rhutchin

Between the commutative and associative laws governing the use of AND in logic (I think), we can read Luke 3 as--

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being as was supposed the son of Joseph, [AND Joseph] was the son of Heli, [AND Heli] was the son of Matthat, ..., [AND Adam] was the son of God.

--with the end result that Heli was the son of Adam and therefore of God by virtue of the chain through Adam.

If Luke's purpose was to say that Jesus was the son of God (a conclusion we might draw from v22) then he needs to remove Joseph from the genealogy as Jesus is NOT the son of Joseph. If Luke is actually providing Joseph's genealogy, then he is basically saying that Jesus was alleged to be the son of Joseph (which He was not) and by virtue of the laws of logic allegedly the son of God (which, by inference, He could not be). However, flowing from v22, it seems reasonable to conclude that Luke is giving the genealogy of Jesus and that Luke wants to exclude Joseph because Joseph is not the father of Jesus and not part of the genealogy of Jesus.

rhutchin

That Mary is not mentioned in the genealogy found in Luke does not mean that the context clearly does not allow for Mary to be of Heli in Luke. You seem to be confused in the argument you are advancing.

If Luke's purpose is to provide the genealogy of Jesus and it is true that Joseph is not the father of Jesus, then the genealogy must go through the father of Mary (meaning that the context does allow for Mary to be of Heli in Luke even though she is not mentioned by name).

Blui

sorry but this does not make sense, that Mary is not mentioned is fact, yet you somehow draw the conclusion that Mary is in fact implied.
Where? where is the implication? your assumption has no merit.

No.

This only would work IF you do not allow that the genealogies could be wrong and therefore any mistake is not a mistake so long as there is some explanation you can concoct to explain it away.

JoeWallack

JW:
That "Luke" is giving Mary's genealogy is a relatively modern Apologetic argument. The early Christian understanding was always that Joseph's genealogy was being given.

Raymond Brown, representative of Mainstream Christian Bible scholarship, writes in his classic The Birth Of The Messiah, Page 89:

"The most simple and best-known is the attempt to treat them both as family records, with Matthew giving us Joseph's record, and Luke giving us Mary's. What influences this suggestion is the centrality of Joseph in Matthew's infancy narrative, as compared with the spotlighting of Mary in Luke's. Even at first glance, however, this solution cannot be taken seriously: a genealogy traced through the mother is not normal in Judaism, and Luke makes it clear that he is tracing Jesus' descent through Joseph. Moreover, Luke's geneaology traces Davidic descent and, despite later Christian speculation, we really do not know that Mary was a Davidid."

Speculating that "Luke" meant it was Mary's genealogy when "Mary" is never mentioned in the genealogy doesn't do "Luke" any favors as it suggests she was an incompetent author. Son, being drunk on holy spirits, fat on the sacrifical lamb, and indulging stupid apologies is no way to go through the supposed life of Jesus.

As usual Brown rewards the honest reader here with one of those stranger than Jesus' life Apologies:

"Seethaler, "Eine kleine," accepts the rather desperate hypothesis that Matthew and Luke give us the genealogies of two different Josephs."



Joseph

BIRTH, n.
The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Vivisector

I find it interesting, given the authoritative tone of your posts, that (a) you admit to no proficiency in Koine Greek (which would have clarified some of the early issues rather quickly) and (b) your blithe dismissal of the difficulties attending Luke's census is suggestive of a certain lack of depth with regard to the topic. That aside, the text is clear, and your argument is with Luke - indeed, it seems you're saying what Luke should have written given your understanding of what he did, in fact, write.

It occurs to me that the only good reason for engaging in this exercise is an a priori conviction that the texts are without error and that you're arguing against the plain reading to support your assumed conclusion.

V.

Dean Anderson

Why?

If Jesus is the "Son of God" by virtue of being the son of someone who is the son of someone who is the son of someone [...] who is the son of Seth who is the son of Adam who is the son of God, then it does not matter who his father is.

Surely Adam is Joseph's distant ancestor just as much as he is Heli's distant ancestor? After all, he's everyone's distant ancestor - that's kind of the point.

So if the author of GLuke is providing the geneaology as a means of demonstrating that Jesus is the indirect son of God, then there is no need to explicitly remove Joseph from it, since Joseph is Adam's descendent just as much as Heli is.

Indeed, using this criterion, I am the son of God.

If, on the other hand, we are to assume that the author of GLuke is pointing out that Jesus is the direct Son of God by virtue of having had no human father, then pointing out that he was only supposedly the son of Joseph is exactly what we would expect. However, in this case, there is no reason to include Heli and co in the list unless they are part of the identification of who Joseph (the alleged father) is. If Jesus is the direct son of God, then an alternate "route" to being the son of God via his maternal grandfather is unnecessary.

In either case, whether the author of GLuke thinks that Jesus is the direct son of God or whether he thinks that he is the son of God by virtue of simply being human and having Adam as an ancestor, there is no reason for him to include both Joseph's name and Mary's geneaology in the same passage.


The whole point of Jesus not being Joseph's son is that his father is no mere human but is God instead.

The point of including the Geneaology from Joseph back through Adam is to say "Look, We're all God's children through Adam, but Jesus is different. He isn't tracing his descendancy from God through Adam like Joseph - his alleged father - is. His descendancy goes directly back to God rather than through a long series of humans. Rather than simply being a son of God (which he would be if Joseph was really his father) he is the Son of God."

I disagree. This is a very unreasonable conclusion to draw.

There is every reason, as I have just mentioned, for giving the long geneaology of Joseph as a contrast to Jesus's direct relationship to God.

What reason is there for the author to include Mary's geneaology (without even mentioning her)? It shows nothing about how Jesus is special - since if you are using the genealogy as proof that Jesus is the (indirect) son of God then it proves that we are all the sons and daughters of God.

Vivisector

Minor clarification, depending on your meaning of "modern" - as per the Catholic Encyclopedia, the idea seems to have been suggested in the late 15th century, gained some traction in the 16th century, but appears not to be a serious contender as an explanation. One would think that, given the RCC's long history of dealing with the issue - which seems to have been around nearly from the beginning - their stance should give pause to anyone who suggests Luke has given Mary's genealogy.

Cheers,

V.

EthnAlln

Man, if that is "apparent" to anyone, they've been eating the wrong brand of mushrooms.

Sorry, you are wrong. Luke doesn't mention Mary in this passage. The Greek phrase "hos enomizeto" (as was thought), doesn't require any parentheses, although it would certainly be OK to put them into an English translation.

In fact, the full Greek starts and ends as "Joseph of Eli of Matthat of Levi of....of Mela of Menna of Mattatha of Natham of David.....of Isaac of Abraham of Thara of Nakhor of Seroukh of Ragau of Falek of Eber of Sala of Kainam of Arfaxad of Sem of Noah of Lamech of Methuselah of Enoch of Iaret of Maleliel of Kainam of Enos of Seth of Adam of God." In every place in the Hebrew Scriptures where these names can be checked, any two adjacent ones are listed as father and son.

Furthermore, the descent from David is very inconsistent with Matthew's version, which says David begat Solomon by "her of Uriah" (tes tou Ouriou), that is, Bathsheba. I suppose one could argue that that was only a way of keeping track of time and that Solomon was not an ancestor of Jesus in the genealogical charts. It would be rather like giving my own genealogy by listing the US Presidents since my earliest ancestors came to the USA.

Well, I half agree. They certainly intended to assert that Joseph was not the father of Jesus. But I certainly don't know that.

I might add that this is one of the least profitable topics for debate I can think of. I would guess that it takes a morbid attachment to scriptural inerrancy to try to reconcile these two genealogies, neither of which is likely to have any basis in truth.

jeremyp

Well strictly speaking, "is the son of" is mathematically a relationship, so we don't want to be talking about commutative and associative but things like transitive, reflexive and symmetric.

a relationship R is transitive if a R b and b R c implies a R c
is reflexive if a R a
and is symmetric if a R b implies b R a

Clearly the relationship "is a son of" is not any of the above, but the relationship "is descended from" is transitive. That and the fact that a is the son of b implies a is descended from b proves that, taking the bible literally, Heli is descended from Adam. Also, whichever grandfather of Jesus Heli was, Jesus is descended from Adam. Unfortunately, as Pervy said, noting that the only people to survive the flood were Noah, his wife and his children, we are all descended from Adam.

That means that the genealogy is pointless unless it is there to serve some other purpose.

EthnAlln

In literal order: AND HE WAS JESUS BEGINNING TO BE OF YEARS THIRTY BEING SON AS WAS THOUGHT JOSEPH OF ELI....OF GOD.

The missing "tou" before Joseph is clearly a misprint. Unless you want to say "Joseph being thought to be the son of Eli...." Actually I rather like that interpretation, and it does translate the Greek. Since Joseph has no definite article to put it in the genitive case, it could well be nominative. (There often is the definite article "ho" to indicate the nominative with proper names, but not always. But I've never known any writer to deliberately omit the genitive article "tou.") But I incline toward the misprint theory nevertheless. More farfetched: "being the son (which Joseph traditionally held) of Eli..."

My guess (based on nothing) is that the "hos enomizeto" is a later interpolation, and that the original text simply had "tou" in place of this phrase. When the belief in the divine origin of Jesus came to be asserted, the earthly genealogy became irrelevant.

And a good thing too. There is not just one Lukan genealogy. Different manuscripts have very different people in some of the places. If, as rhutchin claims, Luke heard this directly from Mary, the people he told it to must have had wax in their ears. Some of the manuscripts say "Aminadab" in verse 33 and others say "Adam", for example. Some say "Admin", others "Aram", and so on and so on.

So, if one claims that this genealogy is necessary, even though Jesus was of divine origin, to prove that he fulfilled the messianic criterion of being descended from David, it is pointless. If we are to believe that on the basis of dogma, fine; let those who wish say they believe it (if they really can). But inserting two different sets of ancestors on which the manuscripts don't agree, and in any case are merely a bunch of names of people mostly never heard of anywhere else anyway, is utterly pointless.


The primary meaning of "nomizo" is "hold as custom or law", but over the course of many centuries, it was used to mean believe or suppose. The middle/passive voice, imperfect tense used here should properly be translated "was supposed." But note the other possible readings I mentioned above. Others with stronger Greek than mine may contradict me, so I stand prepared to retract at a minute's notice.