The Guy

I think brighid nailed it. The standard apologetic is that Joseph's line (In Matt) is the 'legal' one - through the adoptive father. While Mary's line (in Luke) is genetic, thereby showing that Jesus is the Messiah any way you look at it.

svensky

Actaully the three messages are different but all could have been written on the board nailed on the cross.

It was common practice at the time to write a sign like this in a couple of langauages.

They do all say basically the same thing. They would have been written in Latin, the offical langauage of the roman empire, greek the comman language of the roman empire and hebrew.

If you write what john said in latine, what luke said in greek and what mathew said in hebrew the all come out to the same (or roughly the same length). Mark apparently just wrote down what was common to the three.

Have a read of this, it explains it a little better than I have.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1343.asp

Now I expect that i will be accused of cheating in some form or the other, but if you are willing to be honest, this is really good explanation for the slight differences in what was written.

BTW before replying go and read the article it explains it much better than I have.

Jason

ThomasCassidy

Excellent question! And one that has been so foolishly answered for so long that It requires a lot of fixing!

The usual caveat is that Joseph's geneology was needed to sustain Christ's legal claim to the throne, but Mary's to sustain his physical descent from David. Allow me to say BALDERDASH!

If we look at the geneology in Matthew 1 we see in verse 11 that Joseph was descended from Jechoniah. But if we look back to Jeremiah 22 we see in verse 8 that God has condemned the entire line (because of their treason at the time of the captivity) by saying, in verse 30 "Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah."

The descendents of Jechoniah (called Coniah, a diminutive of Jechoniah, in verse 8) were cursed and that curse included no descendent of that line ever being allowed to sit on the throne. As Christ was known to be a descendent of David (a requirement of the Messiah), and qualified to sit on the throne, He could not have been descended from Joseph, either physically or legally!

This is, rather, an indication of a break in the line of Jechoniah, through Joseph, breaking the cycle of sin and condemnation. When we look at Mary's geneology we see she is descended from David through his son Nathan, while Joseph was descended from David through Solomon. It was the line though Solomon which ended with Jechoniah and the curse. This is used to show direct descent through His mother, Mary, but that He was not related to Joseph in any way, thus breaking the curse of Jechoniah, as well as breaking the Adamic curse on all mankind.

Echo

Well you see, it was a really big, big sign that said "This is Jesus the king of the jews, the king of the jews, Jesus of Nazareth the king of the jews, this is the king of the jews"

(Sung to the tune of " Here we go 'round the Mulberry Bush")

nerv111

Originally posted by ThomasCassidy:

I’ve got a better explanation; if God can impregnate a virgin, raise a guy from the dead, etc. I’m certain that he could give a homosexual couple a son… therefore both Heli and Jacob are the fathers of Joseph.

GunnerJ

Hey! I can do that!

Mageth

He could not have been descended from Joseph, either physically or legally!

If I'm not mistaken, if the Jews of the time really thought this, then Jesus would not have been considered a True Jew (TM) or allowed in the Temple. I believe there's a verse somewhere in the law that specifically says children conceived from adultery ("bastards", if you will) are excluded. Therefore, legally Jesus had to be considered Joseph's son to be a Jew.

Also, I don't think throne rights could come from the maternal side. Like I said, Israel was patriarchal, and Judaism, tribe, royalty etc. are passed from father to children (specifically male children); plus a married woman, I believe, "became" of the tribe, etc. of the husband. So if Mary was married to Joseph, her children would legally be of his lineage, not hers. And like I said above, any children she bore from an adulterous relationship, once it became public knowledge, could not have obtained Jesus's status as a Jew and Rabbi, and would not have access to the temple.

pug846

Since the apologetics seemed to gloss over SD’s post, I will re-post here.

If you bend over backwards, any two claims can be harmonized with each other. The question here isn’t how can we harmonize two statements, but how reasonable is that interpretation and does the text lend itself to such an interpretation. By many standards employed by Christian Apologetics, every single holy book is inerrant. In fact, I would challenge any one who holds that the Bible is inerrant to use that same methodology they used with the bible to find inconsistencies in the Koran.

If I claim that SingleDad is a homosexual painter and then later claim he is a straight-lawyer, I would be contradicting myself. However, you could twist the statement and somehow make it true, but then you’ve destroyed the English language and made it utterly worthless. No two statements could be contradictory unless someone was using symbolic logic and flat out claimed A and ~A to be true. You could read into everything and apply background information, that you have no way of confirming whether or not it is true, to the situation.

/end incoherent rant

[ November 06, 2001: Message edited by: pug846 ]

ThomasCassidy

Exactly! The Jews constantly made veiled references to His supposed bastardy. We see examples of that in Matthew 3, Luke 3, and John 8. They constantly told Him they had Abraham as their father, with the unspoken idea of "who is your father?"

ex-preacher

Please tell me, Brother Cassidy, do you completely miss the point of this contradiction, or are you intentionally clouding the issue?

Obviously there were many Zechariahs in the Bible. The problem comes in the fact that Jesus misidentifies one for the other. Re-read (or read) 2 Chronicles 24:20-21. Here we are told that Zechariah, son of Jehoiada the priest is killed in the courtyard of the temple.

Now turn with me if you will to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 23 and verse 35. Jesus says sweetly to the Pharisees, "And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar."

At this point you are no doubt asking yourself, "Who the hell was Zechariah, son of Berekiah?" Wonder no more, dear friends, for we find this Zechariah in the book of Zechariah - turn to Zechariah 1:1 (pause while pages turn): In the eighth month of the second year of King Darius, the word of the Lord cam to the prophet Zechariah, son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo." He was not murdered.

And so we see that Jesus got just a little bit confused. But that's okay, friends, because we all know that nobody's perfect! (do I hear an Amen?)

BTW, notice that Jesus pronounces punishment on his listeners for the sins of their fathers, a clear and direct violation of Deut. 24:16 "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."