Episode 3 – Joseph and His King – “Prosperity and It’s Price”

In this episode, Mike Aquilina and Kris McGregor discuss in more detail the life and influence of Herod the Great. Then the conversation turns to St. Joseph.  We learn more about his family background.   Who was his father? What was it like to be a carpenter in those days?  How old was St. Joseph at the time of his marriage to the Blessed Virgin Mary?  What was the influence of the Essene community?

An excerpt from St. Joseph and His World:

An increasing number of scholars believe that the family of Jesus had contact with the Essenes. St. John the Baptist spent time in the desert and shared the movement’s emphases on asceticism and the coming age of the messiah. Mary and Joseph, too, approached their marriage in ways that seem to conform to Essene asceticism. Mary’s responses to the angel during the Annunciation make sense only if she had intended to observe lifelong virginity. Reviewing the evidence, the archeologist Bargil Pixner concluded that Joseph’s family “had strong ties with the Essene movement.”22 John Bergsma, in his book Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, arrived at a similar conclusion.23

Aqualina, Mike. St. Joseph and His World (p. 34). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.

For more episodes in this series visit – St. Joseph and His World with Mike Aquilina page

You can find the book on which this series is based here

Mike Aquilina is a popular author working in the area of Church history, especially patristics, the study of the early Church Fathers.^[1] He is the executive vice-president and trustee of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, a Roman Catholic research center based in Steubenville, Ohio. He is a contributing editor of Angelus (magazine) and general editor of the Reclaiming Catholic History Series from Ave Maria Press. He is the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Fathers of the Church (2006); The Mass of the Early Christians (2007); Living the Mysteries (2003); and What Catholics Believe(1999). He has hosted eleven television series on the Eternal Word Television Network and is a frequent guest commentator on Catholic radio.

Mike Aquilina’s website is found at fathersofthechurch.com

Other Mike Aquilina series’ found on Discerning Hearts:

Roots the Faith

The Resilient Church

Villains of the Early Church

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