temple teaching the religious authorities. And she’s recognized by them as the most blessed among all women. So I think there is this kind of inverse relationship where Joseph’s status in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is kind of lowered while Mary and Jesus are kind of rising above, and they become the real heroes of the story. Joseph still plays a very important role, but he is the anti-hero.

Shirley

I would think being the father of Jesus must be the hardest job on earth. My goodness. So all right, now in 1945, another important text that was in the larger collection, discovered in Nag Hammadi, in Egypt, talks briefly about Joseph. Can you tell us about that text and what it says about Joseph?

Nathan Houstin (10:01)

Yes, so this text is the Gospel of Philip, and it’s found in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi  Corpus. And actually it’s interesting because Kimberly Fowler, who was here (on a Bible and Beyond podcast) to talk about the Gospel of Philip, I think back in the fall, is the person who recommended to me that I look into the Gospel of Philip for Joseph. I presented a paper on Joseph and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, like I was just talking about earlier. And she was chairing the session and she’s the one who pointed me towards the Gospel of Philip. And a couple years later, I am still thinking about all of this. So I’m really grateful for her guidance and for her advice. But in the Gospel of Philip, Joseph is mentioned very briefly, just once.

He’s identified as a carpenter. And that’s really a very important trait in the Gospel of Philip. He’s a carpenter, not only a carpenter, but he’s also the one who planted trees in his garden. And with those trees, he will be the one building the cross on which Jesus would be crucified. So we read in the Gospel of Philip that Joseph’s offspring hung on what he planted and his offspring was Jesus and what he planted was the cross. So it’s very clear that Joseph the carpenter is himself building the cross on which Jesus will be crucified. So it can seem that Joseph is here represented, I think, as an instrument or an agent of death and And so maybe not as the caring father that we could interpret him in the canonical gospel, but there is more to this story, I think.

Shirley

Yeah, this is a really surprising and difficult picture to think of the father creating the cross for his son, my goodness. But there’s another tree in the midst of the garden that brings us —the chrism, did I get that right?

Nathan

Yes, absolutely. So the text of the Gospel of Philip continues in saying that there’s a tree in the middle of the garden that Joseph planted. So there is a lot of trees, but there is one in particular, in the middle, that is the tree of life. And it’s in opposition to the other trees that are used to build the cross. And, of course, the cross becomes the symbol of death, so the trees of death, right? So this is the opposition between the tree of life and the trees of death. And this tree of life is said to be an olive tree in the text, and its oil is used for chrism. Chrism is very important in the Gospel of Philip because it’s a sacrament. And the Gospel of Philip is very concerned about sacraments, and it has an order in sacraments as well.

We can read in the Gospel of Philip just this enumeration of, this listing of sacraments. The first one is baptism, second one is chrism, third one is Eucharist, the fifth one is redemption, and the sixth one is the bridal chamber. And they go in order of importance. So baptism, chrism, Eucharist, redemption, and bridal chamber.

And so shortly after the passage about Joseph planting his garden, the chrism coming from the tree of life is kind of developed here because the text reads that the chrism is superior to baptism. So we have this hierarchy of sacraments. The chrism has to do with anointing in the text.

And the argument for chrism being so important is that chrism, or anointing, is the actual source of Christ’s name and of the name for Christians. So chrism and probably the anointing with olive oil is so essential because it allows Christians to receive light, to receive the Holy Spirit, and it even says to receive the resurrection.

And it’s the source of Christ’s name and that’s the source of the name of Christians themselves. So that is such an important sacrament. And in this garden, we have both the sacrament—this tree of life with the sacrament of chrism—kind of connected with the tree of death, and the cross that will also bring resurrection in all of this. So it’s a very sacramental text as well.

Shirley

So this father planted both of these kinds of trees in the same garden?

Nathan

Yes, in the same garden. Yes, that’s correct.

Shirley

Oh, what a confused father! So all right, it seems like this cross is really a terrible thing. Is that how you see it too? Is how you interpret this? This is really bad.

Nathan

Yeah, it really does seem like a bad thing. Yeah, not really what we would expect a loving father to do, whether biological or non-biological. But, well, I think it’s a little more complicated because ultimately without the cross, there is no Christian story. And I think this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about because, the Christian faith is centered around, first of all, the birth of Jesus, through Mary and the Holy Spirit and the incarnation of the world made flesh and coming to earth, in the Gospel of John and the prologue. But also, the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is so central to the Christian faith. And especially right now, as Christians are in this time of Lent, culminating into Holy Week and Easter.

And none of the story that is at the core of Christianity would have happened without the cross. So what do you need for all of this story to happen? You need a cross and Joseph is the one providing it. So, in a way, maybe because of Joseph or maybe even thanks to Joseph, the Christian story could unfold because he was doing what he was doing with his craft, with his craftsmanship and being a carpenter and building the cross. So maybe not so terrible after all, I’m not sure. ⁓

Shirley

And then, mean, do you feel like there was any like forethought that this tree was going to be killing his son or it just happened to be that way or we don’t know that it from the text?

Nathan

It doesn’t seem from the text, it’s so short, so it doesn’t seem like there is any indication that he built it knowingly, knowing that his son would be crucified on this tree.

Shirley

So maybe we can forgive him for not knowing. Maybe. All right. Okay, well, we’re going to take a very short break right now and we’ll be right back to talk about his other daddy.

Shirley

All right, so now I think we really need to ask the question, where is God in all of this? The God that Jesus refers to when he says, for example, in the Gospel of John, “In my father’s house are many mansions,” or “I go to my Father.” Is this the same Father? Or are we talking about a totally different father now?

Nathan

So God is everywhere in all of this. This is why it’s so complex and such a fascinating text. I think of all my conversations with different scholars about this text and it doesn’t seem like a lot of people agree, but this is why it’s so fascinating to me. Because I think God is in all of this. God is also clearly Jesus’ father in the Gospel of Philip. So there is the ambiguity that we talked about that exists in the canonical Gospel. But I think here it’s worked out in a way. We said that Jesus is both Joseph’s son and God’s son. So how does this actually work?

From my experience and like what you said at the beginning, in the introduction, lots of people and in many Christian communities that I know that have interacted with, people have kind of brushed over this, right? We think about Mary, but what about Joseph? And here I think maybe in the Gospel of Philip, there is kind of this attempt to reconcile those two fathers. And one of the most interesting, or thought-provoking passages for this—for me—is this little passage that actually the listeners will recognize, but it’s when Jesus says, “My Father who is in heaven…” “My Father who is in heaven,” which comes, of course, in the Lord’s prayer. But the Gospel of Philip says that the Lord would not have said, “My Father who is in heaven,” if he did not have another father. He would simply have said, “father.” So again, Jesus said, “My father who is in heaven,” and Matthew 16, “My father who is in heaven,” because he had to specify that the father is in heaven because he has another father who is not in heaven.

So here, this little passage from the Gospel of Philip, I think is fascinating because it’s taking this prayer—what we know—as a prayer, more as an evidence that Jesus knew of his earthly and biological origins and that he accepted a father on earth. Here it doesn’t say exactly that it’s Joseph being his father, but later in the text, we know that Joseph the carpenter is the one who is building the cross and that his son will be hanging on the cross.

So here are Joseph and the father—the earthly father—in contrast with the spiritual father in heaven, or God. God is in all of it. And if Jesus is both human and divine, then it could make sense for him to have both a human father and a divine father, right? I think this is maybe the most logical explanation. Maybe it’s what the Gospel of Philip was trying to do. Whoever put those words together, was maybe trying to just explain that. How a human and divine figure can be both. Well, maybe they have a human and a divine father.

And that’s also true for the Mother because we don’t talk here too much about Mary, but we also see the same in the Gospel of Philip, that Mary is Jesus’ mother, so the human mother. But Jesus also received the Holy Spirit at his baptism, and the Holy Spirit becomes the spiritual mother, as a feminine and as the spiritual mother. And we know from other passages in the Gospel of Philip that the Spirit is working as a mother for Adam. So we have two sets of parents. We have Mary and Joseph—the earthly parents, and then we have the Holy Spirit and God—as the spiritual parents. And in a way they both play an important role because they’re both necessary to create Jesus and then to make Jesus Christ.

Shirley

So that’s really interesting to think about both the mother and the father roles being the same. Would you say, then, that having two fathers is really about having a father role in the human experience as well as a father who’s like always there even after the resurrection? Or is there maybe another way to understand these two fathers, the role of the two fathers?

Nathan

Yes, so having two fathers allows Jesus, of course, to have a father both on earth, and one for his human part and maybe a spiritual father for his life after death. But God is, as a spiritual father, is already present in Jesus’s life before his death and resurrection, right? Even so with baptism. So I think there is some kind of dual parenting. I’m almost thinking of shared custody here between the parents and the spiritual parents. But once again, I mean, I think there is another way to understand these two fathers, as you are asking.

And I think first I need to explain that in the Codex II of Nag Hammadi, where we find the Gospel of Philip, we have other texts that have a conception of the cosmos and of the world that is maybe not familiar to a lot of people, to a lot of the listeners. But in these texts, there is a supreme God, okay?—a God of all things that rules over everything.  And this whole, we call this the “fullness,”—the pleroma. Okay, so there is a supreme God. I’m simplifying a lot here, but this is the supreme God.

And then there is another divine entity. There are a lot of other entities, but one of them is a divine entity that is creating the world that we know: our world, here, the earth, humans, plants, animals. And this is the god of Genesis. This is a creating god, but it’s a god who remains inferior to the God of all things, to that supreme God that is above everything.

So going back to Genesis and the creation story, there is this inferior god that created the Garden of Eden with Adam, the tree of life, tree of knowledge. A lot of people know this story, the creation story. And the story is often mentioned in the Gospel of Philip. It’s referred to many times. And in a way, Joseph does the same thing as this creating god of Genesis. He plants a garden, right, in the—the Coptic uses the word paradisos—a paradise. He plants a garden, he plants a tree of life, he plants trees that will cause the death, maybe similarly to the tree of knowledge. And so, Joseph is always in this short passage in the Gospel of Philip that mentioned Joseph. He’s defined by his craftsmanship. He’s a gardener, he’s a carpenter. He is there, his creative power is what defines him. So I’m wondering if these two fathers—Joseph and God—are not in the Gospel of Philip maybe something like the supreme God of all things and then this inferior god. Joseph being the inferior creating god, what some people might hear or call the demiurge, but this creating god that is once again essential to allow Jesus to be reunited with the supreme God of all things through his death on the cross and his resurrection. So in a way both are kind of connected and so rather than seeing Joseph as the earthly father and God as the divine father only for after the resurrection, I think they’re both kind of working in tandem here together.

Shirley

Yeah, that’s really helpful. So then do you feel like that the understanding of these two fathers also helps us understand Jesus by having these two fathers, or is that like a different question?

Nathan

Yeah, I think it can help in two ways, I think. Kind of two sides of the same coin, right? My experience is that sometimes we tend to emphasize Jesus’ divinity. And the divine sonship and the fatherhood, we think of Jesus as just this spiritual divine being and thinking of Jesus as having an earthly father, as having something very concrete, created, maybe grounds Jesus back in his humanity as well. Because the whole story, as we understand it in a Christian context, is that Jesus is both human and divine. And on the other hand, I think if we tend to focus a lot on Jesus’s humanity, on his earthly and concrete actions, then remembering that Jesus also has a spiritual father can kind of help to balance this human side of Jesus with his divine identity as well. So I think that’s one way I see that it could be useful to read this text—to kind of really reflect on these human and divine identities and natures of Jesus and how to balance those. So that could be useful to read this text for that, even if it’s not in line with doctrinal or more formal teachings, maybe in most Christian traditions.

Shirley

This is really fascinating. You just opened up my thoughts a lot about understanding Jesus better and what these rules, these human and divine rules work together with. So could you maybe help us think about your own biggest takeaway from your discovery of this idea of the two fathers of Jesus? I’m curious to know how that works in your life.

Nathan

Yes, that’s a great question because I’m also a practitioner. I’m also an ordained pastor and so I like to put all of this into practice and think about how we can use all these texts in a more practical way. I think, first thing, it always reminds me that the canonical text in the New Testament, or one aspect of the Christian story is that in the ancient Mediterranean world Christianity was so much more diverse and that different early Christian communities would have very different beliefs, different ways of explaining the whole Jesus story. And that’s one aspect here. Like I mentioned earlier, we don’t quite know how the Gospel of Philip came together to be in this form. We don’t know if it was written by one author, or several authors. If someone collected thoughts and sermons and biblical interpretations and put this together, is it a coherent theological text or not? Different scholars have different interpretations.

But I think no matter who put this together, we can read that some of these ideas that we might have never thought about, that we might never have heard of, were circulating. And that they could really be an integral part of the history of Christianity. So that’s really something that is always important for me to remember, to remember the diversity of ⁓ early Christian communities. Another thing I think that continues to call my attention is this meaning of family: The Holy Family—Joseph, Mary and Jesus. We know the Holy Family. I know it from icons, and I have one in the back, an icon with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and it’s the Holy Family. And Joseph was a father that has been interpreted and described in so many different ways and in different texts as we kind of talked about in this podcast.

And yet he remains part of the Holy Family. So it always encourages me to rethink in my own conception of family, of fatherhood, of affiliation, whether it’s biological or not. I always kind of go back to a text by Leonardo Boff as well, a Brazilian liberation theologian who wrote on Joseph and who really wanted to go away from this over-spiritualization of Joseph and think of him as maybe a legal father and more than just an adoptive father, educational father. Maybe a virginal—those kind of different ways that we can think of fatherhood. And I think that that really helps me to reframe what I think about family, affiliation, fatherhood, and continually reassess this question. And because I think in our modern society, we hear different discourses about what family should be like or what family is like. And so I always kind of reassess what makes family for me and who is family for me.

Shirley

That’s beautiful. Well, I had a feeling that you were looking into this whole question because it was larger than just simply arguing over theological issues, that there’s so much more to it. I love the way you are finding a way to live these ideas. It’s just beautiful. Thank you for finding a whole new subject that’s kind of new to think about too. It’s just kind of really thoughtful and bringing us into the larger picture of these texts. Really fun.

Thanks for joining us today, Nathan. It’s been fun to get to know you this way.

Nathan

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure and I encourage everybody to read this text and to keep on reading and thinking and reassessing everything.

Shirley

Great, thank you.