As a skeptic of the entire story, I don’t think Mary ever claimed she was pregnant by God. Maybe she had an affair and everybody knew and Joseph was just a good dude that wanted to raise this kid right.

Joseph is the real hero of this story.

Edit: not only did he stick around. He even taught him the family triad (carpentry). Not well, of course, since Jesus went into philosophy instead.

Joseph is the Samwise Gamgee of the Bible confirmed

From what I was told, people didn't have official babies out of wedlock back then, so the whole thing was basically the church avoiding calling him a bastard.

Also, the virgin birth story is the result of a translation error from the original Greek.

Given Mary's age and what became of the religion, Joe was likely a groomer, but the Lord got to her first.

Also, nobody ever talks about the insane pressure Jesus must have felt to have to follow in his real dad's footsteps. What a disappointment, in the end.

That’s not Holy Spirit she was full off.

Given Mary's age and what became of the religion, Joe was likely a groomer

Wasn’t this pretty much normal at the time? So everybody was a groomer.

This is the first time I’ve seen someone refer to him as Joe and I lol’d. Never would I have imagined reading “Joe was likely a groomer” in a bible context.

I remember having read, a long time ago, that back then they had these rituals once a year where young virgins would spend a night in the temple. With (male) priests of course. If a pregnancy was the result they were generally still considered virgins, and the child somewhat holy I guess.

It makes so much sense to me, but every time I try to look it up I get overwhelmed with a tsunami of content...

Did I imagine this, or was it a bullshit story?

I'd expect the eternal, almighty Lord God Jehovah who impregnated Mary to know better, even if people didn't.

I don't think you have to be very skeptical to conclude that some sneaky unmarried rumpy pumpy is infinitely more likely than being impregnated by magic.

Jesus is not necessarily Joseph's son. If she was pregnant her parents would have wanted to have her married off.

It's been a very common story throughout the ages.

Joe and his stepson Josh (as Joshua is a transliteration of Jesus).

Way back before the Jesus era, back in the time of Solomon, there's some modern scholarship that claims evidence that Asherah was worshipped at the Jerusalem temple as the consort of Yahweh. And this worship would have included sacred temple prostitutes.

I don't know if that's related to what you're talking about or not.

Must've really botched teaching carpentry for philosophy to be something he could live off of back then....

Of course she didn’t. A bunch of fat priests agreed to make that cannon some hundreds of years after the fact because of greed for power and money, you know, the christian values

It most certainly is, thanks!

Of course these are and probably will remain forever speculations that compete with other speculations that are pushed heavily by christian churches, but I was now able to find a few articles that offer better explanations for the nonsense of "immaculate conception":

• Several claim that Mary did indeed work as a temple prostitute (or rather temple virgin) right until she got married to Joseph.
• Both such temples and the idea of virgin conception were nothing new at the time, not to Jews, not to other religions.
• Original bible texts don't even claim virginity for Mary; the word is "almah" which just means young woman.

Such dirty thought was pushed out pretty soon, or transfered to Mary Magdalene. I'm not sure who went full patriarchy & misogyny (not saying Jews weren't that at the time, but I get the impression they looked at such things more openly) first, but I suspect the turncoat Saulus/Paulus once again.

https://taylormarshall.com/2011/12/did-jewish-temple-virgins-exist-and-was.html
https://medium.com/write-a-catalyst/mary-was-a-cult-prostitute-8f4bcdcf5d16
This one's outright fishy: https://www.e-seminary.org/twm/mary/virgin.html