Saint Joseph

Joseph (Hebrew: יוֹסֵף‎, romanized: Yosef; Greek: Ἰωσήφ, romanized: Ioséph) was a 1st-century man of Nazareth who, according to the canonical Gospels, was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus.[2]

The Gospels also name some brothers of Jesus,[3] who may also have been Joseph's sons; the Gospel of James, an apocryphal work of the late 2nd century, theorized these as the sons of Joseph from an earlier marriage. This position is still held in the Orthodox churches, but the Western church holds to Jerome's argument that both Joseph and Mary must have been lifelong virgins and that the "brothers" must have been his cousins. Perspectives on Joseph as a historical figure are distinguished from a theological reading of the Gospel texts