Genealogy of Jesus
The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew starts with Abraham and works forwards, while Luke works back in time from Jesus to Adam. The lists of names are identical between Abraham and David, but differ radically from that point. Matthew has twenty-seven generations from David to Joseph, whereas Luke has forty-two, with almost no overlap between them or with other known genealogies. They also disagree on who Joseph's father was: Matthew says he was Jacob, while Luke says he was Heli.
Early Christian scholars take both lineages to be true, offering various explanations for their divergence. For instance, one may be taken to be the lineage of Joseph and the other of Mary, or one may be Jesus' customary legal lineage and the other his biological blood lineage. These versions can also fit the gospels' simultaneous account of Jesus' virgin birth of Mary alone, with Joseph being merely his legal adoptive father; both Joseph and Mary are taken to be David's descendants. Levirate marriage, through which an individual may have two legal fathers, can also serve these explanations. However, some modern critical scholars like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan state that both genealogies are inventions, constructed to bring the Messianic claim into conformity with Jewish criteria.
Matthew's genealogy
–17 begins the Gospel with "A record of the origin of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham begot Isaac,..." and continues on until "... Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ."Matthew emphasizes, right from the beginning, Jesus' title Christ—the Greek rendering of the Hebrew title Messiah—meaning anointed, in the sense of an anointed king. Jesus is presented as the long-awaited Messiah, who was expected to be a descendant of King David. Matthew begins by calling Jesus the son of David, indicating his royal origin, and also son of Abraham, indicating that he was an Israelite; both are stock phrases, in which son means descendant, calling to mind the promises God made to David and to Abraham.
Matthew's introductory title has been interpreted in various ways, but most likely is simply a title for the genealogy that follows, echoing the Septuagint use of the same phrase for genealogies.
David to Babylonian Exile |
Babylonian Exile to Jesus |
File:Hortus Deliciarum, Der Stammbaum Christi.JPG|thumb|upright|Tree of Jesse illustration based on the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg
Matthew's genealogy is considerably more complex than Luke's. It is overtly schematic, organized into three sets of fourteen, each of a distinct character:
- The first is rich in annotations, including four mothers and mentioning the brothers of Judah and the brother of Perez.
- The second spans the Davidic royal line, but omits several generations, ending with "Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon."
- The last, which appears to span only thirteen generations, connects Joseph to Zerubbabel through a series of otherwise unknown names, remarkably few for such a long period.
The rendering into Greek of Hebrew names in this genealogy is mostly in accord with the Septuagint, but there are a few peculiarities. The form Asaph seems to identify King Asa with the psalmist Asaph. Likewise, some see the form Amos for King Amon as suggesting the prophet Amos, though the Septuagint does have this form. Both may simply be assimilations to more familiar names. More interesting, though, are the unique forms Boes and Rachab.
Omissions
Three consecutive kings of Judah are omitted: Ahaziah, Jehoash, and Amaziah. These kings are seen as especially wicked, from the cursed line of Ahab through his daughter Athaliah to the third and fourth generation. The author could have omitted them to create a second set of fourteen.Another omitted king is Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah, also known as Jehoiachin. In Greek the names are even more similar, both being sometimes called Joachim. When Matthew says, "Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile," he appears to conflate the two, because Jehoiakim, not Jeconiah, had brothers, but the exile was in the time of Jeconiah. While some see this as a mistake, others argue that the omission was once again deliberate, ensuring that the kings after David spanned exactly fourteen generations.
The final group also contains fourteen generations. If Josiah's son was intended as Jehoiakim, then Jeconiah could be counted separately after the exile. Some authors proposed that Matthew's original text had one Joseph as the of Mary, who then married another man of the same name.
Fourteen generations span the time from Jeconiah, born, to Jesus, born. The average generation gap would be around forty-four years. However, in the Old Testament, there are even wider gaps between generations. Also, we do not see any instances of papponymic naming patterns, where children are named after their grandparents, which was a common custom throughout this period. This may indicate that Matthew has telescoped this segment by collapsing such repetitions.
Luke's genealogy
In the Gospel of Luke, the genealogy appears at the beginning of the public life of Jesus. This version is in ascending order from Joseph to Adam. After telling of the baptism of Jesus, Luke 3:23–38 states, "Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being the son of Joseph, which was ' of Heli,..." and continues on until "Adam, which was ' of God." The Greek text of Luke's Gospel does not use the word "son" in the genealogy after "son of Joseph". Robertson notes that, in the Greek, "Luke has the article tou repeating uiou except before Joseph".
|
|
|
|
This genealogy descends from the Davidic line through Nathan, who is an otherwise little-known son of David, mentioned briefly in the Old Testament.
In the ancestry of David, Luke agrees completely with the Old Testament. Cainan is included between Arphaxad and Shelah, following the Septuagint text.
Augustine notes that the count of generations in the Book of Luke is 77, a number symbolizing the forgiveness of all sins. This count also agrees with the seventy generations from Enoch set forth in the Book of Enoch, which Luke probably knew. Though Luke never counts the generations as Matthew does, it appears he also followed hebdomadic principle of working in sevens. However, Irenaeus counts only 72 generations from Adam.
The reading "son of Aminadab, son of Aram", from the Old Testament is well attested. The Nestle-Aland critical edition, considered the best authority by most modern scholars, accepts the variant "son of Aminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni", counting the 76 generations from Adam rather than God.
Luke's qualification "as was supposed" avoids stating that Jesus was actually a son of Joseph, since his virgin birth is affirmed in the same gospel. Some view that "as was supposed of Joseph" regards Luke as calling Jesus a son of Eli—meaning that Heli was the maternal grandfather of Jesus, with Luke tracing the ancestry of Jesus through Mary, his nearest blood relative, while listing Heli's son-in-law Joseph rather than Mary in order to maintain the patriarchal structure of the genealogy. D. A. Carson calls this reading "painfully artificial" and would not likely be deduced by readers. Likewise R. P. Nettelhorst calls this reading "unnatural and forced". There are other interpretations of how this qualification relates to the rest of the genealogy. Some see the remainder as the true genealogy of Joseph, despite the different genealogy given in Matthew.