PhilosopherJay

Hi The Evil One,

Thank you for pointing this out. the structure of 39 straight uses of a single term connector between generations exists within the Matthew text, and like the 75 uses of a single-term connector in the Luke text, far exceeds any other other uses of a single-term connector in a serial manner. I admit that it would be more perfect if the first line and last line of Matthew also contained "Father of". However since biblical text is notorious for undergoing numerous changes through many hands, we should not expect to find perfect structures completely intact. The 39 straight uses of a single term connector between generations is enough to mark the text as unique.

The hypothesis is easy falsifiable, simply show me where other writers have used 39 or more serial uses of a single-term connector the way that Matthew and Luke have done.


The best counter example to this is in 1 Chr. 6.33-38, where a single term connector is used 22 straight times to get from Herman the Singer to the patriarch Israel. Judith (8) uses a single-term connector 18 times to give her geneology from Israel. 2 Esdras 1.3 uses a single-term connector 17 times to give the geneology of Ezra to Aaron. Ezra 7.1-5 uses a single-term connector 16 times to show the nearly identical geneology from Ezra to Aaron.

These four cases are the only ones where a single-term connector is used serially in a geneology more than five times in a row. Thus a list of Biblcial text that uses single-term connectors serially more than five times in a row would look like this:

Luke: son of/of 75 times
Matthew: father of 39 times
1 Chr. 6:33-38: 22 times
Judith 8:1: 18 times
2 Esdras 1: 17 times
Ezra 7.1-5: 16 times

Josephus, giving a history of the Priests of the First temple, lists also uses 17 single-term connectors to get from Zadok to Josedec in Ant. 10:8.6.


Perhaps more striking still is that I could only find one use of the term "father of" serially more than four times in a row. This was in Nehemiah 12:

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.

The term "father of" is used 5 times

Thus if we compare the longest serial uses of the the terms "father of" and "son of" in the Bible, we find:

Matthew: "father of" 39 times.
Nehemiah 12: "father of" 5 times.
Luke "son of" 75 times.
1 Chr. 6.33-38: "son of" 22 times.

Matthew has used his term serially over 7 times more than any previous serial user and Luke has used his term over 3 times more than any previous serial user.

There was nothing to stop either Matthew or Luke from doing a short geneology of Jesus involving 4 or 5 names, or an average-sized geneology involving 8 to 10 names.

To reiterate the hypothesis: It is fantastic to believe that they would independently both decide to use a single-term connector serially in doing their geneolgies and both would decide to use them far more than they had ever been used in any previous geneology. It is reasonable to believe that Luke saw Matthew's list and sought to outdo and correct him.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

The Evil One

I know what you're arguing, PhilosopherJay, no need to repeat the whole thing for me. I was just pointing out that if you are allowed to argue that parts of the text in Matthew were written by Luke, simply on the basis that if that were the case your theory works better, then you undermine your entire argument (whose general validity I am not capable of judging - I'll leave that to spin).

Remember, all I was commenting on was

If your argument is that L and M are are mirror images, and your answer to features of L & M that are NOT mirror images is to come up with an ad hoc explanation like this that could explain away anything at all, then clearly the proposition that L & M are mirror images is unfalsifiable in your eyes.

PhilosopherJay

Hi The Evil One,

I agree that an ad hoc explanation of descrepancies is often a sign that their is a problem with a hypothesis, but not necessarily. For example if 98% of people with a disease are cured of a disease who take a certain drug and 2% are not, we do not declare that the drug is unsuccessful in curing the disease. Instead, we look for reasons why the drug was ineffective in the 2% of cases. We might notice that the 2% who were not cured were all people using another medication. In this case, a tester who came out with the ad hoc explanation that other medications blocked the effectiveness of the drug would certainly not be wrong.

In this case, I should point out that the first line is actually the title: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
It is actually not part of the genealogy. Titles are not necessarily written by the writer of a work.

This leaves only the last line of the geneology as diverting from the pattern.

I can offer this explanation of that diversion as the risk of sounding ad hoc.
If we look at Mathew, we may conjecture that he follows the king list from 1 Chr. 3 down to Jechonias where that King list ends. The two names he has attached are high priests Salathiel and Zorobabel. This suggests to me that the original writer had a high priest's list that would have logically ended with Salathiel and begun with a high priest. I believe it was Zechari'ah, John's father.

This makes for an intriguing possibility. The original list was part of the birth of John narrative, it only went back to the high priest Salathiel. Anyone who wanted to could easily trace Salathiel back to Aaron, Moses' brother.

Luke in his first revision of the John geneology list added the king's list and changed Zechariah to Joseph. The list we get in Luke is simply a revision to his own list. This way we may understand the geneologies as primarily the work of one editor/author making two geneologies, based on a different author's much shorter geneology of John, which itself may have come from Josephus.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spin

Actually numerous lines stray from your straightjacket in that they include all sorts of other information along the way, mothers, brothers, titles, background information of other types.

Certainly not. There are three names omitted from Matthew's exemplar, needfully omitted to make the fourteen generations, but Matthew didn't omit them just to make 14 generations. Obviously he got the list that way and therefore not from 1 Chr 3.

Ad hoc on ad hoc... where does that put your theory?

No, not high priests. They are Davidic descendents.

Umm, really? Where did this high priest idea come from regarding Shealtiel (Salathiel)? Zerubbabel is shown as the grandson of Shealtiel in 1 Chr 3.

You should beware of the last two words when you start analyses. You need to check your background assumptions before you even consider the intriguing possibility, and then beware still.

Facts are what you need to start with. You seem to be in the field of counterfactual at the moment.


spin

Johnny Skeptic

Some sophisticated Christians have long since dealt with the issue of genealogical contradictions to the satisfaction of their fans. One example is James Holding. His web site is at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/. Another example is Glenn Miller. His web site is at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/. Both web sites have numerous articles about genealogy. In my opinion, skeptics will never get anywhere with the issue of genealogical contradictions.

I do not see any value in Biblical genealogies for us today since none of them can reasonably be proven. In addition, if Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, he did not have a genealogy.

spin

Did you find any of them convincing?

I suppose you were convinced by the levirate marriage approach and by the fact that Mary was the undocumented daughter of Heli. Or did your source get it mixed up and she was really the undocumented daughter of Jacob?

That should tell you that the notion of the divine conception was a later development.

And no, I'm not particularly interested in contradictions for contradiction's sake. They help us to understand the text and its development.


spin

John Kesler

"James Holding's" Web site is actually http://www.tektonics.org and he deals with the genealogy issue here.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

The straying from my "straitjacket" is not a problem. While the beginning of Matthew does begin with what we might consider a more normal geneology with extended families, at a certain point it turns into a straight list. this simply indicates that the original material has been reworked. The straight list is the later reworking. meant to eliminate extraneous and/or perhaps damaging material in the eyes of the writer.

On my Matthew's Original High Priest List Hypothesis, which is a different hypothesis, I appear to have confused the governors Zerubbabel and Shealtiel with the high priests and Jehozadak and Seraiah

According to Haggai 1:
Haggai
14: And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Sheatiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God,

This is repeated in Haggai 2:

21: "Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah,


Ezra has Zerubabel in the time of King Cyrus 559-529 charged with rebuilding the temple.

Ezra 4
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."

Therefore, we can dismiss the idea that these names provide proof of an oriignal high priest's list. However, I still suspect for other reasons that a high priest's list was originally there.

Consider, for example, we get exactly 14 generations from Abraham to David and 14 generations from Solomon to Jechonias, the last king. We expect to find the next 14 generations on the list. The problem comes in from the fact that we are only getting 12 generations from Shealtiel to Joseph. We expect 14 names.

We may note that after David, Luke appears to have added 14 extra names on his list versus the Matthew list. This is another odd structure that needs to be explained. Luke could have added 2,3, 4 or 40 names to his list. Why exactly 14?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Von Smith

Who says he did? By my count, he omitted 23 names that are in Matthew's list, and added 38 that aren't. Unless you buy the "Jechonias, Jr." schtick, that's a difference of 15, not 14. Also note that that numerical increase doesn't all fall in one place. A few of his additional generations fall before Shealtiel & Son, and a few after, suggesting that the author never tilted in a block of 15 names.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Von Smith,

What I am most interested in are the names from nowhere. Except for The last 10 names on the Matthew list we can easily look up the rest of the names in 1 Chr. 3 and other books of the old testament an get information about the people, but from Abiud to Joseph on the Matthew list, we have no references. In the case of Luke, every name up to Nathan is easily traceable to biblical geneology. Rather than believe that two writters switched from biblical to mysterious hidden sources at a certain point in their geneologies, it is easier to believe that one write (Luke) is messing with both geneologies and creating the same Old Testament-Mysterious Source pattern in both.

We perhaps get a clue in 1 Kings 4.
5: Azari'ah the son of Nathan was over the officers; Zabud the son of Nathan was priest

Zabud sounds a lot like Abiud which is the first unknown source name on the Matthew list. The next name on the Matthew list "Eliakim" is mentioned in 2 Kings 23:

34: And Pharaoh Neco made Eli'akim the son of Josi'ah king in the place of Josi'ah his father, and changed his name to Jehoi'akim

At the moment it appears possible to me that Luke was trying to find 14 names after the Babylonian exile of kings and/or governors that he could put in to reach Joseph.

I find that Ancient writers were very frugal and tended to re-use what they covered over. rather than thow it away. So I conjectured that he took the original 14 priest names he found on the list and placed them into another list he compiled and which we now see in the Luke list. He need not have placed them in any particular order.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay