Joseph, the Man of Dreams
God has fallen out of containment in religion and into human hearts— God is incarnating. Our whole unconscious is in an uproar from the God who wants to know and to be known….
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends….
We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.
From Collected Works (1953) and Man and His Symbols (1964)
Larry M. Toschi OSJ
In the New Testament, only the Gospel of Matthew explicitly presents dreams as a means of revelation. Matthew relates six instances of divine communications in dreams, five of which are in the infancy narrative, one to the magi and the other four to Joseph. Of these five revelations, two are reported in the same abbreviated form “being warned in a dream” (Mt 2:12,22), while the other three (Mt 1:20-25; 2:13-14,19-21) are described according to an artificial pattern with the following elements:1) an introductory description of the situation;2) with very minor variations, the phrase “Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying;”3) the message of the angel, containing a command with a form of the same Greek verb for “take,” and a reason for the command;4) faith response of obedient execution of the command;5) a Scripture citation containing a form of the same Greek verb for “call” and a title of Jesus.
These three stereotyped formulas and one of the abbreviated forms all center around Joseph and regard, respectively: 1) taking Mary as wife and naming the child “Jesus;” 2) fleeing to Egypt to rescue the child and his mother; 3) returning from Egypt to Israel with the child and his mother; 4) withdrawing to Galilee and establishing residence in Nazareth….
While rare in the New Testament, dreams are rather common in the Old Testament, and a variety of significances accompany them…. In righteous Joseph’s dreams (and not in that of the magi), it is the “angel of the Lord,” who appears to him. This exact phrase is found repeatedly and consistently in the Septuagint as a translation for “the angel of Yahweh,” who is sent with most important messages to Hagar (Gen16:7-12), Abraham (Gen 22:11,15), Moses (Ex 3:2), the people of Israel (Jgs 2:1-4), the barren wife of Manoah (Jgs 13:3-5), Elijah (1 Kgs 19:7; 2 Kgs 1:15), and Joshua the high priest (Zec 3:1-10)….
Of all the Old Testament recipients of dreams mentioned here, probably none is more important than the patriarch Joseph. He not only interprets the dreams of Pharaoh and his court, but first of all is himself the recipient of divine communications in dreams, regarding his role in the history of the chosen people (Gen 37-50). Though Matthew’s infancy narrative also contains other resonances and is by no means a systematic allusion to Genesis, there are many significant parallels between the two Josephs….
Matthew’s portrayal thus communicates the multi-leveled truth that Joseph has a patriarchal role to play in connection with the prophetic mission of Christ. As a privileged recipient of multiple, combined forms of divine communications, and as a perfectly obedient man of faith who collaborates with all that is commanded him, he recapitulates the history of salvation of Israel, which has reached its definitive culmination in the child he names, protects and raises. The man of dreams who took the child and his mother to Egypt and back is the last of the patriarchs, who receives revelations about the promised descendence in the style of the Old Testament shared by no one else in the New Testament or thereafter.
From http://osjusa.org/ (2014)
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