edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi
The Gospels do not give much information about Saint Joseph, limiting themselves to recording his silent and concrete contribution to the beginnings of the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, until he reached the age of twelve. After the discovery of Jesus in the temple of Jerusalem, while he was conversing with the doctors, Joseph is barely mentioned when Jesus is referred to as "the carpenter's son" (Mc 6, 3; Mt 13, 55).
In the first chapter of his Gospel, Saint Matthew enumerates the ancestors of Jesus, starting with his progenitor Adam, descending from David to Jacob.
Saint Luke, however, in the third chapter of his Gospel, traces the ancestors of Jesus backwards, reaching up to Adam: in this list, Joseph appears as "son of Heli".
In Matthew, therefore, Joseph is the son of Jacob, who is the son of Mattan, who is the son of Eli, in Luke Joseph is the son of Eli, who is the son of Mattath, who is the son of Levi.
If we have the patience to read the long list of names proposed by Saint Luke, we realize that they are not two contradictory pieces of information because he makes it descend from David, through his son Natam.
Most interpreters, ancient and modern, believe that the two evangelists agree in reporting Joseph's genealogy. They explain the differences with the law of the levirate, reproduced in the book of Deuteronomy (Dt 25,5). According to it, if a man died without children, his closest relative would have to marry his widow, and the first child born was considered the deceased's son for all intents and purposes and took over the rights and inheritance.
Therefore, if, according to Matthew, Joseph is the son of Jacob and if instead, according to Luke, he is the son of Eli, it means that Jacob and Eli were two brothers on their mother's side. When Jacob died without leaving children, Eli married his widowed sister-in-law and fathered Joseph, who, although Eli's natural son, was considered by law Jacob's son.
This position is endorsed by Saint John Bosco, who states that it is the "common and oldest opinion transmitted to us by Julius Africanus, a writer of the second century AD. C., considered the founder of Christian chronography. He states that the parents of Jesus themselves said that Jacob and Eli were brothers and at Eli's death without children, Jacob had married his widow according to the law of Moses and Joseph was born from this marriage."
No news from the mother, unless we accept those reported by the Apocryphal Gospels, which in any case were never recognized by the Church as inspired by God and therefore unreliable, also because they are full of imaginative news.