It will not be without interest to recall here, unreliable though they are, the lengthy stories concerning St. Joseph's marriage contained in the apocryphal writings. When forty years of age, Joseph married a woman called Melcha or Escha by some, Salome by others; they lived forty-nine years together and had six children, two daughters and four sons, the youngest of whom was James (the Less, "the Lord's brother"). A year after his wife's death, as the priests announced through Judea that they wished to find in the tribe of Juda a respectable man to espouse Mary, then twelve to fourteen years of age. Joseph, who was at the time ninety years old, went up to Jerusalem among the candidates; a miracle manifested the choice God had made of Joseph, and two years later the Annunciation took place. These dreams, as St. Jerome styles them, from which many a Christian artist has drawn his inspiration (see, for instance, Raphael's "Espousals of the Virgin"), are void of authority; they nevertheless acquired in the course of ages some popularity; in them some ecclesiastical writers sought the answer to the well-known difficulty arising from the mention in the Gospel of "the Lord's brothers"; from them also popular credulity has, contrary to all probability, as well as to the tradition witnessed by old works of art, retained the belief that St. Joseph was an old man at the time of marriage with the Mother of God.

Det står der vel ikke direkte, men det er vel implicit antaget, i og med at der står, at de giftede sig.

Grunden til, at det nævnes, at Josef ikke lå hos Maria, før hun havde født sin søn, er jo netop, at det er bemærkelsesværdigt.

Hvis man insisterer på, at Maria nødvendigvis skulle forblive jomfru, selv om hun var fuldt ud lovformeligt gift og alting, bliver det for mig at se et signal om, at det seksuelle skulle være en uren ting i sig selv og ikke blot udenfor ægteskabet. (NB. Jeg siger ikke, at det er din holdning.)
Mig bekendt er der ikke vidnesbyrd om sådanne platoniske ægteskaber i jødedommen.

Hvor gammel Maria og Josef var kan vi ikke sige med sikkerhed - men Josef har ikke været helt gammel da han avler flere børn, og der i biblen tales om at de havde et seksuelt forhold (som har resulteret i flere helligåndsbesøg måske)