Jinksy

Contradiction from the skeptic's bible:

Is there any reason not to suppose that they're not just his mum and dad?

judge

The solution seems to be that Matthew 1:16 should read Joseph the father of Mary.
If we look at the peshitta of Matthew we see that the Joseph in verse 16 is the gowra(father) of mary but the Joseph mentioned in verse 19 is th baala(husband) of Mary.

Both these words, gowra and baala were both translated as aner in the greek translation of matthew and subsequently as husband in English,

Here is an interlinear Aramaic/English of Matthew chapter One , note the different words.

The Evil One

Yes: Jacob is a man's name (and women don't "beget" in any case), and Heli is described in the next verse as the "son of" someone else. So unless Joseph's parents were a lot more progressive than most people imagine...

Asha'man

Most likely, both genealogies are simply pure fabrication. The authors hadn't the slightest idea about the parentage of Jesus, but they 'knew in their hearts' that he was the Messiah, and therefore of Davidic descent. In the minds of the authors, they composed a fiction that had to be true.

The strangely inserted wording, separating Joseph from Jesus, was added at a later time, after the virgin birth story was added. The original genealogies went directly from Joseph to Jesus. When the virgin birth myth was added, this made no sense. Since the circulating story of Jesus already had the genealogy in it, it couldn't simply be removed, but a few words could be tweaked and most people wouldn't notice. (Remember, written copies were rare, people just remembered the stories because they heard them often.)

Edit: hmm, you may have been asking a different question that I thought.

Genealogies back in those days never included the mother. The mother was irrelevant to kingship and inheritance, and that was the only reason to provide a genealogy. They didn’t even know that the mother contributed genetically to the child, knowledge of the human egg didn’t exist until after the invention of the microscope. Back then, they thought that a woman was just ‘fertile soil’ for a man to plant his ‘seed’ into.

jbernier

I am not so sure that these are complete fabrication. It is one thing to 'know in one's heart' that, yes, Jesus was of the royal lineage; it is quite another to create a detailed genealogy of Jesus. That is not to say that I do not think that the creations of these genealogies were probably very creative events; it is say that I we need to be a bit more nuanced when we talk about "fabrication" or "fiction."

I would suggest something similar, however. I think that it quite possible that many of the genealogies one finds in the Tanakh - king's lists, for instance - were composed during and after the Babylonian exile. In having to reconstitute the Jewish people after the lost and reestablishment of a national homeland there would have been a felt need to identify who was and was not Jewish. I think that this would have been particularly important to limit intermarriage between Jew and non-Jew (as we know from Ezra and Nehemiah was a major concern among at least certain sections of Jewish leadership at the time of the return). I think that maintaining genealogies would have become very important to Jewish people - particularly the more dogmatic about the rules against intermarriage, etc. Thus there would have been a fair amount of genealogical data floating around. I suspect that Luke (and perhaps Matthew) probably looked at this material in composing their genealogy. However, in an age before standardization of texts they might have been working from different sets of texts in so doing (I particularly suspect that Matthew may have been working more from oral tradition).

Now, this is admittedly quite speculative. The other thing to note is that Matthew's geneaology seems a bit more 'tailored' than Luke's. In particular he is trying to fit Jesus' lineage into 3 groups of 14 generations. The first two groups were based upon Biblical records and perhaps he felt less free to touch this; however, the third set was not based upon Biblical records so I would suggest that here is where we see the most 'monkeying' with the genealogy.

spin

You are still cutting and pasting this stuff, judge.

GOWRA still means "man", hence as a translation of ANER it is correct. The English translation of ANER is given as "husband" for that's what ANER would mean in the context. The Aramaic word for "father" is still AB.

V.19 in Aramaic displays the same semantic translation as the English in both v.16 & 19.


You are still flagellating a deceased equine.


spin

judge

Spin wrote:
GOWRA still means "man", hence as a translation of ANER it is correct. The English translation of ANER is given as "husband" for that's what ANER would mean in the context. The Aramaic word for "father" is still AB.

V.19 in Aramaic displays the same semantic translation as the English in both v.16 & 19.


You are still flagellating a deceased equine.


spin

Judge replied:
You have provided no explanation at all why the author of Matthew refers to one Joseph as the gowra of Mary and the second joseph as the baala of Mary.

If the Joseph in verse 16 is a GOWRA then why id the Joseph in verse 19 not a GOWRA but instead is a BAALA?

This is the key point you have dodged.

The only solution is that the author of Matthew is pointing to two different men. Not only that but there is further evidence as well. The author tells us there are three sets of fourteen generations, or forty two generations.
If these two Josephs are the same men then there are only forty one generations.

spin

You didn't read closely enough.

As I indicated, your Aramaic translator interpreted the text -- as the English translators did for both verses.

Unfortunately, no. You have multiplied Josephs for no tangible reason other than to try to make the two gospel lists work to suit your conscience.

Umm, judge, you're supposed to understand that Jesus is the 14th of the third group.


spin

Chili

Your quote from the skeptic's bible is an error because Christ was born and they called him Jesus. The question becomes: who is this Jesus and why not call him Christ if he was Christ? . . . and that is why it was "supposed he was the son of Joseph" in Luke --which he really was not or they would have just called him the son of Joseph.

judge

A problem here is that all early witnesses tell us that matthew wrote in the dialect of the hebrews not greek.



hmm...Jesus can only be the 14th under my scenario though.

look here is Matthew 1:12-17

******* After the exile to Babylon:
**********Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, one
**********Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, two
********** Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, three
**********Abiud the father of Eliakim, four
**********Eliakim the father of Azor, five
********** Azor the father of Zadok, six
**********Zadok the father of Akim,seven
**********Akim the father of Eliud, eight
********** Eliud the father of Eleazar,nine
**********Eleazar the father of Matthan, ten
**********Matthan the father of Jacob, eleven
********** and Jacob the father of Joseph twelve, the husband (should read father) of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.


Do you see?
Under your scenario Christ is the thirteenth generation. He is only the fourteenth generation if Joseph is the father of Mary.