Are the "genealogies" of Jesus in Matthew and Luke irreconcilable? Are they fictional?
1. A Jewish objection to the messianship of Jesus is that he lacks impeccable Davidic pedigree. Related to this is the objection that a virginal conception disqualifies his claim to be a Davidic heir.
If, however, Matthew and Luke feel free to create a fictional backstory for Jesus, why would they fabricate a backstory that obscures his Davidic claims? Why invent the virgin birth, or codify a legendary virgin birth, if that delegitimates the claim that Jesus is the rightful heir of David?
An obvious explanation is that Matthew and Luke were not guilty of confabulation. Rather, they were constrained by facts about the personal history of Jesus, even if it generates prima facie tensions in their theology.
It would be convenient for them to invent a backstory that makes Jesus an unambiguous heir of David. For that matter, it would be convenient for them to invent a backstory that makes him a Levite. But they're stuck with the actual facts about Jesus. It's a mark of their historical fidelity that they don't concoct evidence.
2. There's the risk of creating a nonexistent problem or contradiction by making a preliminary misstep. It may be prejudicial to classify the lists in Mt 1:1-17 and Lk 3:23-38 as genealogies. Although they contain genealogical elements, it may be simplistic to reduce them to a genealogical genre.
You can have two contradictory roadmaps if, indeed, both are maps mapping the same area. If, however, they have a different function, then they can be different without being contradictory.
3. For instance, many scholars regard the phrase in Mt 1:1 as an evocation of Gen 2:4. Yet Gen 2:4 is not a genealogy. At best it's a figurative genealogy. So that in itself is a clue about how we should read Mt 1:1-17. That should caution us against assuming that this list is meant to be a Simon pure genealogy. Based on the programmatic quotation from Gen 2:4, which introduces the list, the list may reflect a different or broader principle.
4. Although "begetting" can be literal, it can also be metaphorical. Ps 2:7 uses that language figuratively for God's regent. And it may not be coincidental that the figurative usage occurs in the context of enthronement.
5. To my knowledge, royal succession doesn't require genetic lineage. A king can designate a successor who's not a blood relation. Although heredity and royal succession often coincide, they are separable.
6. In Lk 3:38, while "son of" can biological in reference to Seth and Adam, it can't be biological in reference to God. Minimally, this entails a shift in meaning of "sonship" at that juncture. So Luke isn't using "son of" consistently. There's a studied equivocation. And "son of" can have a figurative sense, viz. "sons of thunder" (Mk 3:17), "sons of Belial" (Deut 13:13).
In Lk 3:38, while "son of" can biological in reference to Seth and Adam, it can't be biological in reference to God.
ReplyDeleteThat is probably why the Greek text does not even have the word "son" at all from Heli back to God. After it says, "Jesus, . . . being supposedly the son of Joseph" - after that, it just has the repeated phrase of the genitive articles with the names "the one of so and so", "the one of so and so". It seems to deliberately leave out "son" in order to cover grandsons, great-grandson, and son in law. It seems τοῦ Ἠλὶ / tou Heli ("the one of Heli") means Joseph was "son in law" of Heli - meaning that Heli was Mary's father and the Luke geneology goes back to Nathan, son of David.
23 Καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν Ἰησοῦς ἀρχόμενος ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα Ὢν υἱός ὡς ἐνομίζετο Ἰωσὴφ
τοῦ Ἠλὶ 24 τοῦ Μαθθὰτ* τοῦ Λευὶ τοῦ Μελχὶ τοῦ Ἰανναὶ τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ 25 τοῦ Ματταθίου τοῦ Ἀμὼς τοῦ Ναοὺμ τοῦ Ἑσλὶ* τοῦ Ναγγαὶ 26 τοῦ Μαὰθ τοῦ Ματταθίου τοῦ Σεμεῒν τοῦ Ἰωσὴχ τοῦ Ἰωδὰ 27 τοῦ Ἰωανὰν τοῦ Ῥησὰ τοῦ Ζοροβάβελ τοῦ Σαλαθιὴλ τοῦ Νηρὶ 28 τοῦ Μελχὶ τοῦ Ἀδδὶ τοῦ Κωσὰμ τοῦ Ἐλμαδὰμ τοῦ Ἢρ 29 τοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Ἐλιέζερ τοῦ Ἰωρὶμ τοῦ Μαθθὰτ τοῦ Λευὶ 30 τοῦ Συμεὼν τοῦ Ἰούδα τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ Ἰωνὰμ τοῦ Ἐλιακὶμ 31 τοῦ Μελεὰ τοῦ Μεννὰ τοῦ Ματταθὰ τοῦ Ναθὰμ τοῦ Δαυὶδ 32 τοῦ Ἰεσσαὶ τοῦ Ἰωβὴδ τοῦ Βοὸς τοῦ Σαλὰ τοῦ Ναασσὼν 33 τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ τοῦ Ἑσρὼμ τοῦ Φαρὲς τοῦ Ἰούδα 34 τοῦ Ἰακὼβ τοῦ Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ τοῦ Θάρα τοῦ Ναχὼρ 35 τοῦ Σεροὺχ τοῦ Ῥαγαῦ τοῦ Φάλεκ τοῦ Ἔβερ τοῦ Σαλὰ 36 τοῦ Καϊνὰμ τοῦ Ἀρφαξὰδ τοῦ Σὴμ τοῦ Νῶε τοῦ Λάμεχ 37 τοῦ Μαθουσαλὰ τοῦ Ἑνὼχ τοῦ Ἰάρετ τοῦ Μαλελεὴλ τοῦ Καϊνὰμ 38 τοῦ Ἐνὼς τοῦ Σὴθ τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ Θεοῦ
Jason, what do you think of Eusebius' solution to the disagreement between the two Gospel genealogies where he claims that Joseph had two fathers [who were step-brothers by different fathers], one legal and the other biological?
ReplyDeleteI first encountered this view from this video: https://youtu.be/U3bsAMyRwbw
It's also explained in a more succinct way by another video here: https://youtu.be/UWq3fVQuSuA
I prefer the more thorough explanation of the first video.
ANNOYED PINOY,
DeleteI haven't studied the genealogies in much depth, partly because there are so many linguistic issues involved and so much dispute about them, and I don't know the Biblical languages. I've read a lot of material for and against the authenticity of the genealogies, and it seems that there are many potential ways to reconcile them. I haven't made much of an effort to rank the possibilities, and I don't know much about the explanation you're citing and where it ranks.
In the supplemental material in the second edition of his The Birth Of The Messiah (New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999), Raymond Brown objected to reconciling the genealogies, but acknowledged that it could be done:
"One can never disprove such hypotheses [harmonizing the genealogies in Matthew and Luke]; but there is absolutely nothing in the Gospel text to justify them. And what is gained if such diverse genealogies are reconciled when the other parts of the two infancy narratives are apparently quite irreconcilable?" (588)
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, two very liberal Jesus Seminar scholars, acknowledged, "It is not impossible to harmonize them [the infancy narratives]." (The First Christmas [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007], 23) Even scholars as liberal as Brown, Borg, and Crossan have acknowledged that the material can be reconciled. In a response to Annette Merz, I discussed some of the ways in which two accurate genealogies could differ from one another. Given the prominence of Jesus' relatives in early Christianity, the early Christians could easily have had access to multiple genealogies that had been kept by different segments of the family under different circumstances, with different motives, etc. I give some examples of how easy it would be for genealogies to differ from one another under such circumstances, especially since they were shaped by so many people over the years. The two genealogies we have in Matthew and Luke provide us with some examples. They start in different places; Matthew moves forward chronologically, whereas Luke moves backward; etc. We're not in much of a position to reconstruct what led up to the genealogies we have in the two gospels.
Thanks for answering. Also, those are great quotes where even liberal scholars concede that it's not logically impossible to reconcile the genealogies.
DeleteSteve wrote:
ReplyDelete"It would be convenient for them to invent a backstory that makes Jesus an unambiguous heir of David. For that matter, it would be convenient for them to invent a backstory that makes him a Levite. But they're stuck with the actual facts about Jesus. It's a mark of their historical fidelity that they don't concoct evidence."
Hebrews provides a good illustration. The book places a lot of emphasis on portraying Jesus in priestly terms. It would have been in the author's interest to have portrayed Jesus as a Levite, but instead he refers to Jesus' being from the tribe of Judah (Hebrews 7:14). And that background of Jesus is referred to as "evident", even though the author knew he had the option of saying that Jesus' background was unknown or irrelevant (7:3). Hebrews seems to have been written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., given the book's comments about the ongoing temple system. So, Hebrews provides us with further evidence that the kind of background information about Jesus under consideration here was of widespread interest and was well established in the earliest decades of Christianity. Raymond Brown, who reached largely liberal conclusions about the infancy narratives and related issues, refers to Jesus' status as a Davidid as something accepted by "the majority of scholars" (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 505), and he provides a lot of good arguments for accepting it. Hebrews 7:14 is one of the lines of evidence he cites (507).