Joseph the Carpenter in Islam [Part 3 A]

Joseph’s Exclusion from Surah 3 and Relation to a Legend

Masud Masihiyyen

After analyzing Surah 19 in the second part of this project and seeing how Joseph the Carpenter was excluded from Jesus’ first birth and infancy narrative in that Meccan chapter of the Islamic scripture, in this part I shall examine Surah 3, where a second narrative of Jesus’ birth and infancy is given, and see if Joseph was similarly excluded from this alternate narrative of the post-migration period. This current analysis will also seek answers to the questions concerning the cause and results of Joseph’s omission from the third chapter of the Qur’an (section A) and will be followed by the detailed study of the confusions centered on Joseph’s identity and a related legend (section B).

The Source of the Birth Narratives in Surah 3

As I discussed at length and demonstrated in my comprehensive article named “Surah Mariam: The Curse of the Apocrypha”, Muhammad essentially made use of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a major apocryphal Gospel of Nativity and Infancy, while devising John’s and Jesus’ birth narratives in Surah 19. The fact that Pseudo-Matthew contained not a single reference to Zechariah and his miraculously born son John – a significant figure and prophet in the New Testament and Christian tradition – caused a lot of trouble for Muhammad, but he overcame this problem by textually distorting the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew for the sake of adapting it to the story relating John’s birth to Zechariah. He did this by simply replacing the account about Mary in the original text with that about John (Yahya in the Qur’an) in his peculiar version in Surah 19. 

This drastic modification, of course, resulted in Mary’s father Joachim’s replacement with John’s father Zechariah. Another related significant consequence of this distortion was the thematic dissociation of Mary’s story from Zechariah’s as well as Mary’s physical separation from her family (Surah 19:16). These consequences had the domino effect on the new and Islamic version of the story, which came into existence through plagiarism and the edition of the original material in Pseudo-Matthew, and most likely motivated Joseph’s exclusion from Jesus’ birth and infancy narrative in Surah 19. 

After his migration to Medina, Muhammad gave the second account of Mary’s pregnancy and Jesus’ birth when he devised Surah 3. This time, however, he made use of another major non-canonical Gospel of Nativity: the Gospel of James. The reason underlying Muhammad’s plagiarism from this different Gospel was not only his awareness of the fame and significance of this particular text, but also his eagerness to make up for the earlier omission of the story of Mary’s parents from Surah 19 due to their replacement with John’s parents. The Gospel of James thus gave Muhammad the chance to narrate Mary’s nativity and infancy and integrate Zechariah into Mary’s particular story. This also explains why Surah 3, unlike Surah 19, focuses on Mary’s birth and infancy and recounts also the events happening prior to the angelic visit and annunciation to Mary. In short, what was left out in Surah 19 was restored in Surah 3 with the help of the Gospel of James. 

The process of Muhammad’s adoption and adaptation of the Gospel of James was not as painful as that of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew since the writer of the former had made explicit references to Zechariah, his wife Elizabeth, and their son John and smoothly incorporated them into both Mary’s and Jesus’ story. Accordingly, in Surah 3 Mary is claimed to have been entrusted to Zechariah after her dedication to the Temple (Surah 3:37). Still, Muhammad’s peculiar version of Mary’s birth and infancy narrative in the third chapter was not free of textual perversion as it contained a major replacement. Although the writer of the Gospel of James agreed with Pseudo-Matthew that Mary’s father’s name was Joachim (compare Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew chapter 1 with the Gospel of James chapter 1), Muhammad stunningly altered this name to Imran when he contended that the woman that gave birth to Jesus’ mother Mary was Imran’s wife (Surah 3:34).¹ 

The reason for the modification of the name Joachim to Imran in the Islamic scripture is obviously dependent on Mary’s earlier identification in Surah 19:28 as Aaron’s sister. The author of Surah 3 naturally decided to be consistent with the information previously given about Jesus’ mother Mary and felt obliged to name Mary’s father Imran rather than Joachim in this later chapter since Mary had already been identified in the pre-migration period as the sister of Aaron, whose father had the name Imran (Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew name Amram in the Bible).²

This awkward and erroneous modification applied to Mary’s father’s name in Surah 3 is strikingly bound to the earlier distortion of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew through Joachim’s replacement with Zechariah in Surah 19. In the original text Joachim was said to be from the tribe of Judah, thus from one of the tribes descending from Jacob. More, a few elements in this story had thematic parallelisms with the Biblical story of Jacob and his son Joseph. When the author of Surah 19 had to replace Joachim with Zechariah, he tied Zechariah to Jacob and his family³ although Zechariah was a priest (a Levite) and therefore specifically descended from Aaron. Consequently, in Surah 19 Mary, rather than Zechariah, was mistakenly tied to Aaron even though she was from the tribe of Judah according to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Finally, she was designated as Aaron’s sister rather than daughter because of a Biblical reference to the Mary of the Old Testament, who was Aaron’s sister indeed (Exodus 15:20). 

The claim in Surah 3:34 that Mary’s father’s name was Imran instead of Joachim and the reason giving birth to this faulty assertion seem to be a natural result of the textual coherence between Surah 19 and Surah 3. Despite his use of a different non-canonical Gospel, the writer of Surah 3 generally kept faithful to some basic teachings previously given in Surah 19. This point enables us to guess that a direct and explicit reference to Joseph the Carpenter would be avoided in this new chapter of the post-migration period too. 

An Explicit Reference to Joseph the Carpenter missing from Surah 3

The Gospel of James, a non-canonical Gospel of Nativity and Infancy dating back to the second century A.D., became the main Christian text Muhammad plagiarized from and abused for the creation of the birth and infancy stories in Surah 3. This Gospel, very much like the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, first gives an account of Mary’s father Joachim and his wife Anna, emphasizing the fact that Anna miraculously conceived Mary despite her sterility and Joachim’s old age. In thanksgiving for her miraculous pregnancy, Anna takes a vow to dedicate her child to the service of the Temple. Consequently, Mary is brought to the Temple in the third year of her birth and stays there until her puberty. Since no female is allowed to stay in the Temple after puberty, the priests convene and ask Zechariah, the high priest,⁴ to pray and find out what should be done concerning Mary. An angel of the Lord responds to Zechariah’s prayer and instructs him to gather together all the widowers from the region of Judea. As in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Joseph the Carpenter first appears in this text as one of the widowers descending from the tribe of Judah and coming to the Temple upon Zechariah’s call:

The author of Surah 3 formed the stories of Mary and Jesus’ birth in this chapter by following the outline in the Gospel of James up to the account of Mary’s delivery.⁶ For example, the story in Surah 3 begins with a reference to Imran and his family in the same way as the Gospel of James first introduces Mary’s father Joachim. In the original narrative Joachim’s racial affiliation with Israel and the parallelism he had with Abraham in terms of fatherhood forced the writer of the Qur’an to put the name Imran into Surah 3:33 and designate him as the father of a significant family.⁷

Unlike in Surah 19, in Surah 3:37 Mary was overtly associated with the Jewish Temple and Zechariah was incorporated into her story because of the writer’s dependence on and faithfulness to the Gospel of James. To remember, one of the reasons that had excluded Joseph the Carpenter from the Islamic version of Mary and Jesus’ story in Surah 19 was the omission of the parts recounting Mary’s parents and her dedication by them to the Temple in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Since the author of Surah 19 could not talk of the Temple, he subsequently could not link either Zechariah or Joseph to the narrative about Mary. The writer of Surah 3, however, could and did talk of Mary’s days in the Temple and brought Mary and Zechariah together when he designated Zechariah as the person taking care of Mary in the Temple (verse 37). This is why we would expect to see in this chapter a similar reference to Joseph the Carpenter. 

Our expectation partly finds fulfillment since the following verse looks like the equivalent of the events narrated in the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of James:

It is rather reasonable to suggest that the casting of lots for the selection of a caretaker for Mary in this verse corresponds to Joseph’s selection by lots as Mary’s guardian in the Gospel of James. Further, the dispute in question reasonably pertains to Joseph’s objection to this decision and his conversation with the high priest in the same non-canonical text. Despite this astonishing connection between the non-canonical Gospel and the Islamic scripture, we are surprised to see that the writer of Surah 3 avoided making an explicit reference to Joseph the Carpenter in verse 44, the equivalent of the narrative in the 9^th chapter in the Gospel of James. This leads us to our next discovery that in the process of plagiarism, the Quranic editor did not only exclude the overt reference to Joseph, but also formulated Surah 3:44 in the obscurest way possible in order to conceal Joseph’s presence and role from the reader.

A quick thematic analysis of Surah 3:44 proves this point. The verse is introduced as a part of some divine secrets supposedly revealed to Muhammad, yet it is still impossible to know by reading this verse the identity of the people that cast lots with arrows in the selection of a guardian for Mary. Likewise, it is impossible to know why such a selection was deemed necessary. Again, it is impossible to know why a dispute arose among those indefinite people and if the problem was ever settled. Finally, it is impossible to know the identity of the person that was appointed Mary’s caretaker. 

The fact that we can find in the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of James answers to all the questions arising from the obscure Qur’an verse (Surah 3:44) demonstrates how the author of Surah 3 struggled to leave Joseph out of the original narrative he adopted. The fruit of his efforts was the formation of an obscure and awkward verse in the supposedly clear book of Allah. Thus, a clear narrative in a non-canonical Gospel of Infancy was turned by the writer of Surah 3 into a part of the “hidden things” because of Joseph’s omission. In short, what was defined as “hidden” in the Qur’an was actually the information related to Joseph the Carpenter and his presence in Mary’s life. 

Surah 3:44 and the Problem of Interpolation

In addition to being internally problematic due to its weird and obscure structure, Surah 3:44 also causes an external problem of interpolation due to its strange place in this chapter. The writer of this Surah located this verse right in between the two angelic messages⁸ to Mary : 

Evidently, Surah 3:44 disrupts the flow of the narrative as the addressee in verses 42-43 and 45 is explicitly Jesus’ mother Mary whilst the addressee in verse 44 is implied to be Muhammad although what is stated in that verse is still about Mary and refers to a past incident in her life. No one would deny that the Islamic scripture is replete with examples of interpolation and similar textual problems, but abrupt transitions in a story from one addressee of the past to Muhammad are rather rare. For instance, Surah 28:44 is similar to Surah 3:44 in terms of its structure:

However, this verse does not disrupt the flow of the long narrative about Moses in Surah 28, but functions to conclude it by making a comparison between Moses and Muhammad (verses 45-46). A similar formulation occurs in the 11^th chapter:

Again, this verse, which is more similar to Surah 3:44, comes after the narrative about Noah and the deluge. Unlike in the third Surah, the speaker here does not address Muhammad right in the middle of the story. Finally, a verse found in Surah 12 is surprisingly closest to Surah 3:44 in both structure and theme:

It may be a pure coincidence that this verse, which is closest in formulation to Surah 3:44, is found attached to the story of another Joseph. More, the idea that a group of people came together to devise a plan with regard to Joseph sounds thematically similar to some people’s casting lots to determine Mary’s caretaker in Surah 3:44. Despite these uncanny similarities, the speaker in Surah 12 does not abruptly drop the narration to address Muhammad as in Surah 3:44. Thus, the structure of and interpolation posed by Surah 3:44 seem unique and give birth to the question why specifically this verse in the narrative about Mary and Jesus was designed this way. The reason for this particular choice most likely stemmed from the Quranic writer’s efforts to omit Joseph the Carpenter from Mary’s story. Joseph’s removal was achieved through interpolation and the narrator’s abrupt appeal to Muhammad. If such an interpolation had not been performed, Joseph’s deliberate exclusion from the original narrative would be obvious and cause more inconvenience. 

It is also noteworthy that Muhammad did not choose to support his prophetic claims and the allegedly divine source of his revelation through verses like Surah 3:44 and Surah 12:102 in any other verse regarding Mary and Jesus. After all, the incident of the selection of a guardian for Mary was by no means more significant than Mary’s miraculous pregnancy or Jesus’ birth. The author of Surah 3 could have easily written: 

In short, it is not possible to accept that the sudden appeal to Muhammad and his abrupt incorporation into Mary’s story in Surah 3:44, thus, right at the point of Joseph’s appearance in the original story, is a pure coincidence. 

The Place of the Angelic Annunciation in Surah 3

A more meticulous analysis of the birth narrative in Surah 3 and its comparison with the things stated in the Gospel of James reveal that the Quranic author applied a drastic modification to the original story by changing the place of the angelic annunciation. According to the Gospel of James, Mary heard the news of Jesus’ birth and conceived Him when she was in Joseph’s house since the two related yet independent incidents of angelic call to Mary⁹ happened after Mary had left the Temple and settled in Joseph’s house (chapter 11). 

According to the narrative in Surah 3, however, Mary was not in Joseph’s house or in a place other than the Temple when she was visited by angels and informed of Jesus’ birth and prophetic ministry. The Quranic author and editor taught that Mary was first addressed by a group of angels while she was still in the Temple (verses 42-43). Then he formulated verse 44 and vaguely referred to the process of a caretaker’s selection for Mary. Since he did not present any information about the aftermath of this selection and did not even imply that this selection resulted in Mary’s departure from the Temple and settlement in another place, the location of the second angelic address to Mary in verse 45 was naturally understood to be the Temple. 

Interestingly, the first angelic address to Mary in the Gospel of James also differs from the first angelic call to Mary in Surah 3 in terms of quantity. To compare and contrast:

Although it is possible to say that Surah 3:42 is the equivalent of the angel’s words to Mary in the Gospel of James, Surah 3:43 seems to have no counterpart in the original version of the story, being extra material peculiar to the Qur’an. It is also worthy of note that the first angelic call to Mary in verses 42-43 looks like two different messages brought together. The first call (O Mary!) is followed by the declaration of Mary’s reception of God’s grace whereas the second call (O Mary!) is followed by an instruction/commandment of obedience and its expression through worship. This call to obedience at this point of the story seems awkward. Why would the angels ask Mary, a pious person staying in the Temple since her infancy and receiving food from heaven (Surah 3:37), to be obedient and express her submission through worship? Besides, the angels appearing to Zechariah and announcing John’s birth did not likewise ask him to “bow down and prostrate himself” in obedience. Why was specifically Mary given this particular instruction?¹⁰

The source of this particular instruction may be Joseph’s exclusion from the original story and his subsequent replacement with Mary by the writer of Surah 3. In the Gospel of James, Zechariah, as the high priest, received an angelic message with regard to the selection of a guardian for Mary while he was praying in the holy of holies. He was instructed to gather all the widowers from Judea and appoint one of them as Mary’s caretaker through the casting of lots (chapter 8). At the end of this process and through a divine sign Joseph the Carpenter was chosen to take Mary out of the Temple and keep her in his house. However, Joseph at first objected to this decision, but changed his mind when Zechariah reminded him of some arrogant and rebellious people’s tragic end in the Bible. Joseph “feared the Lord” and “obeyed” the divine instruction. 

The writer of Surah 3 distorted the account in the Gospel of James by altering the content of the angelic message to Zechariah. He claimed that the angels appearing to Zechariah while he was “praying in the sanctuary” (verse 39) announced John’s birth rather than telling Zechariah what he should do concerning Mary’s stay in the Temple after her puberty. This perversion sufficed to annul Zechariah’s association with Joseph the Carpenter. More, the Temple was implied to be the place of the first angelic address to Mary (verses 42-43). Consequently, the first angelic message to Mary in the Gospel of James was mistakenly conflated in Surah 3 with the narrative of the angelic message to Zechariah as well as with Zechariah’s words to Joseph the Carpenter. Zechariah had asked Joseph to fear the Lord and obey Him. Since the author of Surah 3 removed Joseph from his peculiar version of the story, Zechariah’s instructions to Joseph were ascribed to the angels talking to Mary. Finally, the concepts of “humility” and “obedience” were quite naturally expressed through “prostration” and “bowing down” as the Temple was a place of “worship”. As Zechariah warned Joseph not to be like Dathan, Abiram, and Korah (contrast in the Gospel of James), the angels asked Mary “to bow down with those who bow” (analogy in Surah 3).

Joseph missing from the account of Jesus’ nativity

The writer of Surah 3 referred neither to Joseph the Carpenter nor to the person that had been chosen as Mary’s caretaker (verse 44) in the rest of his peculiar birth and infancy narrative. Actually, he did not even present the account of Jesus’ birth and infancy in this chapter, but made an abrupt leap to Jesus’ prophetic ministry right from the angelic annunciation delivered to Mary (read verses 45 through 52). As Surah 3 does not contain the story of Jesus’ birth and says nothing about the events happening right after Mary’s pregnancy, we do not have a chance to compare it to Surah 19 with regard to Joseph’s deliberate exclusion from the original story. The only thing we can know for sure is that the author of Surah 3 avoided making an explicit reference to Joseph in verse 44 and created a few anomalies due to his aversion. This aversion may be affiliated with the reasons already listed in the second part of this series (*). It is also likely that the Quranic writer was aware of Joseph’s exclusion from the narrative of Jesus’ birth and infancy in Surah 19 and simply wanted to create a text that would not be difficult to reconcile with what was previously taught about Mary and Jesus. An explicit reference to Joseph the Carpenter would make that reconciliation rather difficult and pose a risk to the integrity of the Islamic scripture. 

Surah 3:44 in the Islamic Tafsir and Joseph’s replacement with Zechariah

In most of the traditional Islamic commentaries on Surah 3:44 we can find no mention of Joseph the Carpenter even though it is difficult to deny that this particular verse was derived from the account of Joseph’s appointment as Mary’s guardian in the Gospel of James. It is baffling indeed that the majority of Muslim scholars interpreting Surah 3:44 did their best to depict Zechariah as the only male caretaker in Mary’s life and replaced Joseph with him. The most comprehensive commentary on Surah 3:44 was probably reported by Ibn Kathir:

This commentary perfectly illustrates how Muslim scholars distorted the detailed information they got from the non-canonical Gospels of Infancy and how they adapted it to Muhammad’s innovated assertions concerning Mary’s father. In fact, the Qur’an contains zero information about Imran’s occupation or his affiliation with the Jewish Temple. The root of the claim in this commentary that Mary’s father Imran was an Imam that took care of sacrificial rituals in the Temple is nothing but the perversion of the things stated about Mary’s father Joachim in the Gospel of James. Actually, Joachim was not a priest,¹¹ but a rich man having many flocks. He left his wife Anna and started to live in the desert because he was grieved after a priest had rebuked him while he was getting ready to offer a sacrifice in the Temple. The cause of the rebuke was Joachim’s being a man with no seed in Israel. Joachim later reminded himself of Abraham and his miraculous fatherhood (Isaac was born to Abraham while he was very old and his wife was barren), praying and hoping that God would similarly give him a child through a miracle (chapter 1).¹² As we saw before, this parallelism was adopted by the writer of Surah 3, who inserted the name Imran (supposedly Mary’s father) next to Abraham in the order of the major patriarchs in Surah 3:33. Probably, Muslim scholars tried to further the parallelisms between Abraham and Imran by claiming that Imran was an Imam that was in charge of sacrificial rituals since Abraham was also designated in the Qur’an as an Imam (Surah 2:124). 

The discrepancies between the Islamic commentary and the Gospel of James are not confined to the identity of Mary’s father, for the Islamic report quoted above contradicts the Gospel of James by postulating that Imran was dead when Mary was taken by her mother to the Temple of the Lord. According to the Gospel of James, however, both Joachim and Anna took Mary to the Temple for the ritual of dedication (chapter 7).

The traditional commentary on Surah 3:44 is thus associated particularly with the chapters relating Joachim’s desperation and Mary’s miraculous birth in the Gospel of James rather than with the ninth chapter, where Joseph’s entrance into the scene and Mary’s departure from the Temple are narrated. Strikingly, none of the non-canonical Gospels of Infancy contains anything close to the account present in the Islamic Tafsir. Although Mary’s dedication to the Temple is recounted in these Gospels, nothing is stated about the selection of a caretaker for her by the casting of lots at that time. For instance, we read the following in the Gospel of James:

Even the name of the priest who received Mary into the Temple is not given in this section, but the high priest is explicitly identified as Zechariah in the narrative of Mary’s entrustment to Joseph:

Accordingly, it will not be wrong to conclude that Zechariah was a priest serving in the Temple when little Mary was dedicated to the Temple by her parents. Still, in contrast to the assertion in the Islamic commentary on Surah 3:44, there was no need for the selection of a particular caretaker for Infant Mary since the priests followed a usual and regular procedure. Mary was definitely not the first or only person that stayed in the Temple.¹³  Further, Mary’s dedication to the Temple was not a ceremony or official act of adoption, for both her parents were alive at the time of the incident. This is why the idea in the Islamic Tafsir that the priests in the Temple fell into variance out of jealousy and had to cast lots to decide who would be Mary’s guardian sounds baseless and ridiculous. 

Joseph’s selection by lots as Mary’s caretaker in the Gospel of James, on the other hand, is not implausible since Mary reached her puberty while staying in the Temple and the priests did not really know who would take Mary out of the Temple into his house as his wife. Naturally, they needed divine guidance and therefore asked Zechariah the high priest to pray about this matter. The angel of the Lord appearing to Zechariah explained what should be done to choose a spouse and male caretaker for Mary. Muslim scholars commenting on Surah 3:44 obviously distorted this original narrative to fabricate their baseless story. They readily replaced Joseph the Carpenter with Zechariah¹⁴ when they changed the occasion and time of a male caretaker’s appointment for Mary. The result was the innovated presumption that a male guardian was chosen by lots for Mary at the time of her entrance to the Temple in her infancy rather than at the time of her departure from the Temple after her puberty. 

Apart from this fundamental modification, the Muslim scholars commenting on Surah 3:44 also changed the means by which Mary’s guardian was chosen even though they maintained the idea of a lottery. In order to make a comparison and see the contrasts, it is necessary to quote from the Gospel of James first: 

 Here is the traditional commentary reported by Ibn Kathir:

Some Islamic scholars circulating the legend above marked the Jordan River as the setting of the lottery although in the Gospel of James the process of selection took place in the Temple. This discrepancy might have arisen from the fact that a few elements occurring in the account of Joseph’s selection have similarities with the scene of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River. In both incidents a dove appeared and flew upon a person to distinguish him from others. These thematic connections may have instigated Muslim scholars to teach that the casting of lots occurred in the Jordan River. However, it is also not far from probability that the Islamic commentary above was produced through the combination of the narrative in the Gospel of James with the following biblical account:

The Islamic commentary on Surah 3:44 has amazing similarities with the biblical account of a miracle performed by Elisha the Prophet. In both stories the setting is the Jordan River, something is cast into the river, and the floating helps people “find” something. For the sake of humor, the only element that seems to be missing from the Islamic legend is an axe, but we surprisingly find it in the Gospel of James: Joseph casts away his axe in order to go to the Temple and join the other widowers! 

Two major problems posed by the Islamic commentary on Surah 3:44

The Islamic commentary on Surah 3:44 and the legend drawn from it are incompatible not only with the Gospel of James, but also with the Qur’an due to two reasons. First, the traditional tendency to associate the incident of casting lots with the time of Mary’s dedication does not find support in Surah 3 when the chronological flow of the whole narrative is taken into account. It is not difficult to guess that the fabricated claim concerning Zechariah’s appointment as Mary’s guardian in the period of her infancy was based on the following verse:

Muslim scholars stunningly interpreted Surah 3:44 in the light of the verse above since both verses were related to Mary and employed the idea of her entrustment to a male guardian. However, they had to disregard the fact that Zechariah could not have been meant in verse 44 because the writer of the chapter placed verse 44 after the verse of John’s annunciation to Zechariah and right before the verse of Jesus’ annunciation to Mary, implying that the incident of choosing a guardian for Mary happened long after Mary’s dedication. Otherwise, he would have attached verse 44 to verse 37 or done something to highlight the alleged connection between them. 

The supposition that the author used the technique of flashback in verse 44 and thus abruptly went back in time to Mary’s infancy in the course of his narrative also fails to answer the question why verse 37 contains no information about the “selection of a guardian by lots” or a “dispute” even though it describes Zechariah as Mary’s guardian. It is true that the occurrence of the word “guardian” in verse 37 is rather misleading, but it is also true that Muslim scholars did not have hard evidence to substantiate their theory regarding the connection between verse 37 and verse 44. They could not explain why there was no mention of Zechariah in verse 44, nor could they present a valid reason for the occurrence of a flashback in Mary’s story right in verse 44. They simply replaced Joseph the Carpenter in the original narrative with Zechariah in their traditional story and severed the hidden ties between Mary’s story in Surah 3 and that in the Gospel of James because they were bothered even by an implicit and obscure reference to Joseph in the Qur’an.

Second, the order of the events given the traditional Islamic commentary reported by Ibn Kathir does not match the order of the events given in Surah 3:44. According to the Islamic legend, a disagreement/dispute arose among the priests of the Temple when Zechariah wanted to be Mary’s guardian and the others objected. In order to end the dispute and make a fair decision they decided to choose the person through the casting of their pens in the river. Zechariah, whose pen floated, became Mary’s caretaker. Let’s compare this to the Qur’an verse:

Obviously, this verse refers to two separate incidents that are demonstrated by two when clauses: there was a time “when some indefinite people cast arrows to decide who would be in charge of Mary” and “there was a time when dispute arose among them”. More, the dispute may not have arisen before the casting of lots as the current order of the clauses shows. Ibn Kathir’s report, however, turns the order of these two incidents in Surah 3:44 upside down by asserting that a dispute occurred among the priests and a lottery was conducted to end that disagreement. Accordingly, no dissent followed Zechariah’s selection in sharp contrast to the Quranic implication that the dispute followed someone’s selection as Mary’s guardian.  

Some other traditional commentaries repeat the same inaccurate information. For example, in Ibn Abbas’ commentary we read:

This interpretation disregards the existence and order of the two incidents in Surah 3:44 too. If the dispute in this verse had pertained to each priest’s “argument for his better claim to be Mary's guardian”, it would have preceded the casting of lots. In short, the traditional Islamic commentaries on Surah 3:44 are problematic and misleading since they were born as a result of the scholars’ efforts to dissociate the verse from its original source, the Gospel of James, where Joseph was first selected by lots as Mary’s caretaker and then had a dispute with the priest after his objection to the decision. 

Joseph the Carpenter’s appearance in Ibn Ishaq’s commentary

In spite of the Muslim scholars’ general tendency to interpret Surah 3:44 in the light of Surah 3:37 and thus identify the person who was made Mary’s guardian by the casting of lots as Zechariah, in a particular commentary attributed to Ibn Ishaq we read that a new caretaker was chosen for Mary by lottery when Zechariah got too old:

In Ibn Hısham's Sira we find the following section:

This single account baffles us all the more and arouses curiosity when it introduces a mysterious figure named Jurayj rather than Joseph. Actually, this report seems in agreement with the narrative in the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of James except for the name it ascribes to the person who was chosen by lots to be Mary’s guardian. That male figure is even designated as a carpenter, which enables us to suggest that Joseph was mistakenly called Jurayj or replaced, for some unknown reasons, with another person bearing that name.

This theory based on misnaming or the confusion of identities is strengthened when we discover that the same story is repeated in another Islamic text attributed to Ibn Ishaq again, and this time Mary’s caretaker is rightly named Joseph:

It is not astonishing to see an overt reference to Joseph the Carpenter in the commentary quoted above, for some Muslim scholars knew that Joseph’s selection as Mary’s guardian was meant in Surah 3:44. The connection between this verse and the 9^th chapter in the Gospel of James surfaced in a traditional story attributed to Ibn Ishaq no matter how many Muslim scholars did their best to deny and repress it. However, one of the reasons why this report was not considered reliable was the occurrence of another person named Jurayj in Joseph’s stead in an alternate version of the story. Where did this weird difference in identification stem from? We have seen that in the majority of the commentaries on Surah 3:44 Joseph the Carpenter was strangely replaced with Zechariah. Now we shall look for an answer to the question why Joseph was replaced with Jurayj in a traditional narrative related to the interpretation of Surah 3:44.

Continue with Section B.