Diogenes the Cynic

Matthew doesn't give a genealogy for Mary.

Steven Avery

Thank you , Diogenes. My stupid errror, (hit head with palm of hand) so now its time to try to compensate with a little nitty-gritty :-)

Luke is giving the genealogy through Mary/Heli, as commonly understood, and Joseph is in the line by the common method of genealogy.

Joseph thus can be considered the 'literal' father... Here is Gill on Joseph being a 'real' and 'literal' father to Jesus by Hebraic reckoning, albeit of course not a 'bloodline' or 'biological' father.

"the father of Jesus, by a rule which obtains with the Jews {z} that he "that brings up, and not he that begets, is called the father," or parent; of which they give various instances {a} in Joseph, in Michal, and in Pharaoh's daughter." -- {z} Shemot Rabba, sect. 46. fol. 143. 1. {a} T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 19. 2. Vid. T. Bab. Megilla, fol. 13. 1.

Another important aspect is why Mary is not mentioned by name..

"Mary is the daughter of Eli; which accords with this genealogy of the evangelist, who traces it from Mary, under her husband Joseph; though she is not mentioned, because of a rule with the Jews {d}, that "the family of the mother is not called a family." {d} Juchasin, fol. 55. 2.

Custance puts it simply "according to the Jewish way of thinking -and indeed, according to the common practice of many other societies - the man who married could claim his wife's father as his own."

"Thus, although Mary in her own right could claim descent from David through Heli her father, the temple record could not enter her name in the line but must enter the name of her husband, the adopting father of her child. So when Luke copied out this record, he quite properly omitted Mary's name and substituted that of Joseph."

So the geneaology is in fact tracing the 'bloodline' of David through Mary..

And the "supposed", again is only to the fatherhood of Joseph,
*NOT* the sonship from David :-)

In fact this is clarified very well by Custance, about "supposed".
"The verbal root of this qualifying term is nomidzo, which has the sense of legal standing or standing established by custom: it is cognate with the root which gave rise to the English form "nominal." Thus it was clearly recognized that Jesus was the son of Joseph legally, but not necessarily by natural generation."

In other words, something like..
"the son of Joseph, as was accepted culturally, legally".
Rarely do I find a Greek etymology/word meaning helpful, this may be an exception :-)

To augment this understanding, Custance reference...
"This claim is accepted without question in John 6:42, 'whose mother and father we know.' "

Notice this additional Greek aspect also mitigates *against* nomidzo being a negative qualification by Luke to the "son of David".

All of this fits perfectly with Jesus --
"Son of God by virtue of His conception by the Holy Spirit,
and Son of David by virtue of His birth through Mary."
(Arthur Custance, Doorway Papers)

Correlative to the earlier underlying question...

"made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
and declared to be the Son of God" with power (Romans 1:3-4)

And apparently even the Pharisees accepted his Sonship through Mary as "Son of David" as they never contested this in the Psalm 110 discussions.
(actually a strong evidence from silence).

"The Lord's argument could only have real force if the people to whom it was addressed recognized His claim as the son of Mary who was a daughter of David." (Custance)

Sometimes it is good to have egg on your face, as it makes you get a handle on the real issues, rather than the pseudo-issues, and your own polemic :-) I give credit to the late Arthur Custance and John Gill for their excellent insights on the lineage of Jesus.

The Genealogies of the Bible: A Neglected Subject - Arthur Custance
http://custance.org/old/geneal.html#anchor14824171

John Gill's exposition of the Bible
http://eword.gospelcom.net/comments/luke/gill/luke3.htm

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Rick Sumner

Whether or not it is in my "personal paradigm of descent" is irrelevant. The question for purposes of this thread is whether or not kata sarka indicates a literal--bloodline descent from David.

He states "son of David" because his sonship is obtained through adoption. If you have a shred--one iota of actual evidence that Luke was tracing a genealogy through Mary, rather than the hope that he is, I'd delight in seeing in. One word, from Luke's pen, about Mary's lineage.

Apparently not, because Acts 2.30 is too late. Otherwise it would work fine.

Wrong. See this entire thread. Bloodline is what has consistently been meant from the outset, you're inability to keep it in the context of what is being discussed isn't my "weakness."

[snipped for posterity's sake]

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Steven Avery

The arguments for Luke's genealogy being of that of Mary are multifold, some of them in the post above, and in the two articles referenced. Even our very word at issue "supposed" is a good solid hint :-)

Since you consider the genealogy as fabrciated anyway, I can see why you want to close your eyes to harmony and simplicity and clarity and consistency in the NT, to help along some other doctrinal point. This is the essential paradigmic problem with believers discussing the NT text with those who consider it all phoney anyway. Those opposing the scriptures will extrapolate "error upon error" in a spirialing fashion. By denying the logical and harmonious understanding of Luke's gospel, you can then try to support a quasi-mythicist understanding of the NT writers in general in another venue, such as Paul's epistles.

Here is one question to folks who build such constructs. And I mean it sincerely. If you truly believe that the genealogies in Luke and Matthew are fabricated, what meaning and purpose does it have to do such nuanced exegesis and eisegesis and Greek grammatical analysis on an essentially meaningless and worthless writing ?

> "Luke never addresses son of David with any equivocation.."
Acts 2:30
Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne;

To late for what ? Tis the same Luke.

Again and again Luke simply affirmed Jesus as "Son of David", without your equivocation. No "suppose", no "non-literal".

Just in Lukes writing ...
The Hebrews understood this,

The blind man in Jericho,
Paul in Acts 2,
Peter in Acts 13
even the Pharisees did in the Psalm 110 discussion in Luke
only the modern-day mythicists struggle.

Luke 1:32
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:
and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

Luke 3:31
Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David,

Luke 18:38-39
And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.
And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

Luke 20:41-43
And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David's son?
And David himself saith in the book of Psalms, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,
Till I make thine enemies thy footstool.
David therefore calleth him Lord, how is he then his son?

Acts 13:22
And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave their testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.
Of this man's seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus:

Shabbat Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Vorkosigan

Custance was a very bright man, a polymath, gifted, but he was an apologist who believed in the physical existence of Adam and Eve. Here is a good example of why evangelical scholarship is so sterile. You can't take this presentation at face value this way.

First off, the Psalm 110 argument is derived from Mark who probably ultimately got it from Paul, though that is neither here nor there. Luke, who used Mark as a source, incorporated the story into his own Gospel, though naturally he tinkered with the thrust of it.

The Pharisees do not argue the point about Jesus' Davidic background because the entire episode is fiction. To wit:

In Mark the writer has a program to compare Jesus to Simon Maccabaeus. Three/four times in the short space of Mark 11 and 12 he does so, culminating in the citation of Psalm 110. Psalm 110 runs thusly:

1
A psalm of David. The LORD says to you, my lord: "Take your throne at my righthand, while I make your enemies your footstool."
2
The scepter of your sovereign might the LORD will extend from Zion. The LORD says: "Rule over your enemies!
3
Yours is princely power from the day of your birth. In holy splendor before the daystar, like the dew I begot you."
4
The LORD has sworn and will not waver: "Like Melchizedek you are a priest forever."
5
At your right hand is the Lord, who crushes kings on the day of wrath,
6
Who, robed in splendor, judges nations, crushes heads across the wide earth,
7
Who drinks from the brook by the wayside and thus holds high the head.

Psalm 110 is one of the most important texts of OT literature in the NT. It was widely used in early Christian circles in the NT period and is cited in Acts 2:34-5, 1 Cor 15:25, and Heb 1:13.. There are numerous allusions as well (Donahue and Harrington 2002, p359). The importance of Psalm 110 in the Markan scheme of presenting Jesus as priest, king and messiah should not be underestimated. In the entire Torah it is the only place where the king is explicitly spoken of as a high priest (Fletcher-Louis 2003). As Fletcher-Louis writes:

"...Mark 12:35-7 is Jesus' thinly-veiled public statement on the question of Israel's God-intended eschatological constitution: the nation should, and will, be led by one who is both king and priest."(p22)

The relation to Simon Maccabaeus is clear: he was the only historical figure who simultaneously held the role of Priest, King, and Messiah, driving out the empire and erecting a Jewish state. Psalm 110 refers to him because his name is listed in an acrostic in the Psalm itself.

In other words, on the surface level, where evangelicals usually play, like waterbugs on a lake supported by surface tension, too light to break through to the complexity of life beneath, Jesus appears to be debating with the Pharisees. It is only when you burst through that narrative surface to appreciate the complexity of Mark's structure that you can see what is going on. First, Jesus is compared to the historical figure of Psalm 110, Simon. He is implicitly identified as King, High Priest, and Messiah. Second -- the writer of Mark presents Jesus as at the same time confirming or denying his Davidic sonship. The passage can be read either straight (to deny it) or ironically (to affirm it). Tolbert (1989, p249) interprets this as Jesus clarifying his status: it is fine to say Jesus' is David's son, so long as one remembers that he is also his lord. The witty chreia-like structure of the opening verses is also evident. The Messiah is David's son? But how can that be, when David himself calls him Lord?

Looking at the larger features of the pericope, Jesus has just trashed the Temple in Mark 11, but now he is sitting calmly in it, teaching. In a few verses he will sit down "opposite the Treasury" just as in Mark 13 he will sit down opposite the Temple itself. The entire section here is contrived and ultimately fictional.

Vorkosigan

Diogenes the Cynic

Praxeus, Luke says Eli is the father of Joseph, not Mary. Luke and Matthew both give genealogies for Joseph. They are contradictory but there is no sensible argument for calling Luke's genealogy Mary's. Luke doesn't say or imply that. There is no way anyone would infer or understand that from a plain reading of the text, and maternal bloodlines were not tracked and had no legitimacy.


Rick, My understanding is that adoption would have had no more legality in a line of Royal succession than maternity would. The Annointed was supposed to be of the seed of David (reflecting an archaic belief that women were only "vessels" for the patrilinear "seed"). How does Luke get around that in your scenario?

To be fair, royal lines of succession could be and were passed on by adoption in Roman tradition (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero were all heirs by adoption) so perhaps Luke just didn't recognize it as a problem for his audience?

Rick Sumner

The same way Matthew does. . .he doesn't, just calls it good and carries on. He's God's son, isn't that and a Davidic adoption enough?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Chris Weimer

To be utterly fair, I already gave my reasons for Matthew giving Mary's geneology, but in retrospect, I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of it.

Steven Avery

Thanks Diogenes. Excellent points, complementing Custance and Gill with specifics.

I've noticed that we really are conglomerating a couple of different discussions, which is fair to do but sometimes leads to discussion confusion.

Generally, the genealogy here seems to be a springboard for some theories on "according to the flesh", the idea is to undermine the pshat of Luke and have him in some way actually against Jesus being of the seed of David.

Overall, I can see that if Luke's genealogy were that of Joseph, one could pretty legitimately raise the 'literal' bloodline/seed issue, and then the arguments against "according to the flesh" could naturally follow (albeit not very well the "royal line"/throne of David, as Custance and yourself point out).

There is an intellectual and paradigmic irony that those who consider Luke's genealogy to be through Joseph are often those who believe strongly that they are fabricated anyway.

Here is my question for consideration

In their paradigm of analyzing a fabricated genealogy ...
What does it all mean, what are they considering, what is the significance ?

Assuming for now that they even accept the existence of Luke and Paul --

That..
a) Luke *thought*, fabricated the idea of a Joseph genealogy ?
b) Paul *bought* into Luke's fabrication, considering it true ?
c) Paul was an accomplice with Luke in this *thought* of a Joseph genealogy

And if a/b/c what is the significance of our exegeting and analyzing such a construct ?
Does it really have any ?

Or perhaps the *fabrication* proponents are

d) play-acting as if the genealogy were true
e) have a part of their minds that is actually wrestling with the possible truth (and authority) of the Gospels and are really dealing from that perspective.

I don't raise this question flippantly, as I think what is often lacking in discussions is a 'level playing field' and a clear declaration of one's presumptions and paradigmic base. Without those, all sorts of fanciful theories can be weaved, yet the garment falls apart upon inspection.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Steven Avery

Allow me to add an (f) here ..
You are attempting to falsify the views of those who do accept the historicity of the NT, the life of Jesus, the accuracy of the Gospels, etc. For example, by asserting that Paul did not accept a literal, or biological, son of David.

Now, if that is the case, you should be willing to discuss with us from our harmonistic base, including a respect for the view that Luke is giving the bloodline of Jesus to David through Mary, rather than your presumptions of everything in the NT being fabrication and fiction :-)

And you could acknowledge that this is only a conceptual argument for a particular apologetic purpose.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/