In the cataracts of squalor that greeted the news that Roy Moore had an unseemly interest in young teenage girls when he was a 30-something District Attorney, surely the oddest is the defense that Joseph had an eye for teenies, and that led to Jesus — so why be upset with ol’ Roy?
Right out of the gate, we need to admit that the early Christian narratives are the product of so much syncretism and make-believe that there is no realistic hope of ever knowing anything definitive about Jesus and his family. There are even scholars who doubt, for reasons that have to be taken seriously, whether or not the man Jesus ever existed at all.
Separate from the questions about the facts of Jesus’ life is this question: What did the first Christians believe were the facts about Jesus’ life?
The Proto-gospel of James tends to fill in gaps left by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This, for example, is where readers can learn about the parents of Mary — Joachim and Anna — and about the divine intervention that leads to Anna’s conception of Mary.
This gospel also recounts the story of when Mary met Joseph, details absent from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In this telling, Joseph, an elderly widower, is chosen by lottery to take care of Mary, who is 12 years old at the time.
Like the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Proto-gospel of James reports that Mary does not conceive through sexual intercourse. She receives news from the angel Gabriel that she will become pregnant and bear a son, Jesus. But the Proto-gospel of James’s account adds a new wrinkle: Mary forgets about her encounter with the angel. When she realizes that she’s pregnant, she’s overcome with fear and confusion. Joseph is likewise confused by Mary’s pregnancy. He nevertheless remains loyal and protects the 12-year-old girl. He takes her to a cave outside of Bethlehem. Soon there is a blinding flash of light. As it recedes, a child appears.
Twelve? WHOA!!
But the proto-gospel of James first appeared sometime in the 2nd-century — on the order of 100-years after Jesus’ birth and crucifixion and decades after the texts now comprising the canonical gospels. And like the gospels themselves, their authorship is not known. Almost certainly, the text is a fiction written by somebody in response to the curiosity that the devout naturally felt about Jesus. It’s hard to say where the age “12” came from. Jeri Massi argued in a Facebook comment that Mary was probably an older teenager, because girls then began to menstruate at an older age than now; perhaps, then, the age of 12 was chosen to emphasize the miraculous aspect of Jesus’ birth. Or perhaps that is the age when girls were ordinarily betrothed in rural Galilee, whether or not fertile and whenever sexual intercourse began.
There really isn’t any knowing. No matter how many texts are read, no matter how many theologians are consulted — there is no way to know; the gospels are too simply too sketchy and contradictory for any thinking adult to accept. And, recognizing that, the devout ought to keep their hands off other people’s lives and let them go to hell if that’s what they think is their fate.