Visions

In the sermon at our church this past Sunday the topic was Joseph and the announcement to him of Jesus birth by an angelic vision, convincing him to go ahead and take Mary as his wife despite her pregnancy. It is easy for me to relate to the idea that it would take something very dramatic to convince a man to go ahead with a marriage when he finds his betrothed to be pregnant, so the idea of God doing something very convincing is not hard to understand. However, visions seemed to be a thing that God used more often in Biblical times than we see now. We get detailed vision stories with Peter and Paul in Acts, one regarding 'unclean' foods and taking the Gospel to the Gentiles and the other for Paul's conversion. Paul mentions other visions later, being caught up to 'the third heaven'. There are many instances in the Old Testament.



One point in the sermon was that in undeveloped countries, especially where the Bible is banned or most people cannot read, missionaries sometimes meet people who claim to have heard about Jesus in a vision before the missionary arrived and are prepared to accept Christianity when the missionary shows up. This has been heard in a fair number of instances in these kinds of countries but not in developed countries where the Bible is readily available.



Jews were different for their day in that literacy was more common than in many countries because of their being 'people of the book', where the Torah was revered. But, we don't know much about Joseph, and don't really know if he could read. However, even if he could read the materials for writing were very expensive and most ordinary folks would not have any written material in their home. That would be all the more true in a backwater village like Nazareth. If their local synagogue were financially able to have a Torah scroll, it would normally have only one and it was very precious. Even for 'people of the book', having the scripture in the home was prohibitively expensive. Even after Gutenberg made printing more affordable, it wasn't until the industrial revolution with its mechanized papermaking that Bibles in every home could be practical. That would be 17 centuries later than Joseph.



I lose sight of things like that today, with our low cost access to all things written. Visions make a lot more sense to me, however, in the context of a time when very few could read and even those who could would go through life in most cases without ever having a written document in their own home.