judge

Do you have enything earlier. Do you have anything within 1000 years of this even?

All of the earliest witnesses tell us that mattew did not write in greek.

Do you have anyone in the first millenium even that tells us Mattheww wrote in greek?

Amaleq13

How many are independent?

Diogenes the Cynic

Verse 22 is a direct quotation from Isaiah 7:14 (LXX version). That's why it seems out of place and that's why it contradicts the verse which is original to Matthew. The common apology for the contradiction is that Emannuel ("God among us") was not intended to refer to Jesus' literal name but his overall identity. Matthew wanted to use the Isaiah quote for its (mistranslated) "virgin" reference but he couldn't very well change Emmanuel's name, nor could he change Jesus' name so he was stuck with a contradiction but was fortunate in that the literal meaning of "Emmanuel" lent itself quite nicely to Matthew's theology.

By the way, if you read 1:20 you'll see that the Angel calls Joseph Iwshf nios Dauid ("Joseph, son of David"). I would suggest that this pretty much cinches it that Matthew intended the genealogy to be Joseph's. What do you think?

linwood

I`ve run across reference to it in the past in this same debate.
I`ll see what I can come up with and post it here.

However the mere existence of the word would lend credence to the fact that it did.

If it never happened why would they need to describe it?

I`ll see what I can find.

Chris Weimer

But you're still under the assumption that Matthew was a Jewish gospel. It clearly was not. It was all Christian, far after Jesus was already established. And the mere fact that Jesus wasn't a blood-line descendant of David nullifies your arguement anyways. Jesus, in the gospel, was born of a holy spirit, not Joseph, so any arguement saying that it had to be Joseph is mistaken.

What are you talking about? Why would Matthew need a human bloodline if he came from God? And I didn't say a mistranslation, I'm talking about an alteration most likely by an early scribe or final redactor who didn't realize that there were two Josephs. Unless you take the flawed position that Matthew was written as it is today?

Maybe part of Matthew did, but certainly having all Jews be condemned at the end ("his blood be on us and our children") is not an appeal to Judaism by any stretch of the imagination.

Chris Weimer

Interesting but irrelevant.

I see it as an interpolation.

Peter Kirby

We have something earlier, specifically Papias. Papias attributes logia to Matthew, which (multiple) others translated. This evidence coheres with the idea (but does not demand it) that there was some Hebrew or Aramaic document of logia that was attributed to Matthew and that Matthew's name was later transferred to the (Greek) Gospel of Matthew that we possess, which has the great Sermon on the Mount and changes Levi's name to Matthew.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Diogenes the Cynic

How is it irrelevant. You quoted from Matt. 1:21-22 and asked whether 22 might have been interpolated. Since you made specific reference to the names I thought you were asking if "Emmanuel" had been interpolated into 22. I guess I misunderstood you. Were you asking if the entire verse 22 was an interpolation?

The answer is no, because verse 21 has no meaning without verse 22.
And do you have anything but an ad hoc justification for this?

Boomeister

As I understand it, in ancient times, women were seen as irrelevant in the genetic makeup of their children. Children were from the seed of the father only. Women were seen more as incubators nourishing the children, but not providing any genetic material.
The lineage of Mary goes against ancient understanding of conception. And the lineage of Joseph would be irrelevant if Jesus' father was the Holy Spirit. Joseph was Mary's fiancee and played no role in Jesus' genealogy. He was his stepfather. Stepfathers can be significant in the raising of children, but they play no part in their genetic makeup, even if legally adopted. It doesn't work that way.
The Messiah was to come from the "seed" of David. Seed, as in sperm...David's son's son's son's etc.
I think the geneologies were sloppily included to "prove" Jesus' Messiahship without giving thought to how this contradicts his miraculous beginnings.
They are trying to merge two religious traditions together...the Jewish tradition of Messiahship and the pagan tradition of man-god being conceived by a virgin. The two do not mesh well. Now, that is a major contradiction...as it is more than just comparing two verses side by side...but it is a theological contradiction.

Boomygrrl

Diogenes the Cynic

I didn't say it was a Jewish Gospel, I said it had the most Jewish author. Matthew takes to most pains to be persuasive to a Jewish audience. This is most evident in his appeals to the Septuagint and his attempt to create parallels to Moses and David. The allusions to Moses would have been lost on a gentile audience so this shows that at least some of Matthew's target audience was Jewish and that he was trying to make a case for a Jewish Messiah.

The contradiction created by the claim for descendency from David as well as from God is Matthew's problem, not mine. He probably inherited the tradition that Jesus was the son of Joseph and so had to create a proper genealogy for Joseph.
Because Messiahship required it. Only a blood descendant of David through the father could be the Messiah. The Jewish expectation of the messiah was a human king, not a god.
Why is that flawed? I've seen no good argument for redaction other than a personal desire to square a contradiction with Luke. I don't even know why you'd waste the energy trying to devise an apology for the different genealogies when Matt and Luke's Nativities contain far more significant contradictions than that.
This reflects a factional dispute, not a categorically anti-Jewish one. It also reflects Matthew's knowledge of the destruction of Jerusalem. It does not mean that Matthew was not trying to convert diaspora Jews to Christianity.