Joseph the Carpenter in Islam [Part 2]

Joseph’s Exclusion from Surah 19 and the cost of this loss

After having a comparative analysis of Joseph the Carpenter’s existence and role in Christianity and Islam (but very little actual material from Islam) in the first part of the article, we can now continue with the analysis and discussion of Joseph’s absence from Jesus’ birth and infancy narrative in Surah 19 and the possible reasons underlying Joseph’s surprising omission from the Quranic version of Pseudo-Matthew’s text. This removal is noteworthy as it constructs one of the major discrepancies between Surah 19 and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the primary Christian source Muhammad abused while designing his peculiar and adapted version of Jesus’ birth and infancy narrative.

Joseph first appears in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew in the section where the miraculous selection of a guard for Mary is narrated. According to this narrative, Joseph was called to the Temple by the high priest as he was a man from the tribe of Judah and a widower at the time. From the point of Joseph’s rod came forth a white dove, which showed that Joseph was chosen by God and appointed Mary’s protector (Chapter 8).

From this section up to the end of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew Joseph is integrated into every narrative related to Mary and Jesus. Although he is not present in the house at the time of the angelic visit and the annunciation of Jesus’ birth (Chapter 9), he gets the same news in his dream that clears all his doubts concerning Mary’s chastity and innocence (Chapters 10 and 11).

When people understand that Mary is pregnant, they accuse and interrogate not only her, but also Joseph in the Temple. Both Joseph and Mary are proven to be innocent when they pass a test of guilt (Chapter 12).

Joseph later takes Mary to Bethlehem on the occasion of a census and there Mary gives birth to Jesus in a cave. Joseph brings two midwives to the cave and witnesses the first miracle Infant Jesus performs right after His birth (Chapter 13).

After this incident, Pseudo-Matthew recounts Joseph, Mary, and Infant Jesus’ various journeys, and all the accounts in the book depict Joseph as Jesus’ foster father. Joseph is said to be alive in the era of Jesus’ childhood and one of the miracles He performs is related to Joseph’s occupation (Chapter 37). Joseph’s last appearance is in the last section of this non-canonical Gospel: he goes to a feast with his children from his first marriage and Jesus thus meets His brothers and sisters mentioned in the canonical Gospels (Chapter 42).

In the Qur’an chronologically the first account of the angelic visit to Mary and of Jesus’ birth occurs in Surah 19, a chapter of the Meccan (pre-migration) period.¹ Muhammad’s peculiar version in Surah 19 starts with the account of the annunciation to Mary (verse 16) and comes to an abrupt end with some groups’ disagreement after Jesus’ miracle of speaking in the cradle (verse 37).² There is surprisingly no place for Joseph the Carpenter in this Quranic form of the story although Joseph was considered one of the main characters of the events occurring first in Mary’s and then in Jesus’ life.

Joseph missing from the narrative of the annunciation to Mary

The narrative of Jesus’ nativity and birth in Surah 19, unlike the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the narrative in Surah 3, does not relate the things happening prior to Mary’s visitation by an angel. Accordingly, the story begins with Mary’s withdrawing from her family, and going to a place in the East. Right before the angelic vision Mary is also said to have drawn a veil between herself and her people. 

Through their obscurity and the lack of background information these statements leave the reader with several questions. It is impossible to understand by reading the Qur’an why Mary withdrew from her family, where she went, why that indefinite place was particularly in the East, and why Mary drew a curtain between herself and her people.

At this point traditional Islamic commentaries come to the aid of Muslims and seemingly provide plausible and valid answers for all these questions. However, these explanations cannot be considered helpful as they are based on the different and contradictory form of Mary’s story in Surah 3. For instance, the contention that the Eastern place in Surah 19 corresponds to an Eastern chamber of the Temple where Mary stayed after her parents’ dedication makes no sense not only because Mary’s story in Surah 19 contains not even a single reference to the Temple and her parents’ dedication, but also because the narrative in Surah 3 does not affiliate the Temple with the East.³

The Islamic comments on Surah 19 were invented by Muslims who were aware of the discrepancies between the two accounts of Mary’s conception and Jesus’ nativity in Surah 19 and 3 and who struggled to kill two birds with one stone: they thought they would be able to clear the obscurities of the statements in Surah 19 and reconcile the story in Surah 3 with the earlier narrative. Surprisingly, some commentaries contain confessions that confirm Muhammad’s plagiarism from his Christian sources. For example, the answer to the particular question why the author of Surah 19 depicted Mary as a person withdrawing to a place in the East can be found in the following report:

Obviously, Muhammad knew that (Eastern) Christians faced the East in worship, but this had nothing to do with the Qur’an verse in view. Ibn Abbas’ formulation is erroneous as it gives the impression that Christians took the East as the direction of worship because of Allah’s statement in Surah 19! Actually, the Eastern Churches have the tradition of facing the East during prayer because of a number of reasons, one of which is related to the rising of a star from the East at the time of Jesus’ birth according to the canonical Gospel of Matthew 2:1.⁴ Clearly, this tradition was partly related to Jesus’ nativity⁵ as Ibn Abbas confessed in the quote above. However, the Qur’an verse mysteriously linked this direction with the account of Jesus’ annunciation and did not teach that the palm tree under which Jesus was supposedly born was in the East.

While drawing from the account of the magi’s visit to Infant Jesus in Matthew 2, Pseudo-Matthew also wrote that the magi came to Jerusalem from the East and thus associated the word “East” with Jesus’ birth. Further, he thematically bound Joseph and Mary’s journey to Egypt to the magi’s arrival from the East (Chapters 16 and 17) in terms of Herod’s awareness of Christ’s birth and his wish to destroy Him. According to Pseudo-Matthew, Joseph and Mary had first time journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem before and for Jesus’ birth.⁶ Since the word East was connected in the Qur’an to Jesus’ annunciation rather than to His birth, the account of Mary’s miraculous provision with dates and water was transformed into the account of Mary’s labor and delivery in Surah 19 although in the original source this event was said to have happened long after Jesus’ nativity and on the third day of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus’ journey to Egypt.

The curious point is that in Pseudo-Matthew we always see Mary having a trip with Joseph before and after Jesus’ nativity. In Surah 19, on the other hand, Mary is seen going to a place twice (first to an Eastern place before the annunciation, second to a distant place after the annunciation) and she is described as a lonely person having no companion or protector.

As for the bizarre portrayal of Mary as a woman drawing a curtain between herself and her people, the mystery cannot be solved without the detection of a few parallelisms between the story in Surah 19 and the account of the annunciation in Pseudo-Matthew. Although traditional Islamic commentaries support the symbolic rendering of the word “curtain” (or veil) by some modern translators of the Qur’an in the sense of Mary’s choosing seclusion from her family and all people, the literal interpretation of this word makes more sense and enables us to recover the hidden connection between Surah 19 and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.

According to the writer of the 19th chapter, Mary was exceedingly afraid when she was visited by an angelic being (Ruh in the original language) that appeared in the form of a perfect man:

These verses were evidently plagiarized from the account of Mary’s visitation by an angel for the annunciation of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew:

In order to understand what the purple thing Mary worked at just at the time of the angel’s apparition pertained to, it is necessary to read the previous chapter of this text:

Now we know that the author of Surah 19 alluded to Mary’s sewing the veil (curtain) of the Temple when he wrote that Mary drew a curtain right before the apparition of an angelic being in human form for the news of Jesus’ nativity. However, this connection of the Qur’an with the original text got lost when the account of Mary’s leaving the Temple with her virgin friends in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was discarded by the person forming Surah 19.

This skipped section in Pseudo-Matthew also marks Joseph’s house as the place of the angelic visit and annunciation, for Mary is said to be sewing the curtain of the Temple in Joseph’s house when visited by an angel. This leads us to the conclusion that the writer of Surah 19 meant Mary’s departure from the Temple and her settlement in Joseph’s house when he wrote that Mary “withdrew from her family to a place in the East”. However, he avoided making an overt reference to this event as Joseph had first appeared in a section ignored and omitted by him.

This was the first, but not the last time the author of the 19th chapter preferred excluding Joseph from the original narratives in Pseudo-Matthew. However, these exclusions resulted in blunders and started a chain of anomalies in the Quranic version of the story as Joseph’s exclusion mostly meant his replacement with Mary through Mary’s representing Joseph in her words and actions.

Finally, the author of Surah 19 presumed that deleting Joseph from the account of the annunciation would not cause much trouble as in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew Joseph was not present when Mary was visited by an angel, received the news of Jesus’ birth, and got pregnant:

The account of Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s pregnancy missing 

According to the story in Surah 19, the messenger (Allah’s Spirit in Arabic!) appearing to Mary in human form told her that he had been sent to give her a son. Mary reacted to this news and asked how it would be possible for her to be pregnant and bear a child:

The second part of Mary’s question is actually one of the greatest blunders of the Qur’an. The writer of this Surah failed to understand that Mary’s question in its present order would look ridiculous and logically fallacious. Since it would be impossible for a virgin (a girl untouched by a man) to be a harlot, Mary would not need to emphasize her chastity or deny being a harlot after reminding the messenger of her virginity. Further, the denial of being a harlot would turn Mary into a paranoid virgin who awkwardly had to stress her innocence to the angel when no one accused her of fornication yet.

Muslim writers who are aware of this problem fabricate baseless pretexts to defend the alleged perfection of the Qur’an against the charge of mistakes. The Islamic website presenting a comparative study of Joseph the Carpenter’s presence in Christianity and Islam deals with the problem posed by Mary’s irrational question in Surah 19:20 by quoting an imam’s interpretation:

Suyuti’s view is quite manipulative as he tries to confine the meaning of the verb “touch” to lawful sexual relation between a couple after their marriage although the verse in the Arabic language does not allow that kind of a distinction. “Being touched by men” is an expression that pertains to any kind of sexual intercourse with no specific differentiation in meaning. It is also a matter of wonder why Mary did not likewise stress her virginity by saying that she had not been raped by anyone as rape would also signify a different (forceful) means of having been touched by men.

What is striking is that this blunder occurs only in Mary’s question in Surah 19. The author of the nativity and infancy narrative in Surah 3 made Mary remind the angels only of her virginity, dropping the second part in Mary’s question in Surah 19:20 (the emphasis on her not being a harlot) and thus not repeating the previous mistake:

We would have liked to ask Imam Suyuti what he thinks of this difference between Surah 19:20 and Surah 3:47. Would he have bound this to a scribal error or claim that Mary forgot to tell the angels that she was not a harlot?⁷ Why did Mary not deem it crucial to distinguish the meaning of the verb touch in Surah 3?

It should also be made clear that this blunder in Surah 19:20 is peculiar to the Qur’an, being absent from Mary’s question in both canonical and non-canonical Gospels. For instance, in Luke’s Gospel Mary asks Gabriel the question how it is possible for her to conceive and bear when she does not know men (1:34). In the apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, Mary asks the same question (Chapter 9). Even in the medieval and so-called Islamic Gospel of Barnabas, Mary does not say that she is not a harlot (Chapter 1). 

Things get more mysterious when we read and see that the account of the angelic visit and annunciation in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew contains no dialogue between the angel and Mary:

This section is followed by the account of Joseph’s return to his house and finding Mary pregnant. Joseph feels desperate and implicitly charges Mary with fornication. Mary’s virgin friends interfere and deny these charges by testifying to Mary’s virginity and innocence:

A careful reader can observe that this dialogue between Joseph and Mary’s virgin friends concerning Mary’s virginity and chastity was removed and forced by the person devising Surah 19 into Mary’s dialogue with the angel visiting her. Amazingly, this is the second time we witness the omission of an important account about Joseph in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew by the writer of Surah 19, the first time being the account of Mary’s settlement with her virgin friends in Joseph’s house just before the annunciation. Apparently, the narrative of Joseph’s return to his house and his reaction to Mary’s pregnancy in the original text was omitted by the author of the Qur’an, who gave Mary the role of her virgin friends in Pseudo-Matthew: emphasizing her virginity and denying the charge of fornication. However, this replacement did not work since Joseph, as the person considering Mary guilty of fornication, was not replaced with anyone. As a result, Mary’s question and objection seemed awkward and logically flawed due to their misplacement.

The account of the annunciation to Joseph missing 

The account of the angelic annunciation to Mary in Surah 19 does not contain the name Jesus as Allah’s Spirit appearing in human form does not predict what name Mary’s miraculously born son is going to have. Accordingly, the name Jesus in the Islamic scripture occurs for the first time in Surah 19:34 and there is no explanation for the choice of this particular name. We are left with the possibility that Mary gave this name to her son for no specific reason.⁸

Besides, the verses relating Jesus’ birth do not include the information that Mary named her son Jesus or was asked by the indefinite voice comforting her under a palm tree to do so. Actually, Surah 19:34, where the name of Mary’s son suddenly appears, is not a part of the nativity and infancy narrative in this chapter, but an interpolation stemming from Muhammad’s aim to denounce Christians for identifying Jesus as the Son of God:

In sharp contrast to the story of Jesus’ nativity in Surah 19, the story related to Jesus’ birth in Surah 3 teaches that the name Jesus was declared to Mary at the time of the annunciation:

Obviously, the writer of this verse thought that the name Jesus had been determined for Mary’s miraculously born son even before Mary’s conception and delivery. He inserted the information regarding the name of Mary’s son into the account of the annunciation because the author of his primary source where he plagiarized the story from had done so:

The person devising Surah 19, on the other hand, dissociated the name of Mary’s son from the angel’s prediction because Pseudo-Matthew, whose text he adopted and abused, had not inserted this information into the angel’s declaration to Mary:

Pseudo-Matthew had a great reason for shaping this account in this way: he knew that in the canonical Gospel of Matthew the task of giving the name Jesus to Mary’s son and the reason for the choice of this name were revealed to Joseph rather than to Mary. Since Pseudo-Matthew claimed that he was Matthew the Evangelist, he did his best to sound credible and authentic by making his Infancy Gospel more similar to the canonical Gospel of Matthew.¹⁰ Naturally, he added the account of the separate angelic annunciation to Joseph into his Gospel right after the account of Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s pregnancy and his doubts concerning Mary’s chastity:

Through the addition of this narrative, Pseudo-Matthew reiterated the information given in the canonical Gospel of Matthew with regard to the name of Mary’s son. The name Jesus and the reason for the choice of this name for Mary’s son were revealed not to Mary, but to Joseph. Unsurprisingly, the author of Surah 19 could not give the name of Mary’s son in association with Mary’s story or Jesus’ birth because he omitted the part quoted above while plagiarizing from Pseudo-Matthew. It was impossible for Muhammad at that time to realize that Joseph’s exclusion from the original story would later result in a major discrepancy between Jesus’ birth narrative in Surah 19 and in Surah 3, but we would expect omniscient Allah, the supposed author of the Qur’an, to foresee the problem and prevent it. 

The account of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem missing

The narrative of Jesus’ birth in Surah 19 has a number of problems and contradicts the information given in both the non-canonical Gospels of Infancy and the canonical Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Although all Christian documents and even the medieval and so-called Islamic Gospel of Barnabas designate Bethlehem, the city of David, as the place of Jesus’ birth (Chapter 3), the narrative in Surah 19 baffles us by claiming that Mary gave birth to Jesus under a palm tree in an indefinite place far away from her house.

At the time of the delivery, an indefinite voice responded to Mary in order to comfort her and Mary was provided with dates and fresh water:

This account looks awkward and erroneous due to two reasons. First, it implies that Mary’s journey took nine months as it says that Mary set out from her house right after her conception and kept walking until she had to sit under a palm tree when she had the pangs of birth. Second, the indefinite voice told Mary to shake the trunk of the palm tree so as to make fresh dates fall to the ground. This instruction is one of the greatest examples of absurdity since it would be unthinkable for a woman in delivery to shake a palm tree! We cannot stop wondering why Allah, who supposedly created a rivulet for Mary, failed to give Mary fresh dates without her efforts.

The whole account of Mary’s provision with dates and fresh water turns out to have been plagiarized by the author of Surah 19 from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, not without drastic modifications though.¹¹ According to Pseudo-Matthew, Infant Jesus performed a miracle to provide dates and fresh water for Joseph and Mary on the third day of their journey to Egypt (Chapter 20). While they were passing through the desert, Mary was fatigued with the heat and wanted to rest under a palm tree. She saw that the tree was full of fresh dates, but she could not reach them due to their height. Infant Jesus, who was more than two years old at that time, intervened and commanded the tree to bend its branches and give its fruit to Mary. He later likewise commanded the same tree to open from its roots a stream of water. Joseph and Mary ate, drank, and were refreshed before continuing their trip.

In the original version of the story this miraculous incident occurred long after Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem in a cave. According to Pseudo-Matthew’s chronology, two years after Jesus’ nativity in Bethlehem on the occasion of a census, some magi came from the East and looked for the new born King of the Jews. This inquiry informed the people and King Herod of Jesus’ birth. Being enraged by the news and out of jealousy, King Herod ordered the massacre of all the infants close to Jesus’ age in Bethlehem. An angel of the Lord warned Joseph in a dream to leave Bethlehem and go to Egypt. The miraculous provision of dates and water happened three days after Joseph’s departure from Bethlehem with Mary and Infant Jesus.

The author of Surah 19 distorted Pseudo-Matthew’s chronology by asserting that Mary sat under a palm tree and was refreshed with dates and water at the time of her delivery. This distortion resulted in Joseph’s exclusion from both the account of Jesus’ nativity and that of Mary’s consolation and refreshment. The Quranic author’s systematic omission of the references to Joseph was also accompanied with his confusion and rough combination of different yet similar narratives related to Joseph in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. For example, he claimed that Mary left her house right after the angelic annunciation and withdrew to a far place most probably because in the original source Joseph was asked by an angel of the Lord in a dream to leave Bethlehem and go to a distant place (Egypt) after the departure of the magi that had come from the East.

Interestingly, this was not the only instance when the writer of Surah 19 replaced Joseph with Mary by excluding the separate and independent angelic revelations to Joseph in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and ascribing them to Mary in his innovated version. This is why it is not surprising to see that Mary’s words expressing her desperation and distress at the time of Jesus’ nativity in Surah 19 originally belonged to Joseph and were uttered at the time of his return to the house and finding Mary pregnant. To compare:

This significant connection also enables us to understand why the author of Surah 19 gave the weird information that Mary’s journey right after the conception lasted nine months and ended when Mary gave birth to Jesus. In the original account Joseph wished he had died with regard to Mary’s pregnancy¹² when he saw her upon his arrival at his home nine months after the angelic annunciation to Mary. In distress Joseph thought of fleeing and sending Mary away, but that very night an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his dream and comforted him by giving him the good news of Jesus’ birth (Chapter 11). Of course, since the writer of Surah 19 dropped Joseph out of the original story, he had to say that it was distressed Mary rather than Joseph who was comforted, and that this consolation was given through the provision of dates and water.

Joseph missing from the account of Mary’s provision with dates and water

The author of Surah 19 automatically excluded Joseph from the account of Mary’s provision with dates and water when he left out Pseudo-Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and perverted the original chronology of the events. Still, there is a mysterious detail in Surah 19 that exhibits the author’s dependence on the text of Pseudo-Matthew and his accidental replacement of Joseph with Mary due to Joseph’s omission. In the Quranic version of the story the indefinite voice comforting Mary first said that Allah placed a rivulet under her and then asked her to shake the trunk of the palm tree. In other words, the provision of fresh water preceded that of dates.

However, according to Pseudo-Matthew, the provision of dates was followed by the creation of fresh water from the roots of the palm tree. Why did the writer of Surah 19 change the order of the things provided then? The answer to this question is found in the original version of the story:

In Pseudo-Matthew’s narrative Infant Jesus performed a miracle to make both Mary and Joseph happy by giving them what they wanted: fruit and water, respectively. The person devising Surah 19 copied this section after Joseph’s exclusion, but mistakenly implied that the lack of water was Mary’s primary concern as a result of replacing Joseph in the original source with Mary in his modified version.

The account of Joseph and Mary’s interrogation in the Temple missing

Jesus’ nativity in Surah 19 is followed by the account of Mary’s return to her folk and her subsequent exposal to charges of fornication because of the baby in her arms.

Obeying the command of the indefinite voice that called out to her at the time of Jesus’ birth (introduced in verse 26), Mary does not speak to respond to her folk’s accusations, but points at her baby. At that moment Jesus amazes Mary’s accusers by miraculously delivering His first speech despite being a baby in the cradle:

This narrative in Surah 19 contains fundamental discrepancies with the original account it was plagiarized from. Although Pseudo-Matthew wrote that Mary was accused by her people of being an unchaste woman because of her pregnancy, according to this original version, Mary faced the charges of an illegitimate affair not after, but before Jesus’ birth. Moreover, not only Mary, but also Joseph was considered guilty and sinful as he had been chosen to watch over the virgin he had taken from the Temple. Upon the news of Mary’s pregnancy, many people convened in the Temple to interrogate first Joseph and then Mary since they held Joseph responsible for Mary’s gestation. Accordingly, both Joseph and Mary were given a test of innocence. They had to drink of some special water and walk around the altar seven times, for this process would miraculously manifest if a person was innocent or sinful through the appearance of a sign in one’s face.¹⁴ Both Joseph and Mary were proven innocent and the accusers’ doubts were cleared. (Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew Chapter 12)

The author of Surah 19 omitted this particular account and had to claim that Mary was questioned and accused by her folk after giving birth to Jesus rather than when she was still pregnant. This modification in the chronology of the incident necessitated the literal interpretation of the metaphorical expression in the Gospel of Infancy. Consequently, the report of Mary’s being with child in the sense of her pregnancy in Pseudo-Matthew was transformed in Surah 19 to Mary’s carrying Baby Jesus in her arms. 

Naturally, for the author of Surah 19 there was no place for Joseph in the particular narrative of Mary’s accusation too as Joseph’s exclusion from every story related to Mary in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew had been crucial  and an indispensable element of his system of perversion.  He also became temporarily clever enough to foresee a problem and apply for its solution a deeper modification to Pseudo-Matthew’s text. The setting of the account of Mary’s accusation in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and the means through which Mary was proven innocent was likewise related to a ritual carried out in the Temple. An abrupt reference to the Temple at this point of the story would look awkward and make no sense since the whole narrative about Mary in Surah 19 had not been associated with the Temple by any means. This is why the writer of this Surah decided to replace the 12^th chapter in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew with a section adopted from another Gospel of Infancy: the Arabic Gospel of the Savior’s Infancy. 

In my article entitled “Unraveling a Knot of the Qur’an” I explained at length why and how Muhammad and/or his scribe ineptly combined the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew with the Arabic Gospel of Infancy. One of the prevalent reasons underlying this combination was that the Quranic author considered the miracle of Baby Jesus’ speech in the cradle (Arabic Gospel Chapter 1) the counterpart of the miracle that saved Mary from the accusations of fornication in Pseudo-Matthew. Since he located the account of Mary’s accusation after that of Jesus’ nativity, he concluded that it would be more fitting to insert into his new version of the story a miraculous incident linked directly to Baby Jesus and His birth. The result of this strategy was the adoption and distortion of the following section:

Obviously, the writer of Surah 19 discarded the reference to Joseph the high priest in the original text, but we cannot know for sure now if this omission stemmed from his confusion of two people having the name Joseph and if Joseph the high priest was excluded as he was considered the same person as Joseph the Carpenter.¹⁵ Yet we can know for sure that what motivated the writer of Surah 19 to borrow the story of Jesus’ miraculous speech in the cradle was that it was one of the rare instances where Joseph was not mentioned along with Mary in the Arabic Gospel of Infancy as both Jesus’ miracle and speech addressed His mother rather than foster father.¹⁶

After inserting the account of Baby Jesus’ speech into the narrative of Mary’s accusation, the author of Surah 19 had to conclude this story by stating the accusers’ reaction to this miracle, which supposedly functioned to prove Mary innocent. However, Jesus’ miraculous speech was said to cause a division among these people:

Although traditional Islamic commentators mostly tended to associate the conflicting parties mentioned in this verse with Christians and thus invented an anachronistic interpretation, these groups were definitely the same people charging Mary with fornication in verses 27 and 28. This confusion was inevitable due to the author’s hasty incorporation of a section belonging to the Arabic Gospel of Infancy and having a totally different context into the narrative of Mary’s accusation borrowed from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Mistakenly presuming that the parties fell into variance about Jesus since this verse came right after Jesus’ speech and was bound to its content, Muslim commentators concluded that the subject of the division was Jesus. However, the discovery of the connections between Surah 19 and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew enables us to understand that Surah 19:37 was adopted from the following section:

It is not a coincidence that the writer of Surah 19 chose to add this specific detail into his version of the story in the form of a vague statement because it did not contain a reference to Joseph, the division being solely about Mary. Although Joseph had been cleared of guilt immediately, people had doubts about Mary’s innocence even after no sign had appeared in her face.

Possible reasons for Joseph’s exclusion from Surah 19

It is possible to suggest that Muhammad excluded Joseph the Carpenter from the story of Jesus’ nativity and infancy despite his heavy plagiarism from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew because 

1. He presumed that Joseph’s existence would cast doubts upon Mary’s virginity.
2. He was challenged by some Jews who denied Jesus’ miraculous birth and claimed that Joseph was Jesus’ biological father.
3. He thought that Joseph’s exclusion from Mary’s story would be an innovation peculiar to the Qur’an and thus help him dismiss the charges of plagiarism from Christianity.
4. He did not need Joseph as he was not concerned with Jesus’ Messianic claims and His genealogy.¹⁷
5. He was more familiar with the doctrines and practices of the Eastern Church. Although Joseph is a significant figure in Eastern tradition, the practice of portraying Joseph as the head of a Holy Family as in the Western tradition has never been endorsed. Besides, in most of the icons Jesus appears only with Mary rather than with Joseph.

Still, it is not unreasonable to link Joseph’s systematic exclusion from Mary’s story in Surah 19 and the problems stemming from this omission to the problems the Quranic author encountered in the process of plagiarism and edition. A simple comparative analysis of Surah 19 with Surah 3 reveals that the cause of the discrepancies between these two stories of Jesus’ nativity was essentially related to Muhammad’s use of two distinct sources. For instance, the writer of Surah 3 mentioned Mary’s parents and narrated Mary’s miraculous nativity, but the first story of Jesus’ nativity and infancy in Surah 19 starts with the narration of the annunciation to Mary, providing no information about either Mary’s parents or her birth. More interestingly, in Surah 3 Zechariah is described as a person that took care of Infant Mary after her dedication to the Temple by her parents. In contrast, the author of Surah 19 did not even imply that Mary lived with Zechariah in the same era and met him.¹⁸ 

As stated above, this major discrepancy was an inevitable result of Muhammad’s plagiarism from two independent non-canonical Gospels of Infancy. The story in Surah 3 naturally starts with a reference to Mary’s father and continues with the narrative of Mary’s birth and infancy since Muhammad drew it from the Gospel of James after his migration to Medina. Jesus’ birth story in Surah 19, on the other hand, was derived from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew prior to the migration. Even though these Gospels are essentially similar and both start with the narrative of Mary’s miraculous birth, one of the major contrasts between them concerns Zechariah and his story. In the Gospel of James, which became Muhammad’s main source for plagiarisms in Medina, there are overt references to Zechariah, his wife, and his miraculously born son John. Further, these references are directly linked to Mary and Jesus’ story through Zechariah’s identification as the priest serving in the Temple during Mary’s childhood. In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, however, there is no information about Zechariah and his family and consequently Zechariah is by no means incorporated into the story of either Mary’s or Jesus’ birth and infancy.¹⁹ 

While hearing and borrowing from Christians the stories about Mary and Jesus in Mecca, Muhammad encountered a major problem. Although Zechariah and John were associated with Jesus in the stories recounted by Christians (most likely via the canonical Gospel of Luke), Muhammad became aware of and was baffled with the fact that Zechariah was missing from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the primary Gospel of Infancy he was going to use in the creation of Surah 19. At this point, he mistakenly presumed that replacing the story of Mary’s birth and infancy in Pseudo-Matthew with that of John’s birth and nativity would solve the problem. Of course, the amazing analogy between John and Mary’s parents with regard to the theme of having a child with the help of a miracle²⁰ contributed to Muhammad’s faulty conclusion²¹. This drastic modification applied to Pseudo-Matthew’s Gospel also prevented Muhammad from establishing a connection between Zechariah and Mary as well as between John and Jesus in Surah 19. Above all, as a result of Muhammad’s distortion of Pseudo-Matthew’s text, Mary’s parents and her miraculous birth to them were skipped in Surah 19, the angelic annunciation of Jesus’ birth marking the beginning of Mary’s story and the time of her first appearance in the Islamic scripture. 

Naturally, every single reference to Mary in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew before the angelic visit and annunciation was discarded in Surah 19, including the story of Mary’s dedication to the Temple, her vow of perpetual virginity, the problem caused by this vow, and the selection of a man that would take her into his house and be her protector. This man was Joseph the Carpenter (Chapter 8). Apparently, Joseph was first introduced into Mary’s story by Pseudo-Matthew before the annunciation of Jesus’ birth and in association with Mary’s days in the Temple. When this particular section was deliberately discarded by Muhammad and skipped over for the design of Surah 19, Joseph’s exclusion automatically became an obligation. Joseph was once omitted and always omitted since his first exclusion had the domino effect on the whole narrative related to Mary and Jesus, turning this exclusion into a system. 

This possibility, which links Joseph’s omission from Surah 19 to the problems Muhammad encountered due to his dependence on the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, makes even more sense when we remember that Joseph was not the only person dropped out of Pseudo-Matthew’s original narratives. Mary’s virgin friends staying with her in Joseph’s house and even priests interrogating Mary with the charges of fornication were left out of the account about Mary in Surah 19 most likely because these people were likewise related to the Temple and Mary’s dedication and thematically associated with the sections skipped by Muhammad.

In this part of the project we have seen that the writer of Surah 19 systematically omitted Joseph the Carpenter from Mary’s story adopted from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and how these exclusions gave birth to absurdities and problems in the Qur’an. In the next part we shall analyze the story of Mary and Jesus’ birth in Surah 3 to answer the question if the strategy of Joseph’s exclusion from Mary’s story in Surah 19 was repeated in this late chapter of the Islamic scripture. We shall also witness a case of mistaken identity concerning Joseph and the birth of a related legend about him in the Islamic tradition.

Continue with Part 3.