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The most influential one elaborating Joseph's story was a 2nd century text called The Protevangelium of James. Its story runs, in part, like this: the girl Mary, herself the product of a miraculous pregnancy, grows up in the great Jewish Temple receiving food from the hand of an angel. But as she approaches puberty, she can live there no longer, and the High Priest searches for a chaste caretaker to look after her. Under divine guidance, he collects the wooden staffs of all the widowers of Israel and prays over them, awaiting a sign. One by one he returns each rod, unchanged. "But Joseph received the last rod," reads the Protevangelium, "and lo, a dove came forth of the rod and flew upon the head of Joseph." Joseph protests, saying "I am old. But she is a girl. I fear lest I should become a laughingstock." But he eventually gives in.
By making Joseph an old man, the Protevangelium made his impregnating Mary less likely. By assigning him children from a first marriage, it answered the question of who Jesus' siblings were. The Protevangelium portrays Joseph's initial agitation with Mary far more fully than Scripture. It also tells how the dismayed High Priest later puts them both through a trial by ordeal (they must drink a potentially lethal "water of conviction") before he accepts that the pregnant Mary is still a virgin. A bright light obscures Joseph's view of the birth, but the Protevangelium has already assigned him a beautiful epiphany, beginning, "I ... was walking, and I walked not. And I looked up to the air and saw the air in amazement. And I looked up unto the pole of the heaven and saw it standing still, and the fowls of the heaven without motion."
Other accounts edited or added to the story. In one later embellishment, Joseph's staff blooms before the dove flies out: the flowering rod became his standard accessory in Western art--and is why in Mexico hollyhocks are known as varitas (little staffs) de San José. Some tales set Joseph's age at the time of the betrothal at as high as 91. Several portrayed Jesus in his father's workshop, keeping busy by magically correcting Joseph's building errors. Most alarming is The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus strikes dead playmates who annoy him, and other adults beg Joseph to teach his "son" how "to bless and not to curse." He tries to do so, at one point yanking Jesus' ear, only to have Jesus growl something along the lines of "Do not vex me" (manuscripts differ).
Other Apocrypha speculated marvelously on the "flight into Egypt." In one version, dragons along the Nile bend their knee to the baby, and palm trees bow to offer dates. Another features a robber who will turn out to be the "good thief" crucified with Jesus. The flight made Joseph an early favorite of the Egyptian Coptic Church, which mapped a detailed itinerary reaching as far north as Dimyana, near the Mediterranean, and south far past the pyramids down to Deir al-Muharraq. The Coptic History of Joseph the Carpenter provided one of the first descriptions of his death, at age 111, attended by Mary and an 18-year-old Jesus.
The Alienated Cuckold