- published: 16 Dec 2015
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Saint Joachim ("he whom YHWH has set up", Hebrew: יְהוֹיָקִים Yəhôyāqîm, Greek Ἰωακείμ Iōākeím) was the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions. The story of Joachim and Anne appears first in the apocryphal Gospel of James. Joachim and Anne are not mentioned in the Bible.
Since the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke do not explicitly name either of Mary's parents, but apparently name two different fathers for Saint Joseph, many scholars from John of Damascus (8th C.), and particularly Protestant scholars, argue that the genealogy in Luke is actually the family tree of Mary, and that Heli is her father. To resolve the problem of Joseph having two fathers - one descended from Solomon, one descended from Nathan, son of David, traditions from the 7th Century specify that Heli was a first cousin of Joachim.
In the Protoevangelium of James, Joachim is described as a rich and pious man of the house of David who regularly gave to the poor and to the temple (synagogue) at Sepphoris. However, as his wife was barren, the high priest rejected Joachim and his sacrifice, as his wife's childlessness was interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure. Joachim consequently withdrew to the desert where he fasted and did penance for forty days. Angels then appeared to both Joachim and Anne to promise them a child. Joachim later returned to Jerusalem and embraced Anne at the city gate. The cycle of legends concerning Joachim and Anne were included in the Golden Legend and remained popular in Christian art until the Council of Trent restricted the depiction of apocryphal events. Traditional depictions (e.g., vestibular statuary) of Joachim show him bearing a shovel.
Joachim Clemens Fest (8 December 1926–11 September 2006) was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance. He was a leading figure in the debate among German historians about the Nazi period.
Fest was born in Berlin, the son of Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic and strongly anti-Nazi schoolteacher who was dismissed from his position when the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1936, when Fest turned ten, his family refused to make him join the Hitler Youth, a step which could have had serious consequences, although membership did not become compulsory until 1939. As it was, Fest was expelled from his school, and then went to a Catholic boarding school in Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden: here he was able to avoid Hitler Youth service until he was 18.
The fact that his father, an "ordinary German," had understood the nature of the Nazi regime, and had resisted it, coloured Fest's view of his fellow Germans for the rest of his life. He never accepted that Germans had not known what Hitler was doing or that they could not have resisted the Nazi regime.