Aspirin99

Does anyone have more info on this quote from Tatianus? Also, is Tatianus the same as Tatian, who created the Diatessaron? I know he left the genalogies out of that.

Hallandale

There are several things wrong with the genealogies of Jesus.
Length....Matthew has 41 generations from Abraham to Jesus. But I counted 57 generations from Abraham to Jesus in Luke. It seems very unusual for there to be such a great difference in the number of generations for the same period of time ( Abraham to Jesus)
If the genealogies are both of Jesus, then they are totally different. The standard Christian apology is that Matthew's genealogy is his father, Joseph's
genealogy and Luke's genealogy is the genealogy of Jesus' mother Mary.
However, Mary is not mentioned in Luke's genealogy. If it were her genealogy you would expect that her name would appear in the genealogy.

Since Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, it is actually useless because the OT counts Tribe Affiliation (the Messiah, or Christ has to be of the tribe of Judah, a descendant of King David) by Patrilinear descent.
Numbers 1:18 KJV
18And they assembled all the congregation together on the first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, by their polls.

Since Jesus was not the biological son of Joseph, there is another problem.
Matthew 1:18
18Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
If Mary was espoused to Joseph, and Joseph was not his father, but Jesus was a child of the Holy Ghost, then Jesus was illegitimate, or a bastard.
Deuteronomy 23:2
2A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
This would disqualify him from being the Messiah.

Another serious problem is that Matthew did not know how to count when he was fabricating his genealogy.
Matthew 1:17
17So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.
Open your Bible up to Matthew chapter 1 and follow along through the
genealogy of Jesus.

You can see that there are 14 generations from Abraham to David.

1Abraham
2Isaac
3Jacob
4Judah
5Perez
6Hezron
7Ram
8Amminadab
9Nashon
10Salmon
11Boaz
12Obed
13Jesse
14David

14 Generations from David until the Babylonian captivity

1Solomon
2Rehoboam
3Abijah
4Asa
5Jehoshaphat
6Joram
7Uzziah
8Jotham
9Ahaz
10Hezekiah
11Manasseh
12Amon
13Josiah
14Jeconiah


But only 13 Generations from the Babylonian Captivity to Jesus

1Shealtiel
2Zerubbabel
3Abihud
4Eliakim
5Azor
6Zadok
7Achim
8Eliud
9Eleazar
10Matthan
11Jacob
12Joseph
13Jesus
NOTICE THAT THERE ARE ONLY 13 GENERATIONS FROM BABYLON TO CHRIST
This is really a serious error.

Matthew's Genealogy also has another serious flaw.
Matthew 1:11 NAS
11Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
First, Jeconiah was the grandson of Josiah, not his son.
Jeremiah 22:24 NAS
24"As I live," declares the LORD, "even though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were a signet ring on My right hand, yet I would pull you off;
Jeremiah 22:18 NAS
18Therefore thus says the LORD in regard to Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah,
But if Jesus was a descendant of Jeconiah, as it says in Matthew's Genealogy, then he could never sit on David's throne.
Jeremiah 22:30 NAS
30"Thus says the LORD,
'Write this man down childless,
A man who will not prosper in his days;
For no man of his descendants will prosper
Sitting on the throne of David
Or ruling again in Judah.'"

Concerning Luke's Genealogy, there is also a serious flaw.
Luke 3:31 NAS
31the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David,
Luke traces Jesus' genealogy through David's son, Nathan, and not through David's son, Solomon, as the Bible requires for the Messiah.
2Samuel 7:12-16 NAS
12"When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.

13"He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

14"I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men,

15but My lovingkindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.

16"Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever."'"
1Chronicles 22:9-10 NAS
9'Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.

10'He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.'

So you can see that both genealogies are not sufficient to establish Jesus' claim to the throne of David.

Hallandale
enterprisestrategy@earthlink.net

Juliana

Yes, Tatianus is the same as Tatian.

cognac

If you want to get a sense of how apologists attempt to dismiss these problems, you can try these:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/fabprof4.html
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesgen.html

Asha'man

This custom did not exist in the 1st Century. See Mothers of Israel

andrewcriddle

The basis for the claim seems to be

a/ that the Diatessaron or Gospel harmony composed by Tatian left out the genealogies (possibly simply because they were so difficult to harmonise)

b/ Theodoret campaigning in the 5th century CE to have the Syriac churches replace the Diatessaron with the Peshitta (or possibly pre-Peshitta) separated Gospels claimed that "he [Tatian] composed the Gospel which is called Diatessaron cutting out the genealogies and such other passages as shew the Lord to have been borne of the seed of David after the flesh......."


Andrew Criddle

judge

Our earliest sources tell us that Matthew did not write in greek but rather in the "hebrew dialect"

Cited by Eusebius, Church History 3.39.16

So to understand the apparent contradiction we need to look prior to the greek translation.

The Aramaic of Matthew contains the Aramaic word Gowra which basically means man, and more specifically male head of the household.
At times this word can mean husband and at other times father.

The greek translator rendered it husband, but if we translate if father all the contradictions vanish.

We know husband was not intended because Joseph the husband of Mary is referred to as her baala three verses later.

See here for a discussion.

There are plenty of contradictions in the bibel this just isn't one of them.

Juliana

Well, judge, it seems you are not correctly informed because
"Extensive expert research has shown that, contrary to earlier surmises, none of the Gospels, neither in toto nor in part, was originally written in Aramaic and certainly never in Hebrew. The Greek Gospels passed down to us are not direct translations." (Except perhaps Mark, but then from the Latin; cf. Couchoud (1926).

If the judge says so, it must be true. This is was Carotta says about the genealogies:

[...] The genealogies are a later redactional work of Matthew resp. Luke.
What is conspicuous, however – to touch briefly on this – is not even
that the genealogies of Jesus are missing with Mark and John, or that
Luke gives completely different names than Matthew (not to speak of
the numerous variants in the manuscripts), but—as was pointed out not
by Voltaire but e.g. his compatriot, the dominican Fr. R.-L. Bruckberger—
that with Matthew (1:2-17), noticeably many women appear
who actually have no business in a patrilinear line of ancestors and
whose questionable chastity hardly corresponds to patriarchal-biblical
ideas of marriage. Rather their presence serves to avert the traditional
Jewish criticism that Mary did not conceive her son Jesus from her husband.
As if Matthew means to say: You see, your Thamar (a Canaanite,
daugther-in-law of Judas, son of James, who prostituted herself to him),
Rahab (a whore from Jericho who betrayed her city), Ruth (a Moabite
and pagan who offered herself to Boaz and forced him to marry her) or
the wife of Uria the Hittite, (i.e. Bathsheba, an adulteress who became
the mistress of David who treacherously sent her husband, who had
faithfully served him, to death for her (Urias Letter)), were no better in
this regard. That is to say, originally Matthew would not draw up a genealogy
of Jesus but bring in his usual midrashim, i.e. seek out passages
and figures from the scriptures of the Jews that seemed to anticipate the
outrageousness found in the new message. But, because it indeed appeared
far too scandalous, later hands tried to drown the four females
of dubious virtue—non-Jewish, pagan, self-prostituting adulteresses—
into a long genealogy so they would be overlooked as much as possible.
And because apparently someone still noticed it, Luke changed all
names, probably to let the removal of the female names be masked
within the exchange of all others. Thus the traces behind Jesus, Mary,
Joseph, and the Holy Spirit, that pointed to Augustus and the maculate
conception of his mother Atia (not from Octavius, however, but from
Apollo) were covered up. Or, in the later generation, those that pointed
to Tiberius who was from Livia but not from Augustus. But those unchaste
virgins in Jesus’ line of ancestors whose names are still to be read
with Matthew and who replace their Roman equivalents—e.g. Acca
Larentia, Rhea Silvia, Tanaquil, Ocrisia or Cleopatra—still today rather
point to the Roman ‘she-wolf’ resp. to Caesar’s ancestral mother Venus,
than to patriarchs. And they attest, in a hidden but still undeniable
manner, to the late-Hellenistic, Roman, Julian origin of the Gospel—in
discourse with the Jews the Christian Jew Matthew may have talked
about Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba as ‘our’ women, and thus entailing
in their wake the incorporation of the Roman Maria into the
Christian-Jewish amalgam.

Juliana

spin

Oh shite, I you were cured of this disease, judge. You are simply wrong about gowra. It never means father. It is used to mean "man". It is often used to mean the man of a woman, ie husband, often with the more explicit term baala, "lord" is what is more commonly used for "husband" and I have cited cited verses where the connection between gowra and baala make them equated. A man can have children, but that fact doesn't change the meaning of gowra.

You here seem to have stuck your fingers in your ears while the matter was dealt with in the past. You simply couldn't deal with it before and now here you are back again rehearsing the same erroneous position as though nothing had been said about it before. That's not honest, judge, not honest.


spin

judge

But the contextual variant can read as father in several places in Matthew.

Look.



Matthew 7:9

Which man/gowra among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?


Matthew 21:28
What do you think? There was a man/gowra who had two sons. He went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.'


Matthew 22:2

The kingdom of heaven is like a king/gowra who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.



Fathers have children but husbands don't necessarily.
It can mean father or husband contextually.

Pretending that it is just silly. :Cheeky: