Solving The Two Genealogies of Jesus Christ (crucifixion, Gospels, women)

[Eusebius]

I think this is an excellent article for solving the problem with the two genealogies of Jesus Christ:

GoodNewsGospel.info

After you have read the article, why not post
some of your thoughts regarding this?

By the way, not far from the end of the article it gives a reference of Jer.31:32. It should be Jer.31:22.

[Daniel O. McClellan]

Originally Posted by Eusebius

I think this is an excellent article for solving the problem with the two genealogies of Jesus Christ:

GoodNewsGospel.info

After you have read the article, why not post
some of your thoughts regarding this?

By the way, not far from the end of the article it gives a reference of Jer.31:32. It should be Jer.31:22.

There's no problem if you aren't required to harmonize them.

[cpg35223]

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

There's no problem if you aren't required to harmonize them.

Bingo. That's the problem with literalism. You have to go through these kinds of gyrations in order to reconcile two widely disparate texts. And, truly, Christ's genealogy isn't all that central to His mission in the world.

It's not enough to say that these accounts were set to papyrus roughly 35-50 years after Christ's crucifixion and perhaps that Matthew and Luke had different recollections of things. After all, it's The Gospel According To Mark and The Gospel According to Luke. So if these are all The Gospel According to God, then why do we have four separate accounts?

If you are a careful reader of the Synoptic Gospels, you find all kinds of disagreements between the varying accounts of the same events. I mean, when Matthew, Mark, and Luke cannot even agree on Christ's last words on the cross, it gets harder and harder to defend a literal reading.

If God is pure mind, then why are there such discrepancies in the text, discrepancies that wouldn't pass muster today in a 10-grade writing assignment? In fact, if God is indeed the author of the Bible, why are four different accounts necessary at all? Why not one clear linear history of Christ's ministry on earth, an account that would confuse no one at all? The very fact that we're having this discussion due to textual differences pretty clearly demonstrates multiple authorship by well-intentioned writers who nevertheless were subject to the caprices of memory.

[Aristotle's Child]

I'm curious regarding the basis for the claim that Mary was descended from David. Doesn't Luke tell us that during her pregnancy she went to visit her blood relative Elizabeth [ Strong's Lexicon:4773. suggenes soong-ghen-ace' from 4862 and 1085; a relative (by blood); by extension, a fellow countryman:--cousin, kin(-sfolk, -sman).

And Elizabeth was a "daughter of Aaron" thus not of the Davidic blood line.

Also interesting is that the offspring always inherited his father's blood line, never the mother's. So, if Jesus had inherited only Mary's blood, he would lack the Y chromosome for maleness, and, hence, be female.

He would have gotten the Y chromosome for maleness from Joseph or some other male.

[Eusebius]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

Bingo. That's the problem with literalism. You have to go through these kinds of gyrations in order to reconcile two widely disparate texts. And, truly, Christ's genealogy isn't all that central to His mission in the world.

So do you think the two genealogies were not meant to be taken literally but figuratively? If figuratively, why? If figuratively, what are they representing?

It's not enough to say that these accounts were set to papyrus roughly 35-50 years after Christ's crucifixion and perhaps that Matthew and Luke had different recollections of things. After all, it's The Gospel According To Mark and The Gospel According to Luke. So if these are all The Gospel According to God, then why do we have four separate accounts?

1. Who has actually proved the four accounts were written 35-50 years after Christ's crucifixion?
2. Why are different witnesses called to a witness stand in a murder trial? To get the whole picture of what occurred. One witness may have only seen the murderer get out of a car and walk toward the residence with a gun. Another witness may have seen the murderer go into the house and heard gun shots. Another witness may have seen the murderer leave the house and toss the gun. Another witness may have heard the guy say "I'm going to kill so and so." Another witness may have heard the witness say "I hate that person so much I want to kill him."

If you are a careful reader of the Synoptic Gospels, you find all kinds of disagreements between the varying accounts of the same events. I mean, when Matthew, Mark, and Luke cannot even agree on Christ's last words on the cross, it gets harder and harder to defend a literal reading.

Why should the four accounts agree with what Christ said on the cross. They are four accounts of what occurred. If they all said the exact same thing you would have said they have to be wrong.

If God is pure mind, then why are there such discrepancies in the text, discrepancies that wouldn't pass muster today in a 10-grade writing assignment? In fact, if God is indeed the author of the Bible, why are four different accounts necessary at all? Why not one clear linear history of Christ's ministry on earth, an account that would confuse no one at all? The very fact that we're having this discussion due to textual differences pretty clearly demonstrates multiple authorship by well-intentioned writers who nevertheless were subject to the caprices of memory.

Four different accounts are necessary to account for four different representations of Christ to the Jewish populace.

[Eusebius]

Originally Posted by Galileo2

I'm curious regarding the basis for the claim that Mary was descended from David. Doesn't Luke tell us that during her pregnancy she went to visit her blood relative Elizabeth [ Strong's Lexicon:4773. suggenes soong-ghen-ace' from 4862 and 1085; a relative (by blood); by extension, a fellow countryman:--cousin, kin(-sfolk, -sman).

And Elizabeth was a "daughter of Aaron" thus not of the Davidic blood line.

Also interesting is that the offspring always inherited his father's blood line, never the mother's. So, if Jesus had inherited only Mary's blood, he would lack the Y chromosome for maleness, and, hence, be female.

He would have gotten the Y chromosome for maleness from Joseph or some other male.

Elizabeth was a cousin (KJV)/ relative (CLNT) to Mary.


Elizabeth's husband, Zechariah was of Aaron. It says Elizabeth was a cousin to Mary but does not specify how near a cousin she was.

The problem you bring up concerning Mary begetting Jesus and not Joseph is brought up in the article.

[Eusebius]

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

There's no problem if you aren't required to harmonize them.

There is no problem if you do the research needed as the person who wrote the article did.

[Daniel O. McClellan]

Originally Posted by Eusebius

There is no problem if you do the research needed as the person who wrote the article did.

I have three degrees in biblical studies. I've done the research.

[Jrhockney]

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

I have three degrees in biblical studies. I've done the research.

BOOM! lol! Ok, but can you identify where they author in the article went wrong if they did?

[Alt Thinker]

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

There's no problem if you aren't required to harmonize them.

This time we agree. You may or may not agree on the following but it is the way I see it.

Luke’s genealogy is intentionally different from Matthew’s as part of Luke’s general program of redirecting Matthew to serve Luke’s agenda.

Matthew’s agenda is to demonstrate that Jesus is the genuine Jewish Messiah, making the Jesus movement the true heir of historical Judaism in the wake of the catastrophic destruction of the Temple, the heart of Judaism. His target audience is a community of Jewish followers of Jesus. His competition is rabbinic Judaism, being constructed by Pharisees of the House of Hillel who avoided the siege of Jerusalem.

Luke’s target audience is mainly gentile. Matthew’s strongly Jewish Jesus is less than relevant to them. There is also the shadow of the terrible Jewish Revolt, sparked by a Jewish messianic movement. Matthew’s emphasis on Jesus as a Kingly Messiah would cast some of that shadow on the Jesus movement. This prompts Luke to create another Gospel directed more to a gentile audience involving a more universal Jesus. One component of that is the very different genealogy.

Other components of Luke’s program of redirecting Matthew include: entirely new Annunciation and Nativity stories, moving the Rejection at Nazareth from deep in the narrative to almost immediately at the start of the ministry, the reversal of the Moses and King themes, the concentration on the journey to Jerusalem, the different post-Resurrection story, and a number of smaller items. In addition to explaining the differences between Matthew and Luke, it alleviates the need for that pesky Q document. Luke wrote in opposition to Matthew.

But for now, just the genealogy.
Matthew's genealogy of Jesus
Luke's genealogy of Jesus

Placement

Matthew places the genealogy of Jesus at the very beginning of his Gospel. This is a logical place for a genealogy and also allows Matthew to introduce his theme of Jesus as the Messiah and the Jesus movement as the true Judaism right up front. Luke puts the genealogy well into the story, after the baptism of Jesus, back in chapter 3.

Matthew introduces the genealogy dramatically, “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham”. Luke merely says, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph”. “So it was thought”? First Luke pushes it back ‘off the front page’ so to speak. Now he emphasizes that this is not the biological genealogy of Jesus. Why does Luke mention a genealogy at all if he is going to downplay its importance like that? Because Matthew had one. Because Luke wants to remind the reader of Matthew to underscore that Luke is telling the story a different way.

Direction

Matthew’s genealogy runs from Abraham, father to son, unfolding to its inevitable climax in Jesus. Jesus is therefore the culmination of Jewish history, justifying the Jesus movement as the true and unique heir of Judaism. Luke runs it backwards from son to father, undoing that sense of inevitable historic momentum and thereby separating Jesus from that strong sense of being exclusively Jewish.

Organization

Matthew points out that the genealogy he presents is organized in three groups of fourteen. “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 Messiah.” Why fourteen? It turns out that the Hebrew Gematria value of the name David is 14. Daled Vav Daled = 4 + 6 + 4 = 14. According to scripture, the Messiah must be a descendant of David. The whole genealogy of Jesus shouts “Messiah! Messiah! Messiah!” Also notice that David gets counted twice in the list. He is the last of the first group of 14 and also the first in the second group of 14. Matthew even points this out in his ‘fourteen’ description quoted above.

Luke does not attempt to organize his genealogy. In fact he adds back names that appear in the genealogy list in 1 Chronicles that Matthew omitted, thereby breaking Matthew’s 14 based organization.

Place of Mary

In order to connect the genealogy of Joseph to Jesus, thereby justifying the essential Davidic lineage, Matthew links Joseph to Mary by marriage. This establishes a legal basis for Davidic ancestry. Matthew foreshadows this by mentioning several illustrious women (spouses or mothers) in passing in his genealogy list. Luke makes no mention of Mary at all. He makes it clear that he is talking about Joseph’s genealogy and makes no attempt to link it to Mary. Luke’s gentile audience is not concerned with Jewish details like Davidic descent and Luke can then avoid justifying non-biological descent.

Content

In addition to restoring omitted names as mentioned above, Luke gives a totally different ancestry of Joseph following David. In particular he has Joseph descended from Nathan, an obscure son of David, and not from Solomon, the great and famous king. This separation of Jesus from Matthew’s ‘King’ meme also shows up in other facets of Luke’s program, and serves to separate Jesus from being strictly Jewish and also from the bloody Revolt.

Scope

Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham. Luke, who runs his list backwards, goes all the way to Adam and then to God, calling Adam “the son of God”. The term “Son of God” appears frequently in all the Gospels in reference to Jesus. Why should Luke use it in reference to Adam? The answer lies in the passage immediately preceding Luke’s genealogy list.

Luke 3
21 When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Luke has God calling Jesus his Son and having Adam, father of all, also being called “son of God”. And note that this happens when Jesus gets baptized just like “all the people” This makes everyone metaphorically a child of God and linking Jesus, another child of God, to everyone. Jesus is universal and not just Jewish. (If anyone hears echoes of Paul, so do I.)

So that is the way I see it. Luke employs differences in direction, organization, the place of Mary, content and scope to distinguish his story from Matthew and make Jesus universal and not just Jewish, to present the story in a more meaningful way to his gentile audience.