Chris Weimer

I was noticing, how much do we exactly know about the earliest Christian traditions? Something interesting I've noticed is that, retained in the New Testament, an early Christian tradition tended to be antithetical to modern Christianity.

From Matthew and Luke's genealogy, we have two people after David who are listed: Zerubbabel and Scheatiel. Zerubbabel was the son of Schealtiel according to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai, but uncle according to Chronicles. However, both Luke and Matthew list them in their genealogies (well, Luke was the surprising one since his does not follow the Chronicles line).

Why is this significant? Because Zerubbabel and Jesus son of Jozadak were the rebuilders of the temple after the return from Babylon. Foreigners had asked them if they could help, but they explicitly denied them, for the temple was only for the Jews. Thus, if we extend the temple as a metaphor for Israel, then Israel was for Jews only. The messiah, then, would come and "rebuild" the temple for the Jews only, and that means no Gentiles. This would lead to the assumption that the ECT was still wholly Jewish.

By this, we can see that Matthew's and Luke's genealogies were either a) taken from elsewhere and plunged into the main body, b) were interpolated into the main body afterwards, or perhaps c) merely contained traditions that the author utilized in creating the gospel.

If it were selection b, then it is possible that the beginning of Luke's gospel originally started after the genealogy, maybe even to the point of beginning where Marcion (and Mark) began with.