Tag Archives: Joseph

On December 2, 1804, in a ceremony of great pomp and splendour at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Pope Pius VII was there. He had come from Rome to offer his blessing and to place the crown on the head of the new emperor but Napoleon did not do what was expected of him. Instead of kneeling, he took the crown from the Pope’s hands and put it on himself. He also placed a crown on the head of his wife, Josephine. Only twelve years had passed since the French had risen in revolt against their king. Now, by popular vote, they had placed Napoleon on the throne and approved a new constitution giving him almost unlimited power. People in other lands wondered if the French were turning their back on the revolution, but the French did not think so. They looked upon Napoleon as the man who had made laws and treaties to protect most of the benefits which they had won during the revolution. Yet the French had changed. They no longer spoke of liberty. They were willing to give up some of their freedom in order to enjoy other things that now seemed just as important and men who had once been great champions of liberty could do little about it. Among them was Lafayette, who had returned to France after several years in Austrian prisons. Not wishing to support a government under which freedom did not exist, he refused to accept any public office and lived the life of a gentleman farmer. Most Frenchmen simply felt that a practical form of government was more important than liberty. They had discovered some frightening things about liberty during the Revolution — too much of it could …

ALL THAT is known about Jesus of Nazareth appears in the first four books of the New Testament. These books, written many years after his death, are called the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There are differences of detail in each and the events of his life are not always reported in only one or two of the books, others in all of them. The gospels of Matthew and Luke, for example, begin with the birth of Jesus to a virgin named Mary. The gospels of Mark and John begin with events that took place some thirty years later. In general, the life story of Jesus is the same in all four gospels. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, probably about 6 B.C. Almost nothing is said of his childhood, except that he lived in a village called Nazareth in the province of Galilee with his mother Mary and her husband Joseph. Joseph was a carpenter. As a boy, Jesus probably served as his helper and became skilled in making such things as yokes for oxen, bins, chests, beds and kneading troughs. In his home, Jesus spoke the common language of the Jews, which was Aramaic. The synagogue served both as his school and as his place of worship. There he studied the Scriptures and probably learned his prayers in the ancient Hebrew tongue. We are told that during his youth he “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man.” Jesus was thirty years old when John the Baptist began preaching in the valley of the Jordan near the Dead Sea. John was believed to be a prophet. From Galilee and from all the other provinces of Palestine, people came in large numbers to hear him. …