JoeWallack

JW:
You have Style P-Jay and in the final analysis, it's better for the Argument to look good than to be good.



Joseph

EDITOR, n.
A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

spin

Look at 1 Chr 1:1, 2:36-41, 3:10-14 and 6:33-38.

Look at 1 Sam 1:1.

Why?

Well you may suspect that, but you won't get beyond such a suspicion. You don't have the means.

As I said, I have analysed this material to some depth. Ad hoc explanations based on only a small part of the data will not be very perceptive.

Very flow-of-consciousness, PhilosopherJay, but totally without any substance. Sorry.


spin

PhilosopherJay

This is why I don't think you understand the point I am making about the structure of geneologies. I have already shown in a previous post 1 Chr 1 and shown it to have a quite different structure than Matthew or Luke's.

We may examine 1 Chr 2:36-41

36: Attai was the father of Nathan and Nathan of Zabad.
37: Zabad was the father of Ephlal, and Ephlal of Obed.
38: Obed was the father of Jehu, and Jehu of Azari'ah.
39: Azari'ah was the father of Helez, and Helez of Ele-a'sah.
40: Ele-a'sah was the father of Sismai, and Sismai of Shallum.
41: Shallum was the father of Jekami'ah, and Jekami'ah of Eli'shama.

This does descend in a one on one manner from Attai to Jekamiah covering 12 generations. It switches rhymically from "was the father of," to simple "of" in each generation. So we get 6 "was the father of" echoed by 6 "of" clauses.

But note the two lines that come before this passage and need to be read with it:

34: Now Sheshan had no sons, only daughters; but Sheshan had an Egyptian slave, whose name was Jarha.
35: So Sheshan gave his daughter in marriage to Jarha his slave; and she bore him Attai.

In fact, the geneology of 35-41 is really part of a longer geneology that begins in the chapter with the sons of Israel:

1: These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Is'sachar, Zeb'ulun,
4: His daughter-in-law Tamar also bore him Perez and Zerah. Judah had five sons in all.
5: The sons of Perez: Hezron and Hamul.
9: The sons of Hezron, that were born to him: Jerah'meel, Ram, and Chelu'bai.
26: Jerah'meel also had another wife, whose name was At'arah; she was the mother of Onam.

28: The sons of Onam: Sham'mai and Jada. The sons of Sham'mai: Nadab and Abi'shur.
30: The sons of Nadab: Seled and Ap'pa-im; and Seled died childless.
31: The sons of Ap'pa-im: Ishi. The sons of Ishi: Sheshan. The sons of Sheshan: Ahlai.
34: Now Sheshan had no sons, only daughters; but Sheshan had an Egyptian slave, whose name was Jarha.
35: So Sheshan gave his daughter in marriage to Jarha his slave; and she bore him Attai.

So the author is descending 10 generations from Israel. He carefully lists the brothers in all these generations and occasionally lists sons of these brothers too. In the tenth generation, There is only a daughter who marries an Egyptian slave named Jarha.

It is at this point that the author gives us 12 more generations (36-41) in the sing-song style of "was the father of" and "of", till we get to Elishama. It is probable that there was a story of Elishama somewhere and the author wanted to connect him up to the Hebrew patriarchs, but also to say that he was inpure with the blood of an Egyptian slave in him. Whatever the story of Elishama was, it didn't make it down to us.

In any case we can see the complex pattern that Elishama's geneology takes.

Here is 1 Chr 3.10-14:
10: The descendants of Solomon: Rehobo'am, Abi'jah his son, Asa his son, Jehosh'aphat his son,
11: Joram his son, Ahazi'ah his son, Jo'ash his son,
12: Amazi'ah his son, Azari'ah his son, Jotham his son,
13: Ahaz his son, Hezeki'ah his son, Manas'seh his son,
14: Amon his son, Josi'ah his son.

This is a fifteen generation, descending one-to-one Kings list
However, the pattern changes in the very next line:
15: The sons of Josi'ah: Joha'nan the first-born, the second Jehoi'akim, the third Zedeki'ah, the fourth Shallum.
16: The descendants of Jehoi'akim: Jeconi'ah his son, Zedeki'ah his son;

While resembling the pattern in Matthew, Matthew does not change at the end to give us multiple sons in the final generation.

Here is 1 Chr.6:33-38:
33: These are the men who served and their sons. Of the sons of the Ko'hathites: Heman the singer the son of Jo'el, son of Samuel,
34: son of Elka'nah, son of Jero'ham, son of Eli'el, son of To'ah,
35: son of Zuph, son of Elka'nah, son of Mahath, son of Ama'sai,
36: son of Elka'nah, son of Jo'el, son of Azari'ah, son of Zephani'ah,
37: son of Tahath, son of Assir, son of Ebi'asaph, son of Korah,
38: son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, son of Israel;

But let us go a little further:
39: and his brother Asaph, who stood on his right hand, namely, Asaph the son of Berechi'ah, son of Shim'e-a,
40: son of Michael, son of Ba-ase'iah, son of Malchi'jah,
41: son of Ethni, son of Zerah, son of Adai'ah,
42: son of Ethan, son of Zimmah, son of Shim'e-i,
43: son of Jahath, son of Gershom, son of Levi.
44: On the left hand were their brethren the sons of Merar'i: Ethan the son of Kishi, son of Abdi, son of Malluch,
45: son of Hashabi'ah, son of Amazi'ah, son of Hilki'ah,
46: son of Amzi, son of Bani, son of Shemer,
47: son of Mahli, son of Mushi, son of Merar'i, son of Levi;
48: and their brethren the Levites were appointed for all the service of the tabernacle of the house of God.

So we're getting the ascending single geneology but of three priest brothers: Herman, Asap and Ethan; each of whom are being traced back to Levi through one of the three sons of Levi: Merari, Gershom and Kohath. Here we have an ascending one-to-one pattern, but it is repeted three times. Incidentally, the fact that these three descendents of three different sons of Levi find themselves serving together in the tabanacle of the house of God 12-20 generations later is quite incredible if we assume these geneologies are reflecting a reality.

These examples of geneologies, which don't follow a simple one-to-one pattern, provide additional evidence that there are a multitude of ways of doing geneologies and the fact that Luke reverses Matthew's one-to-one pattern is quite significant.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spin

You've made no point about the genealogies, PhilosopherJay. All you've seemed to do is make a claim about the necessary relationship between the genealogy in Matt and that in Luke. While waiting for you to get beyond simple claims, I've supplied similarly structured genealogies for which you have decided to waive the substantiation of your claims and ignore the similarities in those genealogies in order to highlight the differences.

We have seen that there are numerous variations on genealogical structure. We have two such variations in Matt and Luke. You unaccountably tie the two directly together without making a case for doing so and without explaining sufficiently the gross differences between the content of each genealogy.

Now I could throw more genealogies at you for you to play "my genealogy is different from yours!", but wouldn't it be better for you to give body to the simple assertions?

Now there is no point in citing the genealogies in full. There is, however, a point in substantiating your claim somehow rather than assuming it. It seems to me that you clutch at straws when you analyse a similar genealogy -- remember that I have said that genealogies can evolve (and the three I've cited regarding the high priestly line are examples) -- and, although it evinces the structure that interests you, you claim it isn't appropriate, because it is part of a larger, heterogeneous genealogy.

However, what you have done by individuating the differences between all the genealogies is to show that you will be incapable of meeting your own standards for showing similarities between the two for which you wish to have similarities.

Just to remind you of your unsubstantiated claims, here are some:

The geneology now attached to Matthew was originally attached to the birth narrative that appears in Luke. The Jewish style of the geneology matches the essentially Jewish text at the beginning of Luke. It was originally the geneology of Zaccharia. It is meant to tell us the geneology of John and the story of the birth of John from Zaccharia and Elizabeth was attached to it.

Sorry for leading you away from your task of substantiating these ideas and look forward to see you do the groundwork.


spin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

My point about the geneologies of Matthew and Luke is that they have unusual structural properties that is best explained if we assume that Luke is aware of Matthew's geneology. These structural properties, when taken in conjunction with the fact that Luke is creating an international geneology for Jesus in direct opposition to Matthew's Jewish geneology for Jesus, should be sufficient evidence for any reasonable person that the writer of Luke's geneology is aware of Matthew's geneology.

Since my other "unsubstantiated claims" are based on this preliminary claim that Luke is rewriting Matthew's geneology, I think it is important and necessary to establish it first before giving further evidence for these other claims.

You now agree, I think, that there were an enormous variety of geneological models in the Old Testament that the writers could have followed. We needn't find that every element or that most elements match in Matthew and Luke in order to deduce that one knew the other, only that a few relatively rare properties are repeated in both.

A useful analogy to understand this is to imagine that we have put 100 people in a room and asked them to write a number. Ninety-eight people write numbers less than a hundred. The two remaining people write numbers more than ten thousand and their numbers are reverse mirror images of each other, let's say 25,222 and 22,252. We can say that it is much more likely that one of these two people was aware of the other's writing than other people who might have written numbers much closer together like 22 and 25. It is the rarity of the properties that each share that gives the game away. In this case both having 5 digit and all 2's and 5's.

Now the first property to look at in two lists to see if one person copied from another is matching names. It is easy to see that the two lists have 18 matching names, 14 from Abraham to David, Shealtiel and
Zerubbabel, and Joseph and Jesus. Matthew contains 23 non-matching names and Luke contains 58 non-matching names. This does not tell us positively if Luke or Matthew knew each other. They may have been working from different traditions as you suggested, or one might have had a reason for not using the same names, for example, to make the lists "appear" to be from independent traditions as I've suggested.

We then should look at other properties that the geneologies share in opposition to all or most other geneologies in the Bible.

The first property to note is the enormous length of the geneologies. Matthew's geneology covers 41 generations and Luke's covers 76. Most geneologies only cover a few generations. For example take this geneology from Nehemiah (chapter 12)

These were the chiefs of the priests and of their brethren in the days of Jeshua.

8: And the Levites: Jeshua, Bin'nui, Kad'mi-el, Sherebi'ah, Judah, and Mattani'ah, who with his brethren was in charge of the songs of thanksgiving.

9: And Bakbuki'ah and Unno their brethren stood opposite them in the service.

10: And Jeshua was the father of Joi'akim, Joi'akim the father of Eli'ashib, Eli'ashib the father of Joi'ada,

11: Joi'ada the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan the father of Jad'du-a.

Here we are getting the five brothers of Jeshua, plus his descendent down through five generations to Joiada.

Even Genesis only generally gives us a few generations at one time:

4.17: Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.

18: To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Me-hu'ja-el, and Me-hu'ja-el the father of Me-thu'sha-el, and Me-thu'sha-el the father of Lamech.

19: And Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

20: Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle.

21: His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.

22: Zillah bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Na'amah.

Here we are only going down seven generations from Cain to Tubal-cain, the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.

I haven't done an exact count, but I would guess that 99% of the geneologies in the old testament give less than 15 generations at any one time in the text. Already Matthew and Luke show a unique trait. They are enormous in comparison to the average geneology list, both being in the top 1% of length of such lists.

Now, one could argue that they had to be that long because Jesus was so far removed from the other geneologies in the Bible due to his time period. But there was nothing that forced Matthew or Luke to go back to such early geneologies. They could just as well have decided to trace Jesus back to the time of the Babylonian exile, in which case they would only have needed 20 names or so. They could have relied on their audience being knowledgable enough to consult Jewish Scriptures for anything further back. Or they could have stopped at Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel who began to rebuild the temple in Jeruslaem according to Ezra 5.2. Both Matthew and Luke include this famous ancestor as part of their list. Note the appropriateness of the line from Ezra 4.3:

3: But Zerub'babel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses in Israel said to them, "You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us."

One might have expected one to make an extraordinarily long geneology, but not both. To use another analogy, if we find two cars on a block that are ten and eleven times longer than the average car on the block, we do not think that the owners coincidentally both bought such cars, we think it more likely that one long-car owner saw the other long-car, liked it and then purchased a similar slightly longer one.

It is more reasonable to attribute their extraordinary length to one author knowing the other's extraordinary length and liking that feature than to complete chance that both just happened to hit upon the idea of making their geneology of extraordinary length.

Besides the extraordinary length, the second feature to notice is that they both repeat a single term to describe relationships. Matthew uses the term "the father of" 39 straight times. Luke uses the term "son of" 75 straight times. This again is extraordinary. Usually different terms are used in the geneologies, for example: 1 Sam 14:

49: Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, Ishvi, and Mal'chishu'a; and the names of his two daughters were these: the name of the first-born was Merab, and the name of the younger Michal;

50: and the name of Saul's wife was Ahin'o-am the daughter of Ahim'a-az. And the name of the commander of his army was Abner the son of Ner, Saul's uncle;

51: Kish was the father of Saul, and Ner the father of Abner was the son of Abi'el.

Here we have the use of "father" mixed with "son", and we have the names of daughters also being given. Again, I have not done any exact calculations, but I would guess that 99% of the genealogies follow this mixed pattern.

Once again we have both Matthew and Luke being extraordinarily different from other geneologies and extraordinarily similar to each other. They repeat only one term over and over again. One might have thought nothing if either Luke or Matthew had used just one term repeatedly, but for them both to have done it is fantastic if one had not known the other.

It may be objected that the first and last line of Matthew do not follow the one term connector pattern. The first line of Matthew has "son of" twice and the last line has husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. This may be explained by Luke writing the first and last line of Matthew.

In any case, it must be admitted that both Matthew and Luke use and repeat a single term connector between generations more than any other writer of geneologies in the Bible. When put with the independent fact that they both have such extraordinarily long geneologies, the most reasonable explanation is that one copied the style from the other. Together the use of extraordinarily long repetition of one-term generation connectors and their extraordinary total length are the cross-hairs that allow us to line up the writers of two geneologies and say that one copied from the other.

You have attempted to give specific counter-examples to show that the feature of repetitive single-term connectors in geneologies are not uncommon. In each of these cases, which I claim represent only 1% of the cases of geneologies in the Bible, I have shown, I believe, that repetitive single-term connectors are used for relatively short times within other more complex structures. Thus the counter-examples do not falsify the hypothesis.

Only Ezra 7.1-5 which traces Ezra back to Aaron exclusively repeting "son of" sixteen times really works as a counter-example. It is probable that the writer of Luke knew this passage, but to suppose that he picked its long, repetitive one-term connector structure out of the blue without knowing that Matthew also happened to pick a long, repetitive one-term structure is to stretch coincidences beyond reasonable bounds.

Additionally, since Luke has admitted to knowing other gospels in his prologue, it seems to be absurd to insist that their obviously similar structures are due to mere coincidence rather than Luke's knowledge of Matthew.

If the structural evidence I have presented, which I feel is exceedingly strong, is dismissed than there is no reason to present the evidence for other claims. I feel the fault must lie in my own inability to present the evidence clearly, rather than the evidence itself, that is the problem.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spin

I have shown you that there are no unusual structural properties. The best you have done is to show that you have a few longer examples than the ones I showed you from the Hebrew bible. That's understandable: they are supposed to cover a longer period. The upward genealogies in the HB are the source for the style in Luke and I showed enough downward genealogies which you unaccountably rejected perhaps because they were in longer structures.

(International? Why? Because it went back to Adam??)

All you've got here is weak rhetoric, nothing more, PhilosopherJay. Perhaps you'll start with a bit of evidence soon...

Let's get this straight: you now agree that there are different styles of genealogies, including those evinced in Matt and Luke, rather than claiming them unique, as you did with these words:

straight-forwardness of the structure of the two narratives in opposition to all such narratives in the Old Testament

But we need some reason to suppose that one knew the other.

I got this the first time you tried to sell it.

Gawd, PhilosopherJay. This is obvious for a genealogy which is suppose to include the stretch from the exile to the time of Herod. What else could you expect. Scratch this idea as a necessity for anyone wishing to undertake a genealogy of someone of the era.

(And I have given you two very long genealogies from 1 Chronicles.)

The line from Solomon in 1 Chr 3 is 29 generations long.

But so what? When you are dealing with a specific line and you want to trace it back to the time of Abraham or even Adam, you have to have a lot of generations, as you say:

Then you miss the point of the genealogies, which specifically related Jesus to the ancient times.

If genealogies were popular at the time, why not? I gave you a good example from Josephus.

A particularly poor analogy.

Perhaps Josephus copied the idea from Matt as well.

Actually Luke has "son" only once.

And Ezra 7 certainly uses "son" more often than Luke.

Ezra doesn't mix them. For that matter there are several examples in 1 Chronicles that don't. You haven't looked at many, have you PhilosopherJay?

Once again you've tried unsuccessfully to cook the books.

Josephus's example in AJ 10.8.6 is sufficiently long even though it doesn't go past the exile, yet it is just as formal if not more so that the two you are dealing with. You are trying very hard to invent a uniqueness. Sorry, it's just not there. This seems to be more conclusion driven than anything else.

They should be sufficient to show you that you cannot make the claims that you are trying to present as strong.

This is simply badly supported.

Baseless conjecture.

When you start reasoning on the evidence PhilosopherJay, someone might take this stuff more seriously. But you've said nothing new from the first post you made on the subject. You've merely complained about the examples which exist in the HB as fore-runners to the gospels genealogies.

We know that he knew Mark, and I know that lots of people who don't support the two source hypothesis want him to have known Matt. But you've shown no evidence that he did. (And I have seen some unsubstantial claims about the birth narrative.)

(And which I think is so weak that it appears non-existent.)

I just wonder what other people think having seen you belt this sad lot into the ground.


spin

The Evil One

well, spin, the thing I ntoiced most was this:

which at a stroke makes the theory unfalsifiable and thus worthless - there is no feature of the two geneologies which could not be deduced to support the theory when ad hoc explanations like this are allowed.

Amaleq13

I see that son has been parenthetically inserted into the text but does that mean the original text simply has a list of names and the "son" is the implied connection?

spin

The genealogy is connected by the definite article in the genitive, which functionally acts as a chain of "of"s, tou MatQat tou Leui tou Melchi etc, of Matthat of Levi of Melchi... which doesn't mean too much in English so the translators bring the relationship out by inserting "son", son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi...


spin

Amaleq13

Thanks for the info.

Now, regarding the allegedly significant connector repetitions, it seems to me that aLuke's follow from the preceding divine declaration that Jesus is God's Son. Is there a similar connection between aMatthew's preceding genesis and the subsequently repeated gennao?