Who Were Mary & Joseph, part 2

Joseph also went up...to be registered with Mary,

his betrothed wife who was with child.

Luke 2:4-5, NKJV

So, if Matthew and Luke are both reporting the ancestry of Joseph--one legal, one biological--in their respective gospels, who was Mary's family? The gospels don't actually give us their names, but Luke includes some hints as to her ancestry in Chapter 1 of his gospel.

Remember Zacharias and Elizabeth? Luke identified Zacharias as a Levitical priest in the order of Abijah, and called Elizabeth a daughter of Aaron. Elizabeth was of the High Priest's lineage, and her cousin was Mary of Nazareth. This would require that at least one of Mary's parents be from the tribe of Levi.

Very old Christian traditions hold that Mary was the daughter of righteous parents--Joachim and Anna, with Joachim being from the tribe of Judah and likely a near kinsman of the family of Joseph, and Anna being the daughter of Matthan (or Mattathias) the High Priest of Israel. Some of these traditions make Mary an only child, born in her parents' old age and raised in the temple as a dedicated offering to God until she reached puberty, at which time she was betrothed. However, the gospels bear out that Mary had at least two sisters--Mary the wife of Clopas, and Salome the wife of Zebedee. Both women were the mothers of some of Jesus' 12 disciples. According to those same traditions, Matthan the High Priest was the father of three daughters as well--Anna, Zoia, and Mary. Zoia was the mother of Elizabeth, and therefore the grandmother of John the Baptist.

Joachim was said to be descended from the line of King David's son Nathan, his grandfather (called by some Pamphyra or Panthera) being a brother to Joseph's biological grandfather Matthat. And Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrien who figures prominently in the burial of Jesus, was either Mary's brother or her uncle, the brother of Joachim.

So through her father, Mary was a descendant of King David through the noble line of Nathan, and through her mother she was a descendant of the High Priests of Israel. Such intermarriage between royal, noble and priestly lines was practiced often; as in the case of the original High Priest Aaron, who married Elisheba, the daughter of Amminidab and sister of Nahshon, leaders of the tribe of Judah during the wilderness years; and in the case of Jehosheba daughter of King Jehoram of Judah who married the High Priest Jehoiada.