smokester

Over the Christmas holidays I began to look at the two Christmas stories and saw that there seems to be two different genealogies in the Matthew account and the Luke account---I know I must be slow.

Matthew 1:1-17 gives a genealogy of Jesus starting with Abraham and ending with Jesus 41(?) generations later. From David to Jesus there are 27 generations. David is followed by Solomon and others until Jesus' name is reached.

In the Luke account 3:23-38 the genealogy starts with Jesus and works backward in time to God. When I compared the names following David I get Nathan instead of Solomon and what appears to be a whole different list of names from the Matthew account. The Luke account gives 42 generations following David instead of the 27 generations found in the Matthew account.

Quite frankly, I am amazed I haven't heard of this discrepency before. Am I simply mistaken---am I missing something---or is this a concern to the faithful or the skeptical.

I apologise if this topic is simplistic or much discussed previously---obviously I have not paid much attention to this topic.

judge

Hi

Matthew gives Marys side of the family, and Luke gives Josephs side.

See this article.

Use of 0rbg in Classical and Contemporary Aramaic Thought

Asha'man

Nope, this is a blatant contradiction. Not only that, but there are more hidden treasures buried within these two genealogies. Jesus can't be a Davidic descendant via Joseph, since Joseph wasn't his father by blood. There are more contradictions with older genealogies in Chronicles, as well as the presence of 'cursed' lines that can never inherit David's kingdom.

For me, these conflicts bring up a simple point: someone was willing to fabricate a genealogy in order to prove Davidic ancestry, but their scholarship wasn't very good. But the mere fact that fabrications were used is a horrendous hit against everything else the Bible ever says.

judge's explanation is the common one, but it's based on nothing but apologetics and wishful thinking, as well as a generally rejected claim that the original was in Aramaic rather than Greek.

The reason you've never heard of it before? Preachers hate to admit such things exist, even though they are everywhere in the bible. Once you start to see them, they become impossible to ignore, and the fantasy shatters.

Doug Shaver

Not according to what he wrote.

It fails to demonstrate that the author of Matthew probably meant anything other than what he wrote.

lee_merrill

Well, apparently the Jewish writer Matthew, and his Jewish readers in the first century (not to mention the Jewish people who disagreed with them) didn't seem to think so.

Genealogies were always reckoned through the father (Moses' sons were Levites, though Zipporah was not from Israel), and Jesus considered himself descended from David (Mt. 22:43-45).

Now the two genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are actually the same in various places, especially the early parts, and sometimes the genealogies only "hit the high spots," i.e. only give the names that are considered important. Also, names often had variants, so "Matthan" might be the same person as "Matthat."

So the genealogies might just overlap, with different people highlighted, it is possible, though a tight fit in some places.

But more satisfactorily, there might have been adoption, or some other similar circumstance, and thus two lines recorded by the different gospels, along the lines of what Eusebius says here:

"The second century historian Julius Africanus, a native of Israel, records information given by Christ’s remaining family in his day. According to their family genealogy, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (mentioned in Matthew) married a woman named Estha, who bore him a son named Jacob. After Matthan died, Estha married his close relative Melchi (mentioned in Luke) and bore him a son named Heli. Jacob and Heli were thus half-brothers."

"But Heli died childless, and so Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, who was biologically the son of Jacob but legally the son of Heli" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:6:7).

Regards,
Lee

Diogenes the Cynic

Matthew's "Jewishness" is by no means a given and his audience was gentile. Matthew is clearly tracing a genealogy through Joseph and is probably attempting to make Jesus an heir through adoption. Unfortunately, Jewish laws of succession- especially royal laws of succession- do not allow for adoption. The Jewish Messiah must be of "the seed of David" and that means he has to be a direct biological descendant through the father, period. The mother's bloodline doesn't count and adoption doesn't count. Matthew cocked this up either through thoughtlessness (and Matthew was no genius) or he thought he could just gloss it and count on his auudience not knowing the difference. After all, Matthew was shameless at misrepresenting both Messianic expectations and Jewish scripture throughout his book. Why should cheating on one more little thing make a difference?

Johnny Skeptic

First of all, the complete genealogy of Adam through Joseph, the husband of Mary, is non-verifiable, as are the claims that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin, never sinned, and that his shed blood and death remitted the sins of mankind. Second of all, even a mostly complete genealogy is difficult to come by. Third of all, which parts of the geneaology, if any, do you find to be useful as a means to proselytize non-Christians? Fourth of all, if Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, he didn't have any genealogy and thus couldn't possibly have genetically been a Jew.

SkyDancer_0202

why give Joseph's?

noah

There is no way Jesus can inherit the rights of kinkship through bloodline. The bible tells us so.

1) Mary was not from the House of David. Mary was probably an Aaronite since her cousin, Elizabeth (Luke 1:36) was a daughter of Aaron (Luke 1:5)

2) Mary, a woman, can not pass on rights of kingship. That right is reserved for men and men alone, see Numbers 1:2, 4 and 18.
There is not one genealogy in the Bible that is about a woman nor any instance where a king inherits rights to a throne via his mother.

3) Joseph's line, is cursed (Jer 22:29-30).

4) There is no such thing as adoption in Judaic tradition as it relates to inheriting rights of kingship. Inheritance of kingship must pass physically from father to son:
Psa 132:11-12

5) Joseph's name is mentioned specifically in Luke's genealogy so one can reasonably conclude that it's his lineage(Luke 3:23)

6) Mary's name is nowhere to be found in Luke's genealogy. Lee Merrill's point that women were not considered equal to men as an explanation for her absecnce from Luke's geneaology is not an explanantion for her absence, it is in fact reinforcement for the point that women could not pass on rights of kingsship since women were not regarded as equals in that time.

7) JC was not born under law. Jesus was not born in accordance with the Law. Mary, according to the New Testament, did not conceive by her betrothed, Joseph. Therefore, she committed adultery "under law" (Deutronomy 22:23-24)

hatsoff

Here's the long and short of it:

From a non-Christian perspective, it's an obvious contradiction, the reasons behind it unknown.

From a Christian perspective, it is an anomaly with several possible explanations.

That's all. There's no big truth locked away in the discrepancy.