There must have been a love story, but it doesn’t fit in with the narrative. Joseph and Mary come off as serene and obedient, and not at all passionate. But they were betrothed before they knew they were chosen; and one presumed that Joseph wanted to marry Mary for human reasons, not divine ones. At any rate I’d like him better if that were true; that he loved her and courted her and flirted with her and spoke to her parents and gazed into her eyes and did all of those things that lovers do. Or most of them, anyway; we are assured that they didn’t do at least one of those things.
The story of Jason and Medea, though, fairly drips with passion. According to the way the story is generally told, she is so carried away that she is almost continually presenting him with heartfelt bouquets of bodies and body parts. She does his homework for him, helps him through finals, again with the corpses; he takes her home to meet the folks and keeps her until he finds someone better for his career. She sends him one final bloody valentine, and the bastard had it coming. Of course, a lot of innocent parties are dismembered, immolated and poisoned along the way. But then you can’t make an omelet without spilling some milk.
I guess the love sory of Joseph and Mary is a “good” story; the part we hear is full of moderation and obligations met and reasonable behavior. Everything done decently and in order, as they say. a love story with the love left out. And the story of Jason and Medea is horrible, but a good story; an admonition for those of us who occasionally let our passions run away with us, in a less dramatic way. But I go back to the beginnings of each story. Joseph met Mary; Jason met Medea, and something bound them together, a future was bound to happen. There was no telling what that would be.
