Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 January 7

= January 7 =

Geography
Geomorphology.Explain the meaning of the word? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.116.221.215 (talk) 14:28, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * See Geomorphology. --Xuxl (talk) 14:40, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Eastern Catholic view of Mary and Joseph's marriage
Do Eastern Catholics hold to the Western view that Mary and Joseph were married, or to the Orthodox view that they were only ever betrothed? Lazar Taxon (talk) 19:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I did not know that the Orthodox believed they were never married. So they just stayed engaged for the rest of Joseph's life?  (Joseph's death is never mentioned in the Bible as far as I recall but he doesn't seem to be around at the time of Jesus's ministry so presumably he died first.)  It's hard from a modern perspective to resist the idea that that would have led to some awkward so-when's-the-big-day questions. --Trovatore (talk) 21:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Jesus had at least one half-sibling. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:24, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, the Bible speaks of James, brother of Jesus, but interpretations differ on the exact meaning of "brother" in that context. For dogmatic reasons, most Christians reject the possibility of a full brother (which might or might not have been a half-brother, depending on wether one believes in the holy spirit story or is more sceptical), but half-brother (via Josef, from another, possibly earlier marriage) or cousin both seem to be compatible with the use of the term in contemporary texts. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:36, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * it's a little hard to reconstruct which aspects of which Christian doctrines you're applying to these possibilities.
 * Typically, Catholics (which I assume include Eastern Catholics, though I can't say I'm 100% sure) accept both the perpetual virginity of Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus. For them, a son of Joseph via an earlier marriage would not be a half-brother to Jesus, at least biologically, because Joseph was not Jesus's father.  I expect this applies to Orthodox as well, though again I'm not super-sure.
 * As a general rule, traditional Protestants accept the virgin birth but reject perpetual virginity; they consider Mary and Joseph to have had a normal marriage (as normal as it can be under the circumstances), and that the named brothers were ordinarily conceived children of Mary and Joseph. Those would be half-brothers, because they had Joseph as their father whereas Jesus did not.
 * More liberal Protestants might also reject the literal virgin birth, and consider the named brothers to be full biological brothers. I suppose they could also countenance that Jesus might have had half-brothers from an earlier marriage of Joseph. --Trovatore (talk) 20:44, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, Christianity is a wide field, and christologies varied a lot in early Christianity. But at least the (revised) Nicene creed, which most modern Churches accept, states a) that Jesus was "begotten, not made", b) "begotten of the father", and c) was "incarnate (made flesh) by the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary". Most people take that to mean the Josef's role was, at best, that of a bystander. So if Jesus had full brothers, Josef would also not been involved. But that goes very much against the exceptional role of Jesus. For Jesus to have half-brothers (mother Mary, father e.g. Josef), "only" Marys perpetual virginity goes out the window. That is unacceptable in Catholic teaching. A half-brother via Josef would not be a brother at all, but taken as one (since Josef was accepted as Jesus' father at the time). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:31, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think we've been largely repeating one another here (except for the suggestion that Jesus could have had a full brother if that one were also a son of God; I never thought of that one) . It didn't quite come through in your first post, or at least I didn't read it that way.  It also sounded a little like you were discounting Protestants who deny perpetual virginity. --Trovatore (talk) 02:28, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The bible in fact names several brothers of Jesus: James, Joses, Simon and Jude, besides several unnamed sisters. Cheers ❖hugarheimur 21:40, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Um… we seem to have gotten side tracked… the question that was asked is about the beliefs of Eastern Catholicism (re marriage/betrothal)… not whether Jesus had siblings. Blueboar (talk) 21:56, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm not asking about the historicity of the question; I'm mainly curious whether this was a dogmatic point that the Greek-rite Ruthenians had to accept under the Union of Brest, or if they were allowed to keep their previous opinion on it. Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:06, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Matthew 1 places Jesus in the House of David through a descent line via Joseph, but not stating a father–son relationship explicitly. The Gospels are the Word of God, also in Orthodox Christianity. If you put this on your resume, you can hardly defend it by saying, “through my mum's squeeze, even though he's not my dad”. There is a similar descent line in Luke 3:23ff, but the text is not easy to interpret. The closest I can come to a literal translation is "Jesus, ... being (as was customarily assumed) the son of Joseph".  --Lambiam 23:58, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, and Matthew 1:16 states, literally, "Joseph, the man of Mary", which is commonly translated as "Joseph, the husband of Mary". However, in some recorded use the term refers to a paramour. --Lambiam 00:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The following sentences of Matthew 1 strengthen this. Joseph is (according to the narrative in Matthew) betrothed to Mary when he finds out she is with child, and plans to leave her silently (Matth. 1:19). But then the angel of the Lord appears unto him in a dream, saying, "fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife" (Matth. 1:20). And Joseph does as the angel of the Lord bade him, and takes unto him his wife (Matth. 1:21). The poor bloke then is deprived of knowing her (in the biblical sense) till she brings forth her firstborn son (Matth. 1:22). The latter passage specifically mentioning Joseph's temporary abstinence reinforces the earlier implication that they were married at the time of the birth of Jesus. --Lambiam 14:36, 8 January 2023 (UTC)


 * OK, but is this official Eastern Catholic doctrine? Blueboar (talk) 15:33, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about Eastern Catholic Churches? If so, wouldn't their views be about the same as conventional Roman Catholics? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:24, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. They do have some differences in doctrine and practice. The question is… is this one of those differences or not? Blueboar (talk) 22:32, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no Eastern Catholic pope who can determine "the" doctrine of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The Bible states that Joseph obeyed the angel of the Lord who told him to take Mary as his wife. If one of these Churches denies the historicity of the Bible, all bets are off. --Lambiam 01:00, 9 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Our article says there are four Eastern Catholic churches, so to answer your question we’d have to find the outlook for each of the Maronite Church, Albanian Greek Catholic Church, Italo-Albanian Catholic Church and Melkite Greek Catholic Church. For the first, The Virgin Mary in the Maronite Church has a section on page 40 that might answer this – not available in my preview, but if also not in anyone else’s here, you could ask at WP:RX if anyone can access the book in a library. You could also look through the writings of Saint Ephrem linked in his article. I didn’t find anything for the Albanian or Melkite churches but others may. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:33, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh wait, I just saw your note above about actually meaning to ask about the Union of Brest. The full 33 articles are available online and they don't mention any Marian doctrine. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:48, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There are 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. You've listed four of them. 142.127.187.55 (talk) 20:00, 11 January 2023 (UTC)


 * See Josephite marriage, as this may give you part of the answer. 142.127.187.55 (talk) 20:00, 11 January 2023 (UTC)