The following articles are taken from Jimmy Akin’s website, which can be accessed here:
Questions About Jesus’ Genealogies
An Older Article on Jesus’ Genealogies
Taken from my book A Daily Defense:
Day 85: Descended from David How?
Challenge: Jesus’ genealogies contradict each other. Matthew has Jesus descended from David’s son Solomon (Matt. 1:6), while Luke has him descended from David’s son Nathan (Luke 3:31). Similarly, Matthew has him descended from Zerubbabel’s son Abiud (Matt. 1:13), while Luke has him descended from Zerubbabel’s son Rhesa (Luke 3:27).
Defense: Jesus was descended from David and Zerubbabel by more than one line.
Normally, a person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. But this doubling pattern does not go back indefinitely.
Marriages usually occur within the same community (a village, region, tribe, or nation). People in a community tend to be related. Consequently, the number of ancestors is less than what the doubling pattern would predict. In a small community, an individual may occupy more than one slot in a family tree.
Suppose William has a son named Henry, who has descendants, and several generations later, one named Elizabeth is born. Suppose William also has a daughter named Adela, who also has descendants. Because of intermarriage in the community, Elizabeth is also one of Adela’s descendants. Genealogists would say Elizabeth is descended from William by the Henry “line” and the Adela “line.”
This describes the British royal family. Queen Elizabeth II descends from William the Conqueror (c. 1028-1087) by the line of King Henry I and the line of St. Adela of Normandy, both of whom were William’s children. In fact, Elizabeth II is descended from William by multiple lines (at least eight through Adela alone). William the Conqueror thus appears in multiple slots in Elizabeth II’s family tree.
The same was true for David and Zerubbabel concerning Jesus, who descended from David by both the Solomon and Nathan lines and from Zerubbabel by both the Abiud and Rhesa lines. This is not unexpected. David lived a millennium before Jesus. Matthew records twenty-seven intervening generations, so according to the doubling pattern, Jesus would have at least 67,108,864 ancestors in David’s generation.
There were not that many Israelites alive in David’s generation, so, since David was one of Jesus’ ancestors, David filled multiple slots in Jesus’ family tree, and Jesus was descended from David by multiple lines. The same is true of Zerubbabel, though to a lesser degree, since Zerubbabel lived only half a millennium before Jesus (for more, see Day 95).
Day 95: The Judgment of Jeconiah
Challenge: Jesus is disqualified from being Messiah since he descends from the last king of Judah, Jeconiah (Matt. 1:12). God judged Jeconiah so that “none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah” (Jer. 22:30).
Defense: There are multiple flaws with this argument. Here are several.
First, Jesus was not descended from David only by the line of Jeconiah. He was also descended through the line of Nathan (Luke 3:31; see Day 85). It may have been questions among some Jews about whether a descendant of only Jeconiah could be Messiah that prompted Jesus’ family to preserve the memory of the Nathan line. The presence of both genealogies in Scripture shows that, regardless where a Jew fell on the Jeconiah question, Jesus had a qualified lineage either way.
Second, the prophecy need mean no more than Jeconiah’s immediate sons wouldn’t be kings because the Babylonian Exile would go on for too long (cf. Jer. 22:25-28).
Third, one of Jeconiah’s grandsons—Zerubbabel—received ruling authority in Judah, being made its governor (Hag. 1:1). (On Zerubbabel’s lineage, see 1 Chron. 3:17-19; there may be a levirate marriage involved since Zerubbabel’s father is usually said to be Shealtiel, though here he is said to be son of Pediah; both were sons of Jeconiah, and thus Zerubbabel was his grandson).
Fourth, the language used concerning Zerubbabel suggests a reversal of God’s judgment. God told Jeconiah, though you “were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off” (Jer. 22:24), but he told Zerubbabel he will “make you like a signet ring; for I have chosen you, says the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2:23). The image of making one of Jeconiah’s descendants again like a signet ring suggests a restoration of the family to divine favor.
Fifth, multiple Jewish sources indicate Jeconiah (also called Jehoiachin) repented and the curse was lifted. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 ed.) notes: “Jehoiachin’s sad experiences changed his nature entirely, and as he repented of the sins which he had committed as king he was pardoned by God, who revoked the decree to the effect that none of his descendants should ever become king” (s.v. “Jehoiachin”).
Day 106: Matthew’s Missing Generations
Challenge: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus omits some generations and thus is wrong.
Defense: In Israelite genealogies, it was permitted to skip generations.
Hebrew and Aramaic don’t have terms for “grandfather,” “great-grandfather,” “grandson,” “great-grandson,” and so on. Any male ancestor was called a father (Hebrew, ’ab, Aramaic, ’ab, ’abba), and any male descendant was called a son (Hebrew, bēn, Aramaic, bar).
Thus, prophesying the birth of Jesus, Gabriel tells Mary, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). David lived a millennium before Jesus, yet he is called Jesus’ father. Similarly, both Jesus and Joseph are called “son of David” (Matt. 1:20, 9:27). This made it possible to skip generations in genealogies, whether they ran forward (“Joram was the father of Uzziah”) or backward (“Uzziah was the son of Joram”).
Richard Bauckham notes:
That a family descended from one of the sons of David had at least an oral genealogy must be considered certain. This does not, of course, mean that it would be a complete genealogy. Oral genealogies, like many of those in the Old Testament, regularly omit generations, since their function is not to preserve the memory of every name in the list but to link the family with an important ancestor who gives it its place in the community (Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, 341).
Matthew skips generations for literary purposes, grouping his genealogy in three sets of fourteen generations (Matt. 1:17). The reason may be to stress Jesus’ connection with David. In Hebrew and Aramaic, David (DVD) adds up to fourteen (D = 4, V = 6, D = 4).
Matthew would have expected his readers to recognize that the generations he skips are recorded in the Old Testament. In 1:8, he says Joram was the father of Uzziah (aka Azariah), but 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 shows three generations between the two. The missing names are Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. These three figures were kings of Israel. Their stories are told between 2 Chronicles 22 and 25.
When Matthew skips three Jewish kings in the line of David—well known to the audience from the Old Testament Scriptures—he expects his readers to recognize the literary device he is using in the genealogy.
Day 162: His Father Was Who?
Challenge: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus contradicts Luke’s. Matthew says Shealtiel’s father was Jeconiah, while Luke says it was Neri (Matt. 1:12; Luke 3:27). Similarly, Matthew says Joseph’s father was Jacob, while Luke says it was Heli (Matt. 1:16; Luke 3:23).
Defense: There are multiple possible explanations, given the way Israelite genealogies worked.
Hebrew and Aramaic didn’t distinguish between fathers, grandfathers, and so on. All male ancestors were called “fathers” (see Day 106). Consequently, since one person can be descended from another by more than one line (see Day 85), both Jeconiah and Neri could have been Shealtiel’s “father” (male ancestor) if one genealogy skipped a generation. The same is true of Jacob and Heli with respect to Joseph.
Alternately, adoption (legal rather than biological descent) may have been involved. Shealtiel may have had a legal and a biological father. The same is true of Joseph. This is particularly relevant because of the levirite marriage custom, which required that if a man died childless, his brother was to marry the widow and father a son who was legally attributed to the line of the dead man (Deut. 25:5-6). The levir (Latin, “brother-in-law”) thus supplied a son for his deceased brother. Given the ancient mortality rate, this situation was common. It is not surprising if it occurred more than once in the millennium between David and Jesus in their family tree.
It may have happened with respect to Shealtiel, and we have early testimony that it did happen with respect to Joseph. Early Christian writer Julius Africanus (c. A.D. 160-240) reported a tradition from Jesus’ surviving relatives in his day regarding the fatherhood of Joseph.
According to Jesus’ family, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (mentioned in Matthew) married a woman named Estha, who bore him a son named Jacob. After Matthan died, Estha married his close relative Melchi (mentioned in Luke) and bore him a son named Heli. Jacob (mentioned in Matthew) and Heli (mentioned in Luke) were thus half brothers. When Heli died childless, Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, who was biologically the son of Jacob but legally the son of Heli (see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:6:7).
Regardless of which explanation is true, the fact that multiple explanations exist indicates that no contradiction has been shown.
The Genealogies of Christ
by Jimmy Akin
Since the gospels were first written, people have been puzzled by the two genealogies they give for Christ. The genealogy in Matthew 1 offers a different lineage than the one in Luke 3. This isn’t surprising since neither genealogy attempts to give a full family tree for Jesus, containing all his lines of ancestry. Each records only one line of ancestry.Even so, people are often perplexed by some of the differences between the two. The most obvious difference is that Matthew’s genealogy begins with Abraham and moves forward to Christ. Luke’s genealogy, on the other hand, begins with Christ and traces the line backward to Adam. If we compensate for these factors and only look at the period where the two genealogies overlap, there are still differences. The most notable is that both genealogies trace Jesus’ lineage back to David, but through different sons. Matthew has Christ descending from David through Solomon, while Luke has him descending from David through a different son, Nathan. This is not itself a puzzlement since David had more than one son, and a later individual can be descended from more than one of them. The question arises when the two lines meet up again. The Solomon line runs parallel to the Nathan line until the time of Shealtiel, when they intersect. In Matthew, Shealtiel is described as the son of Jechoniah, and in Luke his father is said to be Neri. The question arises: How can he have two fathers? After Shealtiel, both genealogies state Christ was descended from Shealtiel’s son, Zerubbabel, who was governor of Israel after the Babylonian Exile. But then they diverge again. Matthew traces Christ’s lineage through Zerubbabel’s son Abiud, while Luke traces it through a different son, Rhesa. Again, there is no puzzlement since Zerubbabel simply had more than one son, and Christ was descended from both. The question again arises when the two lines converge, which they do on Jesus’ foster father, Joseph. In Matthew, Joseph is said to be the son of Jacob, of the Abiud line, while in Luke Joseph is said to be the son of Heli, of the Rhesa line. So the question is: How can Joseph be said to have two fathers? Some have tried to deal with the issue by saying that Luke’s genealogy really doesn’t give Jesus’ lineage through Joseph at all, but through Mary. However, the text does not support that idea. Luke states that Joseph was the son of Heli, not that Mary was the daughter of Heli, and in any event, this does not account for the question of Shealtiel’s two fathers. To explain that issue, one needs to know something about how ancient Jewish genealogies work. There are a number of differences that can account for this. Ancient Jewish genealogies often skipped generations, in part because there were no terms for “grandson” and “grandfather.” Any male one was descended from was one’s “father,” regardless of how many generations back he was. Similarly, any male descended from you was your “son,” no matter how many generations down the line he was. This is why the Hebrews were called “the sons of Israel” hundreds of years after the original Israel (Jacob) died. Potentially, this could explain why Shealtiel is said to have more than one father. In biblical genealogies, as soon as one moves more than one generation back, a person does have more than one father. Adoption, whether of a child or an adult, was also common and could affect which genealogical line one was ascribed to. For example, the faithful spy Caleb was biologically the son of a non-Jew named Jephunneh (Num. 32:12), but he was adopted into the tribe of Judah and ascribed to the line of Hezron (1 Chron. 2:18). Adoption could take place even posthumously. The most striking example of that is what is known as the levirite marriage (from the Latin, levir = brother-in-law). If a man died childless, it was the duty of his brother to marry the widow and father a son on behalf of his brother. This son would then be posthumously “adopted” by the dead man and reckoned as his son in the family genealogy. Given how common death and infertility were in the ancient world, it would not be surprising to find several instances of levirate marriage in the thousand years between the time of David and the time of Christ. Adoption is the most probable explanation of Shealtiel’s two fathers. Jeremiah had prophesied that Jechoniah’s (biological) descendants would never sit on the throne of Judah (Jer. 22:30). Thus the legal succession passed to the line of Nathan and Shealtiel, though biologically the son of Neri, was reckoned as Jechoniah’s son for purposes of the kingly line. It appears that Shealtiel also died childless and his brother Pedaiah fulfilled the obligations of a brother and fathered Zerubbabel (1 Chron. 3:17-19 with Ezra 3:2, etc.). This solves the first case of in the genealogy of a man seeming to have two fathers. The second occurs with Jesus’ foster father, Joseph. In this case we have more direct information. The second century historian Julius Africanus, a native of Israel, records information given by Christ’s remaining family in his day. According to their family genealogy, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (mentioned in Matthew) married a woman named Estha, who bore him a son named Jacob. After Matthan died, Estha married his close relative Melchi (mentioned in Luke) and bore him a son named Heli. Jacob and Heli were thus half-brothers. Unfortunately, Heli died childless, and so Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, who was biologically the son of Jacob but legally the son of Heli (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:7:6). |
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