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Jesus's Genealogy

Oct 31, 2023, 5:57 PM

Jesus’s Genealogy

A previous thread branched off into Jesus’s genealogy, and I thought it was an interesting enough topic to split it off so it doesn’t get buried too deep in discussion.

Some people made some fine posts related to it, and attached some nice articles, but I wanted to get right down into the weeds and dig around in it.

In short, something is going on there, I just haven’t figured out what it is. So, I’ll consider this post a work in progress. It’s a mystery, and I do love mysteries.

We’ve got two genealogies to work with, Matt 1:1 and Luke 3:23. Matthew puts his right up front. It’s the very first thing he wants you to see and read; Jesus’s Davidic link. So, whoever Matthew’s intended readers were, I suppose that was a primary concern or issue for them.

Luke on the other hand puts his genealogy after Jesus’s birth. So he wants John the Baptist and Jesus’s birth to come first for his audience. Since there are only two to work with, it should be easy enough to line them up and see what we’ve got here.

I can see three distinct break points right off the bat, so I’ll break my spreadsheet into 3 chunks to take a closer look at each one:

Section 1 (I’ll paste multiple times so you don’t have to scroll back and forth.)

Section one is the simplest. Matthew on the left, Luke on the right. Column C is consecutive generations, 1-14. Matthew makes a comment about 14 generations from a to b, 14 generations from c to d, etc. But it seems he fudged a bit, or at least double-dipped. We’ll get there in a second.

Column D is king numbers of the Unified Kingdom, and then Judah. Saul and Ish-bosh-eth would have been U1 and U2, but they’re not relevant here.

Column E is the people, F is the scripture. Colum G is consecutive generations from Adam. For instance, Abraham is 21st generation from Adam, and 1 for Matthew, so 21/1.

Matthew starts at Abraham, and Luke starts at Adam, but all that is irrelevant at the moment.

The first important split in Jesus’s genealogy comes at David. (The lineage is identical prior to that.)

Matthew branches off through Solomon, the King’s branch. Luke branches off through Nathan. Both are kids from Bathsheba, and as far as I can tell, Luke’s branch is not priests or really anyone of importance.

In fact, most of those names mentioned through Nathan only appear once in the whole Bible, right here. Why did he go down that branch? That’s mystery #1. I have no idea.

Section #2 is the most interesting section.

Matthew is trying real hard for his 14-14-14 symmetry. Maybe a little too hard. If you look at the kings in red (except Solomon), those are all kings of Judah that Matthew eliminated in his lineage. You can still read all about them in 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings, but Matthew doesn’t want them. Why? That’s mystery #2.

Here’s what’s going on politically:

Ahaiziah is the legit #6 King of Judah. No question about it. Son of the king becomes the king. But he marries the enemy. The daughter of the King of Israel, Omri. Her name is Athaliah. Oops. They have a son, Joash.

But King Ahaiziah dies early, and Joash is still a baby, so his mom, the enemy, becomes Queen Regent of Judah. Now, she is the rightful Queen, but she’s not of the line of David.

A true “Oh Shid” moment. Next she tries to kill baby Joash and the whole rest of the family, but gets killed herself. When that happens, Joash, of the line of David, becomes rightful king as he is still the son of the former king.

And Joash’s son, Amaziah, becomes rightful King of Judah also. But Matthew cuts the whole episode, and lineage, out. Why would he do that? Matthew is writing almost 900 years after that ugly episode. Nevertheless, those kings are not in Matthew’s lineage of Jesus. Mystery #3.

Sure the wicked mom was of the Omri line from Israel, but her son, and her son’s son, were both rightful Davidic rulers. Finally, once the dust clears, Matthew includes Uzziah, king #10, without missing a beat.

Matthew even fudges by saying King #5 (Jehoram) was father of King #10 (Uzziah)

“Jehoram the father of Uzziah,” Matthew 1:8 NIV

But that is flatly contradicted by 2 Chronicles 26:1

“Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in place of his father Amaziah.”

And Matthew is contradicted again in 2 Kings 15:1

“In the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Azariah[a] (Uzziah),son of Amaziah king of Judah began to reign.”
[a] 2 Kings 15:1 Also called Uzziah;

Uzziah (#10) is the son of Amaziah (#9), not the son of Jehoram (#5).

Now, one could “poetically” say that we are all the sons of Adam, or Seth, or Enosh. But if one is making a chronological list of kings, it’s best to stay either in poetry, or in prose, because mixing the two makes for a whole lot of unnecessary confusion.

And if one is doing it specifically to show royal lineage, like for Jesus, prose is better than poetry. Particularly when Matthew has the Old Testament he can flip right over to and review the line in both Kings and Chronicles.

Matthew then cuts out 2 more Kings, Jehoahaz (#17) and Jehoiakim (#18). Both these guys were legit, but 17 was deposed by the Egyptians in an alliance gone wrong, and 18 was killed by the Babylonians and not buried. Still, they were Kings of Judah in the line of David.

Matthew also deletes another King of Judah from history down at Zedekiah, King #20. Zedekiah was placed on the throne of Judah as a puppet by Babylon but he revolted, watched his kids die, got his eyes poked out, and got hauled off in captivity 586 BCE. Poor guy. Why Matthew nixes him is mystery #4.

At this point, Matthew’s poetic 14-generation symmetry needs some massaging, so he double-counts Jeconiah (in light blue), counting him as the last of the second group of 14, and the first of the third group of 14. It’s possible that Jeconiah has a son named Jeconiah, and so there were two Jeconiah’s, but the Bible says he has 8 sons, and Jeconiah isn’t one of them. Mystery #5.

1 Chron 3:17 And the sons of [q]Jeconiah [r]were Assir, Shealtiel his son, 18 and Malchiram, Pedaiah, Shenazzar, Jecamiah, Hoshama, and Nedabiah.

Zedekiah would prove to be the last king Israel (Judah or Israel) would ever have. The two Jesus genealogies briefly synch-up again at the Exile, with both Matthew and Luke tracing Jesus through Shealtiel and his son Zerubbabel (in orange.) Both were of the Davidic line, but neither would get a chance to be king. They make sense in Matthew’s line, but why Luke has two “would be kings” in his line of unknowns it yet another mystery, #6.

And finally, after Zerubbabel, Matthew and Luke again diverge. Matthew goes through son Zerubbabel’s son Abihud, and Luke goes through Zerubbabel’s son Rhesa. And the only problem with that is that 1 Chron 3:17 doesn’t list Rhesa as a son of Jeconiah. The only time the name Rhesa appears in the Bible is in Luke’s lineage.

So, where did Rhesa come from? Mystery #7. And why split between Abihud and Rhesa? Mystery #8.

There’s still something missing though, because even with Matthew cutting out a handful of Kings of Judah, there’s still about 10 generations difference from when they synch at Zerubbabel, down to Jospeh and Jesus. What’s up with that? Mystery #9.

So, there’s a little history on the topic but as always, it just seems to generate more questions than answers. Why two lines that touch and diverge, touch, and diverge? Why cut out some kings but not others? And who are all those people through Nathan, and how can they be counted as “royalty?” Nine juicy questions for those willing to take up the R&P Board challenge!

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I don't disagree with any of that. And I also don't think that a genealogy has anything to do with whether Jesus was the son of God, either. As I've mentioned before, in my church the specific details of the various explanations of man were largely irrelevant. One believed, or one didn't.

But, the fact that Matthew put his genealogy right in front might show that it mattered to him, or at least to those he was directing his Gospel to.

My interest in in the historical situation at the time that compelled Matthew to do that. As I mentioned, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Matthew didn't have an Old Testament sitting right on his desk as he was writing his Gospel. And he probably knew the Kings of Judah by memory, as did his readers, without even flipping to Kings and Chronicles.

That tells me that he was ok cutting 7 kings out, AND that his readers were fine with it too. There's no way he would present a genealogy that was false to people just as versed in scripture as he was.

It would be like me telling Clemson Nation that we won 3 national championships in the 90's. No one would believe it, and since they lived through it they would know it without a doubt. Actually, a better analogy would be if I listed all the Clemson coaches and just left out Hatfield and West. Clemson nation might just look around, nod in agreement, and say "Yeah, were fine with that. We can all collectively agree that never happened."

Sticking with the Gospels, let's say I'm a Jew in 50ish AD, and maybe I was even lucky enough to walk around some with Jesus twenty years earlier. Mark puts out his Gospel, without a genealogy, and it's well received in the community, and accurately portrays what a lot of people remember.

But those priests in Jerusalem won't stop nagging us. In fact, they are still sacrificing at the Temple (and would until 70 AD), still worshipping as normal, and still going about their daily routines as if nothing significant has happened. We see it clearly, but they don't. To them, it's just business as usual. And what's worse, they're attacking the guy who we know was the messiah by saying he doesn't have the creds to be a messiah. The fools!

I say "a messiah" because even the Jewish version of what a messiah is has changed over time. Cyrus, 500 years earlier, was called a messiah. Being Persian, he surely wasn't of the line of David. But now, in 2nd Temple times of 50 AD, correct lineage is a requirement.

So, Matthew sits down in 60 AD and says "I got this." And that's the first thing he lists out, a genealogy. First to silence priestly criticism of Jesus, and second to meet the new requirement of what a messiah is in 30AD vs 500 BCE. By this time Paul has set up churches all over Turkey, Greece, and Italy, among people who could care less about David line. They're not Jews, so it's the message, not the creds, that sell them on Jesus.

But the Jerusalem priests won’t stop. Now the gripe is "Well sure, Matthew gave a lineage back to David, but you Christians say Mary was a virgin, and since Joseph wasn't Jesus's biological dad, he STILL doesn't meet the current Jewish requirement of a messiah. Never mind that Paul is converting way more gentiles by now who just don't care about lineage. This is a fight between Jerusalem Jews and Temple priests.

So Luke sits down in about 70 AD and says "I got this." And he take the line through Mary, to counter the priest criticism that Joseph was a proxy dad. But to do that he has to give Mary sufficient cred too, so his Gospel begins with Jesus's birth and her role and background, and then he gets to Jesus’s genealogy though her. Most everyone who was alive then is dead now from old age, and the Temple has been destroyed by Rome, so his line can’t come under much criticism, because there’s no one left to criticize it.

By the time John comes along in 90ish AD, there is no Temple, and no priests to speak of, and most Christians are gentiles anyway, so nobody cares much about the line of David anymore. So he doesn't even address it in any way in his Gospel.

Now, that's all hypothetical, and I have no idea if it happened that way at all. And as I said at start, for me it's all human explanations to other humans, for their needs, independent of what may be reality. If Jesus was the son of God then he was, regardless of how someone tried to explain it or justify it to someone else for whatever reason.

But it is that human stuff that I find most fascinating. And trying to get into the minds of those guys, while they're making those decisions on what to say, and what not to say, and how to say it, is incredibly exciting.

Jesus's Genealogy

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That is my understanding.

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