Abstract:
For love, only for love: a gender hermeneutic starting from new masculinities in Matthew 1:18-25 presents Joseph, the husband of Mary, with his man body, constructed amid of androcratic, androcentric, patriarchal, hegemonic and dominant relationships of first century‟s Palestine, but dreaming of new and different relationships. Thus it offers, from the viewpoint of masculinities, a new look at a familiar text. According to the methodology employed, i.e. the popular Bible interpretation, the analysis starts from the body of men with its inquiries about the construction of hegemonic masculinity and different masculinities, namely their aspects of gender and sexuality, and about the manner in which these constructions are signified, and resist against or perpetuate a system that oppresses the human beings and the Earth. Next, the analysis asks for Joseph's body in the text. By borrowing gender categories from feminist theories, especially the deconstruction and reconstruction of the gender imaginary present in the life of the text, Joseph is shown as naming and generating an alternative masculinity, starting from the situation of discrimination and danger lived by Mary, pregnant with Jesus. Out of his silence and his dream, Joseph names Jesus and Mary in their full dignity and thus according to the interpretation frame set by the Matthean community the impoverished people. There is a link between the situation of Mary who is impoverished, and the situation of Joseph himself who is re-interpreting his masculinity. Being a part of traditions of the Infancy Gospel handed down by the Matthean community, this pericope also concerns the ongoing debate of the synoptic question. Finally, it is a text that sets up the new challenge of learning biblical hermeneutic from the viewpoint of masculinities, by constructing relationships of ecumenical and ecological spirituality of another world that is possible!
