spin

PhilosopherJay, I'm sorry I entered into this: I had hoped to elicit something that would clarify your position, but instead you've just shown nothing after numerous posts. All you've got are two genealogies that are much longer than anything comparable, necessarily so because they cover a much longer timeframe. Beyond that, nothing. The genealogies are rather different from each other in form, direction and in content. So by now, I can't expect you to provide any substance to this list-juggling. Best of luck.


spin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

Thanks Spin. Our reasonings are probably incompatible and that's fine.

If you try to construct a list showing a kingly geneology of Jesus from David you will obviously get stuck at the time of exile. This is painfully obvious. I, therefore, now believe that two people would not take it upon themselves this heavy and futile task. It is clear to me that the Luke list is simply a second attempt by the same author to solve the problem. Why did he have to redo it? Why would someone put themselves through all that work a second time for nothing? The answer that occurs to me is that the orginal geneology was compromised. Somebody figured out how Luke had constructed the post-exile end of the Matthew list. Luke had no choice but to go back to the drawing board and try it again a different way, trying to disguise himself better the second time by starting the deviations from David's son.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

ynquirer

Hi PhilosopherJay,

I’ve read your argument and found it interesting but non-compelling so far. Most of the names used by Matthew within the generations from the exile to Jesus are totally unknown in the OT, so how might the genealogy be “compromised,” as you say? On the other hand, the choices of Salomon by Matthew and of Nathan by Luke as alternative branches down from David look like theologically driven, Salomon’s being the outcome of adultery as he was while no record states anything of the like for Nathan. Could you elaborate a little further these details?

Best,

y.

spin

(After all these posts you have me wondering: have you found a dictionary that actually spells the word "genealogy" the way you do? I have no great problem with unique spelling, but you'll need to get this right, if you want to get past musing on the subject.)

To make this claim, you don't seem to know the literature, PhilosopherJay. People were interested in genealogies. Otherwise why do we have genealogies in the gospels, in Josephus, in 2/4 Esdras (which shows a further development on the genealogy seen in Ezra 7)? Why does the Davidic genealogy in 1 Chr 3 extend so far beyond the exile? Face it, people took on long genealogies. You have been trying to build a hedge around the gospel genealogies with the thinnest of reasons. If one person attempted such a "heavy and futile task", it means that there was at least one will to do so. Cultural artefacts are usually reflections of their own times, so one genealogy suggests there may easily be others and in fact we have examples of others, so there is no reason for you to build the hedge.

It may be clear to you, but you've shown no reason for your clarity.

You need to show that he did and you haven't. You just persist in assuming your conclusions. The results of this will impress those who share your conclusions.

Is this an effort at mindreading?

When you ask questions for which the presuppositions are both unfounded and desired, you will probably find answers, though what those answers actually reflect will generally not be reality.

Have you attempted to see how the post-exilic genealogy of the Davidic line in 1 Chr 3 compares to Matt???

Was this knowledge arrived at through a medium or just a ouija board?

This type of explanation is as clear as mud, PhilosopherJay.

You cannot know why a writer wrote something without having evidence either from what he has written or from what others say. I have asked for something to render your musing more concrete and you, in my eyes, have failed to provide anything.

Let me give you the words of the venerable Bede, the christian you've had a few discussions with:

You base your theory on silence and when you find your sources are not so silent after all, you decree yet another interpolation so the sources work again. This is so ad hoc and such poor methodology that I am in awe that I am the only one here really calling you on it. In fact, your method is to declare any passage that you don't like an interpolation and then declare the remaining passages are silent.

Change this discourse from interpolations to false parallels and history repeats itself.

My complaint has always been a methodological one, as Bede's was in the above quote. Your analysis seems to be based on rhetoric rather than content. You have not attempted to deal with my criticisms, although I was willing to consider your proposition if you had something to support it with. I see what appears to be the emperor's new clothes and you say, "beautiful material".


spin

Von Smith

That's nice, but I'm afraid that fifty-six minus forty-one still equals fifteen.

jgibson000

Could you please tell us specifically which Ancient writers you "find" to be "frugal" and who actually display the "tendencies" you claim they do? Who actually is it whom you are talking about?

Are the ones you "found" displaying these tendencies a sufficiently large enough and a chronologically relevant sampling so that the inductive leap you are making is vis vis Matthew and Luke is actually warranted and justified?

Just how broad is your familiarity with Ancient writers and their literaru tendencies? Is it on the same order as your familiarity with what did and did not go on in the Jerusalem Temple in the first century?

Jeffrey Gibson

PhilosopherJay

Hi Von Smith,

Thanks. This is true, 56-41 = 15, but 14 + 14 + 14 = 42 and 56 - 42 = 14.

If the text did not originally consist of 14 + 14 + 14 names, I hardly think that the writer of Matthew would have declared, "from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations."

I believe the writer of Luke took the 14 priestly names from his Matthew list and placed it in his Luke list. He then had to come up with 14 names to put in the post-exile period of the Matthew list. Why only 13 names appear there is a good question. It could be carelessness, most likely, he struck one name from the list for some reason and never got around to replacing it. I regard it as quite possible, but slightly less likely that some later editor struck the 14th name from the list.

I'll try to deal more with this in a later post.

Warmly

Philosopher Jay

Johnny Skeptic

Of course not, but I like to use arguments that gives fundies difficulty, and there are plenty of arguments that give them difficulty. Most people who do not find the Bible to be unconvincing will still find it to be unconvincing with or without considering the issue of genealogies.

There is a difference between ommissions, which Holding and Miller claim, and contradictions. Of course, no rational being would ever inspire the writing of a book like the Bible.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

Thank you for pointing out my spelling mistake. I am quite busy these days and often write late at night, I find my ability to spell decreases with the lateness of the hour. Here is some interesting information about the spelling of "geneaology" and "geneology"


from http://amberskyline.com/treasuremaps/geneology.html:

Geneology? Genealogy? Ask a friend how to spell it and they may just settle for "Family History." And genealogy is even funnier when you see lesser known bargain geneology software. Yes, I've even seen the business world goof it up.

If you've ever stumbled over the word genealogy, it was probably one of these most commonly misspelled ways: genology, geneology, or geneaology.

Don't feel bad if you have. Lots and LOTS of people have and do. And heaven knows I'd be lost without the spell check feature on my computer anyway.

Here's what's so interesting about this geneology/genealogy thing...

There are on-line services that track what key words have been searched on the Internet. This is real data, showing what real people have been searching.

For example, over a two month period, 10,722 searches were done for the key word "genealogy" (by a group of popular search engines--this data is from WordTracker).

Not surprising because genealogy is so popular.

The common misspelled key word "genology" had 302 searches done over that same two month period.

The common misspelled key word "geneaology" had 711 searches done.

Here's the amazing part. The MOST commonly misspelled word, "geneology" was searched for 5988 times! That is over half of the times that the correct spelled word genealogy was.


It is interesting that the spelling g*e*n*e*o*l*o*g*y was used over half as much as the correct spelling g*e*n*e*a*o*l*o*g*y on goggle over a two month period. This suggests to me that based on real-world usage, future dictionaries, if they do not do so already, should include geneology as an alternative spelling to geneaology.

As far as people being interested in geneaologies, I certainly agree they were. Before Homeric heroes go into battle, they generally inquire about their opponent's geneaology. This however does not mean that they automatically gave 40 generation geneaologies at the tip of a hat. Three or four generation geneaologies are quite common (I would guess 90% of Biblical ones are) and geneaologies going back over 10 generations are quite rare (I would guess less than 10% of them). Ones going back over 20 generations are rarer still (I would guess 1% of them. Matthew and Luke's geneaologies are at the extreme end of the scale. As I think I've pointed out already, we have numerous and different types of geneaologies. A scientific study begins by gathering together similar specimens and considering their similarities and differences and looking for patterns. I consider this an objective and important similarity and I have not cooked it up in any way. It is not like I took the 3rd letter in every 3rd name excluding the second, fifth and ninth lines and came up with a secret message. Their extraordinary length vis-a-vis other Biblical geneaologies is a simple, extraordinary and objective feature. Other features that I've mentioned such as the practically exclusive use of one-term connectors which have a mirror-image quality is also simple, extraordinary and objective. My interest is simply figuring out what most likely caused these features. I have no particular interest in arriving at any particular conclusion, I only seek the most logical and probable one.

As far as your repeated statements that I am not clear. I apologize, given the complex nature of the field we are working in, it is often quite difficult to be clear and I do strive for it. On the other hand, I know that it takes time for people to see certain structures and patterns when they are not use to seeing them. As Picasso said to Gertrude Stein when she said that his portrait of her did not resemble her, "Wait twenty years, it will."

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

jgibson000

But it doesn't say it was used that many times. It says it was searched for -- presumably to see how to correctly spell the word genealogy -- that many times.

What real word usage?

In any case you suggestion about what dictionaries should do means that you think that they should no longer make or see a distinction between talk about "genes" and talk about "generations" (GENEA). But this to me seems absurd since is not the other and people's confusion over words is a bad guideline for what editors of dictionaries should do.

Generally? We have the example in Iliad book 6 of Diomedes doing this when he meets Glaucus. But do we actually find any other, let alone (as you imply)most Homeric/Illiadic heroes doing this as well? Could you please point me to the places in the Iliad where other examples of such inquiries are to be found?

And in any case, the point of the Homeric inquiry into ancestry is to discover either whether one will have extra reasons to brag about the victory one has obtained in the killing of one's foe or whether, in killing one's opponent, one is violating any guest/host relationship that had previously been established by one's progenitors and those of one's foe.

Yes, but why should we ever expect them to do this? Are they interested, as Matthew and Luke are in discovering the ultimate origin of a person or in making the theological points about Jesus as a true son of Abraham or as a universal saviour that Matthew and Luke are interested in making with their genealogies?

You would guess??

You would guess?

You would guess??:huh: Don't you know? And if you don't know, how do you have the hutzpah to make any claims at all, let alone the particular ones you do, about what is normal and what is not normal in the recitation of genealogies?

And what ones, especially those outside of the Bible but in a Mediterranean miliue have you gathered and actually looked at?

Have you tested your hypothesis and your theories and your claims against what is found vis a vis ancient genealogies in such published studies on ancient genealogies as Johnson's The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies (Cambridge, 1988) or Malamat's "King Lists of the Old Babylonian Period and Biblical Genealogies" (JAOS 88 [1968] 163–73) or Robinson's "Literary Functions of the Genealogies of Genesis" (CBQ 48 [1986] 595–608) or Sasson's "A Genealogical “Convention” in Biblical Chronography" ( ZAW 90 [1978]: 171–85) or Tengström's Die Toledotformel (Lund, 1982), or Wilson's Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (YNER 7. New Haven. 1978) or Wilson's entry in the ABD, let alone the discussion of the Matthean and Lukan genealogies in Brown's The Birth of the Messiah?

My guess is that you have not. Am I wrong?

Jeffrey Gibson