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In the name of God, of one essence and three persons.

The History of the death of our father, the holy old man, Joseph the carpenter.

May his blessings and prayers preserve us all, O brethren!  Amen.

His whole life was one hundred and eleven years, and his departure from this world happened on the twenty-sixth of the month Abib, which answers to the month Ab.  May his prayer preserve us!  Amen.  And, indeed, it was our Lord Jesus Christ Himself who related this history to His holy disciples on the Mount of Olives, and all Joseph’s labour, and the end of his days.  And the holy apostles have preserved this conversation, and have left it written down in the library at Jerusalem.  May their prayers preserve us!  Amen.¹⁷⁰⁷

1707 The Coptic has:  The 26th day of Epep.  This is the departure from the body of our father Joseph the carpenter, the father of Christ after the flesh, who was 111 years old.  Our Saviour narrated all his life to His apostles on Mount Olivet; and His apostles wrote it, and put it in the library which is in Jerusalem.  Also that the day on which the holy old man laid down his body was the 26th of the month Epep.  In the peace of God, amen. His day is the 19th of March in the Roman calendar.

1.  It happened one day, when the Saviour, our Master, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, was sitting along with His disciples, and they were all assembled on the Mount of Olives, that He said to them:  O my brethren and friends, sons of the Father who has chosen you from all men, you know that I have often told you that I must be crucified, and must die for the salvation of Adam and his posterity, and that I shall rise from the dead.  Now I shall commit to you the doctrine of the holy gospel formerly announced to you, that you may declare it throughout the whole world.  And I shall endow you with power from on high, and fill you with the Holy Spirit.¹⁷⁰⁸

1708 Luke xxiv. 49.

1709 Luke xxiv. 37.

1710 Comp. Matt. x. 42.

1711 Comp. Ps. lxxxiv. 10.

1712 Matt. xii. 36.

1713 2 Cor. v. 10.

1714 Jer. ix. 23, 24; 1 Cor. i. 31; 2 Cor. x. 17.

2.  There was a man whose name was Joseph, sprung from a family of Bethlehem, a town of Judah, and the city of King David.  This same man, being well furnished with wisdom and learning, was made a priest in the temple of the Lord.  He was, besides, skilful in his trade, which was that of a carpenter; and after the manner of all men, he married a wife.  Moreover, he begot for himself sons and daughters, four sons, namely, and two daughters.  Now these are their names—Judas, Justus, James, and Simon.  The names of the two daughters were Assia and Lydia.  At length the wife of righteous Joseph, a woman intent on the divine glory in all her works, departed this life.  But Joseph, that righteous man, my father after the flesh, and the spouse of my mother Mary, went away with his sons to his trade, practising the art of a carpenter.

3.  Now when righteous Joseph became a widower, my mother Mary, blessed, holy, and pure, was already twelve years old.  For her parents offered her in the temple when she was three years of age, and she remained in the temple of the Lord nine years.  Then when the priests saw that the virgin, holy and God-fearing, was growing up, they spoke to each other, saying:  Let us search out a man, righteous and pious, to whom Mary may be entrusted until the time of her marriage; lest, if she remain in the temple, it happen to her as is wont to happen to women, and lest on that account we sin, and God be angry with us.

4.  Therefore they immediately sent out, and assembled twelve old men of the tribe of Judah.  And they wrote down the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.  And the lot fell upon the pious old man, righteous Joseph.  Then the priests answered, and said to my blessed mother:  Go with Joseph, and be with him till the time of your marriage.  Righteous Joseph therefore received my mother, and led her away to his own house.  And Mary found James the Less in his father’s house, broken-hearted and sad on account of the loss of his mother, and she brought him up.  Hence Mary was called the mother of James.¹⁷¹⁵

1715 Luke xxiv. 10.

5.  And I chose her of my own will, with the concurrence of my Father, and the counsel of the Holy Spirit.  And I was made flesh of her, by a mystery which transcends the grasp of created reason.  And three months after her conception the righteous man Joseph returned from the place where he worked at his trade; and when he found my virgin mother pregnant, he was greatly perplexed, and thought of sending her away secretly.¹⁷¹⁶

1716 Matt. i. 19.

6.  But at mid-day there appeared to him in a dream the prince of the angels, the holy Gabriel, furnished with a command from my Father; and he said to him:  Joseph, son of David, fear not to take Mary as thy wife:  for she has conceived of the Holy Spirit; and she will bring forth a son, whose name shall be called Jesus.  He it is who shall rule all nations with a rod of iron.¹⁷¹⁷

1717 Ps. ii. 9; Rev. xi. 5, xix. 15.

1718 Matt. i. 20–24.

7.  Some time after that, there came forth an order from Augustus Cæsar the king, that all the habitable world should be enrolled, each man in his own city.  The old man therefore, righteous Joseph, rose up and took the virgin Mary and came to Bethlehem, because the time of her bringing forth was at hand.  Joseph then inscribed his name in the list; for Joseph the son of David, whose spouse Mary was, was of the tribe of Judah.  And indeed Mary, my mother, brought me forth in Bethlehem, in a cave near the tomb of Rachel the wife of the patriarch Jacob, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin.

8.  But Satan went and told this to Herod the Great, the father of Archelaus.  And it was this same Herod¹⁷¹⁹

1719 It was Herod Antipas who ordered John to be beheaded.

1720 John xviii. 36.

1721 The Salome here mentioned was, according to two of the mss. of Pseudo-Matthew, the third husband of Anna, Mary’s mother, and the father of Mary the wife of Zebedee.  But compare Matt. xxvii. 56 with Mark xv. 40.

9.  Now Herod died by the worst form of death, atoning for the shedding of the blood of the children whom he wickedly cut off, though there was no sin in them.  And that impious tyrant Herod being dead, they returned into the land of Israel, and lived in a city of Galilee which is called Nazareth.  And Joseph, going back to his trade of a carpenter, earned his living by the work of his hands; for, as the law of Moses had commanded, he never sought to live for nothing by another’s labour.¹⁷²²

1722 Gen. iii. 19.

10.  At length, by increasing years, the old man arrived at a very advanced age.  He did not, however, labour under any bodily weakness, nor had his sight failed, nor had any tooth perished from his mouth.  In mind also, for the whole time of his life, he never wandered; but like a boy he always in his business displayed youthful vigour, and his limbs remained unimpaired, and free from all pain.  His life, then, in all, amounted to one hundred and eleven years, his old age being prolonged to the utmost limit.

11.  Now Justus and Simeon, the elder sons of Joseph, were married, and had families of their own.  Both the daughters were likewise married, and lived in their own houses.  So there remained in Joseph’s house, Judas and James the Less, and my virgin mother.  I moreover dwelt along with them, not otherwise than if I had been one of his sons.  But I passed all my life without fault.  Mary I called my mother, and Joseph father, and I obeyed them in all that they said; nor did I ever contend against them, but complied with their commands, as other men whom earth produces are wont to do; nor did I at any time arouse their anger, or give any word or answer in opposition to them.  On the contrary, I cherished them with great love, like the pupil of my eye.

12.  It came to pass, after these things, that the death of that old man, the pious Joseph, and his departure from this world, were approaching, as happens to other men who owe their origin to this earth.  And as his body was verging on dissolution, an angel of the Lord informed him that his death was now close at hand.  Therefore fear and great perplexity came upon him.  So he rose up and went to Jerusalem; and going into the temple of the Lord, he poured out his prayers there before the sanctuary, and said:

13.  O God! author of all consolation, God of all compassion, and Lord of the whole human race; God of my soul, body, and spirit; with supplications I reverence thee, O Lord and my God.  If now my days are ended, and the time draws near when I must leave this world, send me, I beseech Thee, the great Michael, the prince of Thy holy angels:  let him remain with me, that my wretched soul may depart from this afflicted body without trouble, without terror and impatience.  For great fear and intense sadness take hold of all bodies on the day of their death, whether it be man or woman, beast wild or tame, or whatever creeps on the ground or flies in the air.  At the last all creatures under heaven in whom is the breath of life are struck with horror, and their souls depart from their bodies with strong fear and great depression.  Now therefore, O Lord and my God, let Thy holy angel be present with his help to my soul and body, until they shall be dissevered from each other.  And let not the face of the angel, appointed my guardian from the day of my birth,¹⁷²³

1723 One the subject of guardian angels, see Shepherd of Hermas, iii. 4; Justin, Apol., ii. 5, Tryph., 5; Athenagoras, Legat., 10, 20; Clem. Alex., Strom., vi. 17.

1724 This clause looks like an interpolation.  But the doctrine of purgatory was held from an early date.  Clem. Alex., Pædag., iii. 9; Strom., vii. 6; Origen against Celsus, v. 14, 15.

14.  It came to pass thereafter, when he returned to his own house in the city of Nazareth, that he was seized by disease, and had to keep his bed.  And it was at this time that he died, according to the destiny of all mankind.  For this disease was very heavy upon him, and he had never been ill, as he now was, from the day of his birth.  And thus assuredly it pleased Christ¹⁷²⁵

1725 Note the change from the first person.

1726 Here the Coptic has:  This is the end of the life of my beloved father Joseph.  When forty years old he married a wife, with whom he lived nine (? forty-nine) years.  After her death he remained a widower one (or two) year:  and my mother lived two years in his house before she was married to him, since he had been ordered by the priests to take charge of her until the time of her marriage.  And my mother Mary brought me forth in the third year that she was in Joseph’s house, in the fifteenth year of her age.  My mother bore me in a cave (this seems a mistranslation for mystery), which it is unlawful either to name or seek, and there is not in the whole creation a man who knows it, except me and my Father and the Holy Spirit.  It is to be noted that the last clause is omitted in the Coptic.  The phrase one essence was first used in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity by Augustine.

15.  The whole age of my father, therefore, that righteous old man, was one hundred and eleven years, my Father in heaven having so decreed.  And the day on which his soul left his body was the twenty-sixth of the month Abib.  For now the fine gold began to lose its splendour, and the silver to be worn down by use—I mean his understanding and his wisdom.  He also loathed food and drink, and lost all his skill in his trade of carpentry, nor did he any more pay attention to it.  It came to pass, then, in the early dawn of the twenty-sixth day of Abib, that Joseph, that righteous old man, lying in his bed, was giving up his unquiet soul.  Wherefore he opened his mouth with many sighs, and struck his hands one against the other, and with a loud voice cried out, and spoke after the following manner:—

16.  Woe to the day on which I was born into the world!  Woe to the womb which bare me!  Woe to the bowels which admitted me!  Woe to the breasts which suckled me!  Woe to the feet upon which I sat and rested!  Woe to the hands which carried me and reared me until I grew up!¹⁷²⁷

1727 Comp. Job. iii.

1728 Comp. Ps. li. 5.

1729 Matt. i. 16.

17.  These are the words spoken by Joseph, that righteous old man.  And I, going in beside him, found his soul exceedingly troubled, for he was placed in great perplexity.  And I said to him:  Hail! my father Joseph, thou righteous man; how is it with thee?  And he answered me:  All hail! my well-beloved son.  Indeed, the agony and fear of death have already environed me; but as soon as I heard Thy voice, my soul was at rest.  O Jesus of Nazareth!  Jesus, my Saviour!  Jesus, the deliverer of my soul!  Jesus, my protector!  Jesus!  O sweetest name in my mouth, and in the mouth of all those that love it!  O eye which seest, and ear which hearest, hear me!  I am Thy servant; this day I most humbly reverence Thee, and before Thy face I pour out my tears.  Thou art altogether my God; Thou art my Lord, as the angel has told me times without number, and especially on that day when my soul was driven about with perverse thoughts about the pure and blessed Mary, who was carrying Thee in her womb, and whom I was thinking of secretly sending away.  And while I was thus meditating, behold, there appeared to me in my rest angels of the Lord, saying to me in a wonderful mystery:  O Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take Mary as thy wife; and do not grieve thy soul, nor speak unbecoming words of her conception, because she is with child of the Holy Spirit, and shall bring forth a son, whose name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.  Do not for this cause wish me evil, O Lord! for I was ignorant of the mystery of Thy birth.  I call to mind also, my Lord, that day when the boy died of the bite of the serpent.  And his relations wished to deliver Thee to Herod, saying that Thou hadst killed him; but Thou didst raise him from the dead, and restore him to them.  Then I went up to Thee, and took hold of Thy hand, saying:  My son, take care of thyself.  But Thou didst say to me in reply:  Art thou not my father after the flesh?  I shall teach thee who I am.¹⁷³⁰

1730 The Sahidic has:  Joseph entreats Jesus to pardon him likewise, because when, once upon a time, He had recalled to life a boy bitten by a cerastes, he (Joseph) had pulled His right ear, advising Him to refrain from works that brought hatred upon Him.  See Second Gospel of Thomas, chap. 5.

1731 Ps. cxvi. 16.

18.  When my father Joseph had thus spoken, he was unable to weep more.  And I saw that death now had dominion over him.  And my mother, virgin undefiled, rose and came to me, saying:  O my beloved son, this pious old man Joseph is now dying.  And I answered:  Oh my dearest mother, assuredly upon all creatures produced in this world the same necessity of death lies; for death holds sway over the whole human race.  Even thou, O my virgin mother, must look for the same end of life as other mortals.  And yet thy death, as also the death of this pious man, is not death, but life enduring to eternity.  Nay more, even I must die, as concerns the body which I have received from thee.  But rise, O my venerable mother, and go in to Joseph, that blessed old man, in order that thou mayst see what will happen as his soul ascends from his body.

19.  My undefiled mother Mary, therefore, went and entered the place where Joseph was.  And I was sitting at his feet looking at him, for the signs of death already appeared in his countenance.  And that blessed old man raised his head, and kept his eyes fixed on my face; but he had no power of speaking to me, on account of the agonies of death, which held him in their grasp.  But he kept fetching many sighs.  And I held his hands for a whole hour; and he turned his face to me, and made signs for me not to leave him.  Thereafter I put my hand upon his breast, and perceived his soul now near his throat, preparing to depart from its receptacle.

20.  And when my virgin mother saw me touching his body, she also touched his feet.  And finding them already dead and destitute of heat, she said to me:  O my beloved son, assuredly his feet are already beginning to stiffen, and they are as cold as snow.  Accordingly she summoned his sons and daughters, and said to them:  Come, as many as there are of you, and go to your father; for assuredly he is now at the very point of death.  And Assia, his daughter, answered and said:  Woe’s me, O my brothers, this is certainly the same disease that my beloved mother died of.  And she lamented and shed tears; and all Joseph’s other children mourned along with her.  I also, and my mother Mary, wept along with them.¹⁷³²

1732 The argument of the Sahidic is:  He sends for Joseph’s sons and daughters, of whom the oldest was Lysia the purple-seller.  They all wept over their dying father.

21.  And turning my eyes towards the region of the south, I saw Death already approaching, and all Gehenna with him, closely attended by his army and his satellites; and their clothes, their faces, and their mouths poured forth flames.  And when my father Joseph saw them coming straight to him, his eyes dissolved in tears, and at the same time he groaned after a strange manner.  Accordingly, when I saw the vehemence of his sighs, I drove back Death and all the host of servants which accompanied him.  And I called upon my good Father, saying:—

22.  O Father of all mercy, eye which seest, and ear which hearest, hearken to my prayers and supplications in behalf of the old man Joseph; and send Michael, the prince of Thine angels, and Gabriel, the herald of light, and all the light of Thine angels, and let their whole array walk with the soul of my father Joseph, until they shall have conducted it to Thee.  This is the hour in which my father has need of compassion.  And I say unto you, that all the saints, yea, as many men as are born in the world, whether they be just or whether they be perverse, must of necessity taste of death.

23.  Therefore Michael and Gabriel came to the soul of my father Joseph, and took it, and wrapped it in a shining wrapper.  Thus he committed his spirit into the hands of my good Father, and He bestowed upon him peace.  But as yet none of his children knew that he had fallen asleep.  And the angels preserved his soul from the demons of darkness which were in the way, and praised God even until they conducted it into the dwelling-place of the pious.

24.  Now his body was lying prostrate and bloodless; wherefore I reached forth my hand, and put right his eyes and shut his mouth, and said to the virgin Mary:  O my mother, where is the skill which he showed in all the time that he lived in this world?  Lo! it has perished, as if it had never existed.  And when his children heard me speaking with my mother, the pure virgin, they knew that he had already breathed his last, and they shed tears, and lamented.  But I said to them:  Assuredly the death of your father is not death, but life everlasting: for he has been freed from the troubles of this life, and has passed to perpetual and everlasting rest.  When they heard these words, they rent their clothes, and wept.

25.  And, indeed, the inhabitants of Nazareth and of Galilee, having heard of their lamentation, flocked to them, and wept from the third hour even to the ninth.  And at the ninth hour they all went together to Joseph’s bed.  And they lifted his body, after they had anointed it with costly unguents.  But I entreated my Father in the prayer of the celestials—that same prayer which with my own hand I made before I was carried in the womb of the virgin Mary, my mother.  And as soon as I had finished it, and pronounced the amen, a great multitude of angels came up; and I ordered two of them to stretch out their shining garments, and to wrap in them the body of Joseph, the blessed old man.

26.  And I spoke to Joseph, and said:  The smell or corruption of death shall not have dominion over thee, nor shall a worm ever come forth from thy body.  Not a single limb of it shall be broken, nor shall any hair on thy head be changed.  Nothing of thy body shall perish, O my father Joseph, but it will remain entire and uncorrupted even until the banquet of the thousand years.¹⁷³³

1733 Barnabas, 15; Hermas, i. 3; Irenæus, Contra Hær., v. 33; Justin, Tryph., 81; Tertullian, Adv. Marc., iii. 24.  Caius and Dionysius imputed grossness and sensuality to Cerinthus, because he spoke of the wedding feast of the thousand years.

1734 All the fathers placed the purgatorial fires, as the Greek Church does now, at the day of judgment.  Augustine was the first who brought forward the supposition that the purification took place in Hades before the day of judgment.  Haag, Histoire des Dogmes, ii. 323.

27.  Thereafter the chief men of the city came together to the place where the body of the blessed old man Joseph had been laid, bringing with them burial-clothes; and they wished to wrap it up in them after the manner in which the Jews are wont to arrange their dead bodies.  And they perceived that he kept his shroud fast; for it adhered to the body in such a way, that when they wished to take it off, it was found to be like iron—impossible to be moved or loosened.  Nor could they find any ends in that piece of linen, which struck them with the greatest astonishment.  At length they carried him out to a place where there was a cave, and opened the gate, that they might bury his body beside the bodies of his fathers.  Then there came into my mind the day on which he walked with me into Egypt, and that extreme trouble which he endured on my account.  Accordingly, I bewailed his death for a long time; and lying upon his body, I said:—

28.  O Death! who makest all knowledge to vanish away, and raisest so many tears and lamentations, surely it is God my Father Himself who hath granted thee this power.  For men die for the transgression of Adam and his wife Eve, and Death spares not so much as one.  Nevertheless, nothing happens to any one, or is brought upon him, without the command of my Father.  There have certainly been men who have prolonged their life even to nine hundred years; but they died.  Yea, though some of them have lived longer, they have, notwithstanding, succumbed to the same fate; nor has any one of them ever said:  I have not tasted death.  For the Lord never sends the same punishment more than once, since it hath pleased my Father to bring it upon men.  And at the very moment when it, going forth, beholds the command descending to it from heaven, it says:  I will go forth against that man, and will greatly move him.  Then, without delay, it makes an onset on the soul, and obtains the mastery of it, doing with it whatever it will.  For, because Adam did not the will of my Father, but transgressed His commandment, the wrath of my Father was kindled against him, and He doomed him to death; and thus it was that death came into the world.  But if Adam had observed my Father’s precepts, death would never have fallen to his lot.  Think you that I can ask my good Father to send me a chariot of fire,¹⁷³⁵

1735 2 Kings ii. 11.

29.  Having thus spoken, I embraced the body of my father Joseph, and wept over it; and they opened the door of the tomb, and placed his body in it, near the body of his father Jacob.  And at the time when he fell asleep he had fulfilled a hundred and eleven years.  Never did a tooth in his mouth hurt him, nor was his eyesight rendered less sharp, nor his body bent, nor his strength impaired; but he worked at his trade of a carpenter to the very last day of his life; and that was the six-and-twentieth of the month Abib.

30.  And we apostles, when we heard these things from our Saviour, rose up joyfully, and prostrated ourselves in honour of Him, and said:  O our Saviour, show us Thy grace.  Now indeed we have heard the word of life:  nevertheless we wonder, O our Saviour, at the fate of Enoch and Elias, inasmuch as they had not to undergo death.  For truly they dwell in the habitation of the righteous even to the present day, nor have their bodies seen corruption.  Yet that old man Joseph the carpenter was, nevertheless, Thy father after the flesh.  And Thou hast ordered us to go into all the world and preach the holy Gospel; and Thou hast said:  Relate to them the death of my father Joseph, and celebrate to him with annual solemnity a festival and sacred day.  And whosoever shall take anything away from this narrative, or add anything to it, commits sin.¹⁷³⁶

1736 Rev. xxii. 18, 19.

31.  And our Saviour answered and said:  Indeed, the prophecy of my Father upon Adam, for his disobedience, has now been fulfilled.  And all things are arranged according to the will and pleasure of my Father.  For if a man rejects the commandment of God, and follows the works of the devil by committing sin, his life is prolonged; for he is preserved in order that he may perhaps repent, and reflect that he must be delivered into the hands of death.  But if any one has been zealous of good works, his life also is prolonged, that, as the fame of his old age increases, upright men may imitate him.  But when you see a man whose mind is prone to anger, assuredly his days are shortened; for it is these that are taken away in the flower of their age.  Every prophecy, therefore, which my Father has pronounced concerning the sons of men, must be fulfilled in every particular.  But with reference to Enoch and Elias, and how they remain alive to this day, keeping the same bodies with which they were born; and as to what concerns my father Joseph, who has not been allowed as well as they to remain in the body:  indeed, though a man live in the world many myriads of years, nevertheless at some time or other he is compelled to exchange life for death.  And I say to you, O my brethren, that they also, Enoch and Elias,¹⁷³⁷

1737 Comp. Rev. xi. 3–12.

32.  And we said:  O our Lord, our God and Saviour, who are those four whom Thou hast said Antichrist will cut off from the reproach they bring upon him?  The Lord answered:  They are Enoch, Elias, Schila, and Tabitha.¹⁷³⁸

1738 Acts ix. 36.  Schila is probably meant for the widow of Nain’s son.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH