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Originally Posted by zeek
Well sure. We are all entitled to our opinions and I don't expect you to accept mine. It seems reasonable to me to base my opinion on knowledge otherwise I feel like I'm just whistling in the wind. To the best of my knowledge, there is no historical evidence for Joseph whatsoever. So the Biblical account is uncorroborated. I'm not saying that it didn't happen exactly the way it is written. I'm saying there is no way to KNOW one way or the other if it did or not. An allegoric interpretation is essentially agnostic about the issue. It doesn't matter if the actual event occurred or not. What is essential to an allegorical interpretation is the MEANING of the text not it's historical accuracy.
Be that as it may, it does not rule out the possibility that real historical persons live out archetypal patterns to some extent. Archetype refers a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. According to the Gospel of John, Christ is the Logos, the principle of God active in the creation and the continuous structuring of the cosmos and in revealing the divine plan of salvation to man. If the Logos is a divine prototype, godly persons may more or less live out the the prototype of which Christians believe Jesus of Nazareth is the full realization.
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That is also my point as well. Jesus is the prototype. According to the Archetype theory Jesus should come first, not Joseph. So for Joseph's life to be recorded in such detail as a type of the "Archetype" is not part of the theory. That theory, whether they admit it or not, says that the writer of history embellishes, adjusts, and erases to make his character fit the archetype. Joseph preceded Jesus so that no writer could have used Jesus as the archetype in writing that history.