DCHindley

I looked into the Epiphanius angle.

He seems to advocate the position that Jesus' mother was a virgin, and that his brothers and sisters were actually born by his (unnamed) 1st wife. He also says that Joseph was of the tribe of Judah.

He does seem to say that Mary's lineage was to both the house of Judah and to Levi. It gives me a headache to read excerpts from Epiphanius, so I did not look too closely into how he managed this. Levirite marriage?

DCH

JEST2ASK

Interesting (well to me) the 14 names from Abraham to David are the same, and both lists contain the names of Shealtiel (father) & Zerubbabel (son).
Names mentioned quite prominently in 1-Chronicles,Ezra,Nehemiah detailing the return from EXILE and the rebuilding of the Temple & Jerusalem.

Luke 1
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. ..............

26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary.

35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[c] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, *KJV says cousin

OK so what I gather is that the genelogies of Matthew &/or Luke are only partially supported by O.T. scripture. Both are seemingly dependant on extra-biblical sources. The lists of Matthew and Luke were seemingly influenced by the theological / cultural agendas of the respective authors.

The claim that Luke gives the geneology of Mary is not supported by the Bible without interpretation ( IMO speculation) or reference to early church tradition or Jewish customs (levrite marriage etc). The differences between the lists was noted fairly early but the reconcilation / harminzation of those lists is seemingly not dealt with by modern main stream (what-ever that means) Christians.


Would that be a valid ?:huh:

I am sure some of sentences are vaguely and poorly worded but am I on the right path?

Roger Pearse

In Eusebius of Caesarea's Gospel differences and solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum/Marinum), several of the 'questions' for Stephanus relate to the genealogies.

Unfortunately no English translation exists of this interesting work. As an experiment, I have commissioned a translator to work upon it, and I will publish this translation when he is done (not for some months, tho). But if you (or anyone) would be interested in knowing when this book becomes available, please drop me your email address in a private message. No commitment, of course.

The idea is to sell enough printed copies to recover the translation cost and then make the translation freely available online, so the more people that are interested the better.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Eusebius, Quaestiones ad Stephanum 3:

"3. How is it that Matthew takes the line of succession from David and Solomon down to Jacob and Joseph, whereas Luke takes a line opposed to Matthew’s, from David and Nathan through Nathan’s sons to Eli and Joseph?

"It is time to consider the third problem put forward. Let us, then, base the evangelists' meaning firmly on their actual words...."

JEST2ASK

Thank you for your comments

This is a problem I often encounter with some Christians that a plain and simple reading is to be be taken; except when it presents a disagreement with their doctrine.

DCHindley

JEST2ASK,

Not exactly the same. Between Hezron & Amminadab, Matthew has a certain "Ram" (agreeing with 1 Chron 2:9) while Luke has "Arni and his son Admin", names which are nowhere else to be found in the Hebrew bible.

Comparing 1 Chronicles 3:1-24, Matthew's genealogy agrees from Solomon to Josiah except for leaving out Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah between Joram and Uzziah = Azariah. Then after Josiah, he leaves out Jehoiakim and goes straight to Jeconiah = Jehoiachin. Then, between Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, he leaves out Pedaiah. Everything after Zerubbabel bears no relation to 1 Chronicles.

Luke's genealogy preceding Abraham is boiler plate from Genesis, although it includes a Cainan between Arphaxad and Shelah, and thus must follow the Lxx rather than the Hebrew. From David, though, the line is traced through his son Nathan rather than Solomon, and seems to have no relation to anything I can find in the Hebrew Bible. Yet he still manages to tie it in to Shealtiel. Like Matthew, he does not follow 1 Chron. and leaves out Pedaiah between Shealtiel and Zerubbabel.

After Zerubabel, neither genealogy seems to be derived from the Hebrew bible.

I have made no attempt to check the Lxx except in a few cases above.

From the above information, one could say that Luke's genealogy is not as derivative of the Hebrew bible as Matthew's is (particularly 1 Chron). This *might* suggest he is using some independent genealogy he found.

Pity we don't know what was in the genealogy passed about by the Desposynii. I do not think that Africanus/Eusebius knew anything about their peculiar genealogy of Jesus other than it was derived from private sources, which for him explains how there can be two diverging genealogies in Matthew and Luke. It did not appear to matter to him that any particular one of them had to be wholly correct or not.

DCH

Ben C Smith

According to Bauckham, we do have this genealogy, and it is the Lucan.

Ben.

DCHindley

I can see how that could be concluded.

My impression, though, was that Africanus didn't know exactly what was in it, but only that they claimed to have carefully "obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from the registers", that preserved "the memory of their noble extraction".

Now he did like the story passed about by the "little despots" that defended their privately compiled genealogy on the basis that Herod destroyed all the "official" records, as it allowed him to "explain" how the two conflicting genealogies of Matt & Luke could have arisen. Africanus believed the story was true, but if Josephus can be believed it is likely a slanderous fabrication, as nowhere else do we hear of this wild story about Herod's ancestry, even when the legitimacy of his descendents' right to rule were challenged.

Why, though, wouldn't Africanus (or Eusebius in a side comment) just say that Luke had access to family archives that Matthew did not? They didn't know? If they didn't know, then we are just guessing even more so now. Why not say that Matthew was right from Zerubabel onwards, on the same basis? Genealogies more or less cobbled together from scripture when hard facts were lacking is not unheard of in antiquity. Ezra's genealogy, basically borrowed from Joshua son of Jehozadek, is a good example.

DCH

Ben C Smith

I think Bauckham would agree that Africanus himself did not know the contents of the genealogy.

Probably agreed.

Correct. They had no idea.

I do not think so. I certainly agree that nothing is certain, but Bauckham analyzes the character of the Lucan genealogy itself for clues, comparing the results with the note from Africanus. The link with the genealogy in Africanus is hardly necessary to his overall thesis, but it jumps out at me as the most likely reconstruction.

I recommend Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, by Bauckham. There is an entire chapter on the matter. Please note that Bauckham takes (probably too) seriously a couple of links in the chain that I would tend to regard as legendary, but I think he makes his case that the Lucan genealogy would have served the interests of the desposynoi.

Ben.

PS: From my Hegesippus page. Eusebius, History of the Church 1.7.14, quoting from Africanus:

Ολιγοι δε των επιμελων ιδιωτικας εαυτοις απογραφας η μνημονευσαντες των ονοματων η αλλως εχοντες εξ αντιγραφων εναβρυνονται σωζομενης τη μνημη της ευγενειας· ων ετυγχανον οι προειρημενοι, δεσποσυνοι καλουμενοι δια την προς το σωτηριον γενος συναφειαν, απο τε Ναζαρων και Κωχαβα κωμων Ιουδαικων τη λοιπη γη επιφοιτησαντες και την προκειμενην γενεαλογιαν εκ τε της βιβλου των ημερων ες οσον εξικνουντο εξηγησαμενοι.

But a few of the careful, having obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by otherwise getting them from copies, pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble birth. Among these happen to be those already mentioned, called desposynoi on account of their connection with the family of the savior. They travelled from Nazara and Cochaba, Judaic villages, to the rest of the land and interpreted their extant genealogy and from the book of days* as far as they could.

* The book of days is the Hebrew title (דברי הימים) of what we call 1 and 2 Chronicles, though Julius Africanus may not have been aware of this datum, which appears to have been forgotten even by some modern translators. The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, for example, translates της βιβλου των ημερων as the book of daily records.

rlogan

There is a third (and different) lineage in Chronicles.

All three inconcistent lineages copied faithfully for over a thousand years.

Therefore proving inerrancy in the Bible.

or not.