Johnny Skeptic

I look forward to reading comments from readers.

Robert Byers

Yes. The whole new testament is geared toward fulfilling the promise at the fall that someone would come to smash the snakes head. (not the animal but the one speaking thru it). This was fleshed out later thru the bible that this someone would come by way of Abraham and then David a King.
All sorts of verses show this person/messiah was to be human otherwise a line from David is irrelevant.
Robert Byers

OneInFundieville

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...26#post4784626

I fail to see the statistical significance of descent from David.

J-D

I think the most probable answer is that some ancient Jews expected the Messiah to be a descendant in the male line (a statistically more stringent condition) of David.

But some may not have. I think there were divergent messianic traditions.

OneInFundieville

Tamar? Rahab? Ruth? Bathsheba? Mary?

J-D

I'm not sure why you're quoting these names.

What I said was that some Jews would have expected the Messiah to be descended in the male line from David. I'm sure that's true--for that matter, I'm sure that some Jews expect that now.

Obviously being descended in the male line from a particular male ancestor (David, in this case) does not mean not having any female ancestors at all.

According to tradition, Tamar and Ruth--and possibly Rahab--were ancestors of David, and that would make any descendants, including any descendants in the male line, of David their descendants as well. That doesn't change anything.

According to tradition, Bathsheba was the mother of David's son Solomon: that would make Solomon, and any descendants of Solomon, who would all have been descendants of David, including any descendants in the male line, Bathsheba's descendant as well. Again, that doesn't change anything.

As for Mary: if Jesus was a descendant of David, but only through Mary, he would not have been a descendant of David in the male line, and hence could not, in that case, have fulfilled any expectation of a Messiah descended from David in the male line. But I would still say that it was the case that some Jews expected a Messiah who was a descendant of David in the male line.

So what's your point?

OneInFundieville

No real point really, other than agreement with the above. What the rights of royal succession were to be is a topic for which I've yet to get a straight answer out of anyone.

Genetically, it appears that after 39 generations, all Jews of the time would have been descended from a David.

If the Jews contemporary to the time of Jesus didn't expect a messiah to be descended from David, it's only because they didn't know their approximate population size, didn't long how to do a logarithm to the base of two to get to a most recent common ancestor and didn't know that an all-common ancestors point would be around 1.77 times that.

Johnny Skeptic

My intent in starting this thread was to show that if Jews expected the messiah to be a genetic descendant of David, they did not get one since Jesus was supposedly conceived by the Holy Spirit, and to show that if the God of the Bible exists, he inspired Scriptures that were needlessly misleading.

Chosen people? Chosen for what, may I ask?

Why would God want to predict the future?

Pataphysician

Several problems

1. Chang's formula assume random mating which never happens even in animal populations let alone complex human societies.

2. even using Chang's formula which grossly underestimates the time to ACA, you need 39 generations, whereas the NT says that Jesus is 28 generations from David. Ergo if Jesus's ancestry is correct, we know that not every Jew during the time of Jesus has David as an ancestor, and since your argument is based on the accuracy of Jesus being descended from David, we can't really throw that out.

3. You would need to do a computer simulation of Palestinian population, like those done by Rohde to come up with a more accurate ACA, my guess is that is that it will be well over the time of David.

J-D

But not in the male line.
I agree that the scriptural account is incoherent. The attempt to establish a genealogical connection between David and Joseph is of no evident relevance if Jesus was not the son of Joseph.

On the other hand, I assume we here are all agreed, whatever other opinions we may hold, that, whatever scripture may say, Jesus was not conceived by the Holy Spirit: which leaves open the logical possibility that he was descended from David. If (and of course it's a big 'if', but it's not impossible) his contemporaries accepted him as the biological son of Joseph, descended through him in the male line from David, they might have seen that as fulfilment of messianic prophecy--but in that hypothetical scenario, it would follow that the scriptural account of his conception by the Holy Spirit could not be what his contemporaries believed.1 and 3 are good points. In relation to 2: by my count, the genealogy given in Matthew has 27 generations from David to Jesus, but the genealogy given in Luke has 42. And if there ever was such a person as David (which I regard as uncertain but not impossible), he probably live roughly a millennium before Jesus, which would make Matthew's figure less probable (although still not impossible, especially as we are talking about descent in the male line).