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The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke.[1] 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 (whose royal ancestry affirms Jesus' Messianic title Son of 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.[2]
Early Christian scholars (starting with Africanus and Eusebius[3]) take both lineages to be true, offering various explanations for their divergence.[4] For instance, one (usually Matthew's) may be taken to be the lineage of Joseph and the other (usually Luke's) 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 (such as Joseph) 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.[5]
- ^ Matthew 1:1–16; Luke 3:23–38
- ^ Matthew 1:16; Luke 3:23
- ^ Eusebius Pamphilius, Church history, Life of Constantine §VII.
- ^ R. T. France, The Gospel According to Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary (Eerdmans, 1985) pages 71–72.
- ^ Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas (HarperCollins, 2009) page 95.