There's often thought to be a simply computational error in Matthew's genealogy (Mt 1:17). It looks like Matthew miscounted the number of generations in v17. This is discussed in standard commentaries, which rehearse different explanations.
I don't have a new, direct explanation to offer. I'd just say that I take a different approach to the issue. I take a step back.
1. We're so conversant with the Bible that it can gives us a false sense of familiarity. But we're not 1C Palestinian Jews, and Matthew wasn't written to us. There's an in-house quality to some of his reasoning which may simply be lost on a modern reader. We are far removed in time and space from the cultural code he shared with his target audience. Imagine my dipping into the rabbinic discussions in the Talmud. It's a strange world.
We need to have realistic expectations. What's impressive is how much of the Bible we understand. But we need to have a sense of humility, and not act like it should all be transparent to a modern reader. There's no presumption that everything in Scripture ought to make sense to a modern reader, and if it doesn't make sense to us, it must be wrong. I expect to find puzzling passages in Scripture.
2. The initial distribution of Matthew's Gospel must have been extremely limited. There were no Christian publishing houses back then. It's not like the first run was 1000 copies. It had to be hand-copied by private scribes.
Presumably the first readers of Matthew's Gospel were members of his social circle. He knew them and they knew him. If his genealogy committed such a conspicuous blunder in elementary arithmetic, surely one or more of his readers could have taken him aside and said, "It just doesn't add up. That's an embarrassing mistake. You need to fix it!"
And with so few copies in circulation, it wouldn't be hard at that stage of the distribution process to edit. So why was the mistake allowed to remain and be recopied? If it's that's noticeable to a modern reader, surely it was just as noticeable to the first readers.
Perhaps it wasn't corrected because the first readers didn't perceive it to be in error. It made sense to them because they understood the code.
// Presumably the first readers of Matthew's Gospel were members of his social circle. He knew them and they knew him. If his genealogy committed such a conspicuous blunder in elementary arithmetic, surely one or more of his readers could have taken him aside and said, "It just doesn't add up. That's an embarrassing mistake. You need to fix it!"
ReplyDeleteAnd with so few copies in circulation, it wouldn't be hard at that stage of the distribution process to edit. So why was the mistake allowed to remain and be recopied? If it's that's noticeable to a modern reader, surely it was just as noticeable to the first readers. //
Great point! His target audience were 1st century literate Jews who could explain his Gospel to those less literate or non-literate Jews. Jews of course are known for their high intelligence. So much so that the racism targeted against them is often due to jealousy on the part of non-Jews for their ability to do business [which obviously includes COUNTING]. So, the "mistake" has to either have been intentional, OR there's a copying error. As Steve said there are many offered solutions. It only takes one plausible solution to dissipate the alleged errors. And we have more than one. I say "errors" because there's not only the counting problem, but the obvious fact that Matthew's list leaves out many other names that are clearly recorded in the Tanakh. Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some other code that hasn't been discovered yet in Matthew's list. As I speculated in a thread HERE.
One of the things I like about InspiringPhilosophy's videos is that it provides the current generation's video fixated generation solutions to many alleged Bible problems in audio/visual format.
Here's IP's video on this particular problem:
https://youtu.be/PC1pAeIGrpc