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It could be an interpolation or it could just be a rather inelegant hedge. AMt's main purpose as you note is to tie Jesus' ancestry to the house of David which necessarily means going through Joseph. Even so by the time GMt is written there is already, apparently, a tradition of Jesus not being the biological son of Joseph which also needs an explanation.
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But Matthew is citing an older tradition, whereas the desire to deify Jesus by (among other things) declaring him born of a virgin, was far closer in time to the period in which the Gospel was written. So these two contradictory statements were not contemporary. The fact that the lineage statement throws a spanner in the works, gives it some added credence, along with the tradition that linked the messiah to royal lineage. I imagine that the lineage tradition was far too strong to edit or redact. Matthew does a great deal of backward-looking, so starting the Gospel in this way is quite consistent.
It would be very difficult, I imagine, to argue that the lineage statement is an interpolation.
09-15-2004, 03:16 PM
