text: The way that I understand the story of Mary and Joseph goes (and it's been awhile since I've read it) is that she was raised in the church basically and had come of age to be married, which if I remember correctly was 15.  Joseph was an older man, with other children, I don't know if he had other wives, but I know he was married at least once before.\n\nJoseph didn't want to marry Mary, is the jist of it.  There was some sort of religious thing where all the men stuck their sticks into the ground and one of them would suddenly grow flowers.  Joseph's staff was the one that "won" the maiden, and he was pretty much forced into marrying her.\n\nSo anyway, when they married, there was some reason why he couldn't have relations with her, something about how long the ceremony was, like 21 days or something.  He left the city, and didn't return until well AFTER the 21 days was up.  And she was already pregnant.\n\nA lot of what I just told you was taken from the Apocrypha, and like I said, it's been a long time since I've even thought about it.