Johnnyboy

Hi all, it's me again. ^^

Well I have another Question. It is a fact that most modern scholars view the genealogies of jesus as contratictional, personally, I see no reason why they might be wrong, but it seems to my, that many fundametalists can't handle this and try to disprove the scholars.

So what do you think are the strongest arguments you heared from fundies, that the genealogies are right? And what do you answer? I read some threads here, but I am keen on knowing more about this.

Greetings from Heidelberg.

spin

As you can imagine, it is very hard to have two distinct male lines leading to the same person, ie Joseph, the umm, step-father of Jesus, Mt 1:16 Jacob begat Joseph, Lk 3:23 Joseph of Heli (Lk has no verb for "begat" in his genalogy). There are no good answers. At least one genealogy is wrong.


spin

Juliana

The genealogies of Matthew and Luke have not only been disputed by modern scholars but already by church father Tatianus who testified that they were fictitiously added in order to make Jesus (i.e. the mutated and delocalized Divus Julius) a descendant of David.
You can read more about that in "Jesus was Caesar" the pioneering work on the historical Jesus by Francesco Carotta.

Greetings from southern Germany

Juliana

Diogenes the Cynic

There aren't any "strong" answers but there are some standard boilerplate answers. Usually the tactic is to try to argue that one or the other of the genealogies goes through Mary. I've seen that argued both ways but usually they try to claim that Luke goes through Mary and Matthew through Joseph. There is zero support in the text for either being a genealogy of Mary, though, and it wouldn't matter anyway since the mother's bloodline was irrelevant. An claim to royal succession from David had to go through the father...and only through a biological father. Adoption doesn't count.

Any and all attempts to explain the disparity are completely ad hoc and are rooted in nothing but a preconcived desire for the gospels to be "inerrant." There is no serious scholarship which sees the different genealogies as anything but two contradictory attempts to construct bloodlines for Joseph.

Amaleq13

Is adoption explicitly denied for the Messiah in Hebrew Scripture or even Jewish tradition?

It seems to me that we have to assume that, at the very least, those Christians who accepted either geneaology (or both) did consider adoption to be a legitimate avenue.

Diogenes the Cynic

It's definitely denied in Jewish tradition. I don't know that it's explicitly denied in Hebrew scripture, but I do know that the rules of succession in practice have never allowed for an adopted heir to a throne. In the case of the Messiah, there are also verses which specify that he will be from "the seed of David" or "the fruit of [David's] body" which strongly imply a biolgical lineage. The idea of an adopted heir is something which at least has no support in the HB and which is denied both in Jewish tradition and in Jewish interpretation of scripture.

Diogenes the Cynic

Yes, but those Christians weren't Jewish. Adoption wasn't a problem for a Greco-Roman audience. Several Roman Emperors got their thrones by adoption.

Aspirin99

Chris Weimer has a recent blog post on the genealogy of Matthew.

http://neonostalgia.blogspot.com/200...f-matthew.html

I had posed a question on his blog about the genealogy coming through Mary. It seems to me that the Biblical view of conception was that the male sperm contained everything required to grow a human. It only needed a womb. The concept of a "barren womb" was common in the Bible. Similar to a crop field, a womb might be barran and unable to receive the seed. There was no concept in the Bible of low sperm count being a problem. It was always the woman who was barren. This would be one reason it would be impossible to have female genealogies.

Following this line of reasoning, it would be impossible for the genealogy to come through Mary. However, a slight problem with that approach is that Matthew has 4 women in his genealogy. Chris has some nice theories about the 4 women in his blog. However, I find the fact that Matthew would use women at all in his genealogy puzzling (due to the fact it ignores the male seed, not that the women do not have a purpose). Why would he ever ignore the male seed provider in favor of the birth mother?

Edit: As soon as I posted this, I thougt - I suppose that if the woman was Jewish and the Father was not might be one reason.

Berthold

How, then, can it be that a Jew is defined by having a Jewish mother (not father)? Or is this modern compared to the Bible?

Aspirin99

For me, I see no problem separating maternity with their idea of creating and growing a human. However, admittedly, I've not studied this out. I'm just bouncing ideas.