The Ultimate Pedigree - back to Adam and Eve

Two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, contain geneologies of Jesus. Matthew chapter 1, verses 1 to 17; Luke chapter 3, verses 23 to 37.

Many readers skip over them, considering them to be a "dull and boring". But there is interest within them:
(a) because they are so different to each other,
(b) because they say something about who Jesus is,
(c) because they have cultural significance,
(d) because they reveal how certain prophesies were fulfilled.

Why are they different ?

1. They are not family trees, so they do not show all the relatives. This is a list of significant ancestors, so the selection of ancestors could be different between geneologies. Luke starts his list earlier than Matthew. He starts from Adam, perhaps to emphasise how Christ is relavent to all mankind. Matthew, writing to a predominantly Jewish audiance starts from Abraham. As I show below, they use the same material as far as King David, and then follow the descendants of two different sons of David.

2. It is likely that official records were kept of family lineage, but that these were destroyed when the Romans invaded Jerusalem after Jesus death. In this case the geneologies in the gospels need only be in summary form. We know that it was a census in which everybody had to return to their ancestral town, that caused Christ to be born in Bethlehem, so genealogical knowledge must have been kept in some form.

3. It has been suggested that Matthew's geneology is Joseph's family, and that Luke gives Mary's line (though it is not clear why he doesn't say this). This view is given creedance by Gabrial's words in Luke 1:32 which imply that Mary was a descendant of David.

4. It is also possible that these lists are tracing legal succession to a throne (even where it does not run through the direct line of father to son) rather than actual parentage. It is interesting to note that Matthew lists Judean Kings, but Luke goes via a more obscure line of ordinary people, seemingly avoiding royalty.

A further puzzle is that the lists come together in the middle, sharing the names Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, and then diverge again.

It seems unlikely that it was all made up, given the importance this society attached to family. Their history is the story of the descendants of Abraham. Jesus' Davidic descent was common knowledge at the time - look at the story of Blind Bartimaus in Mark 10:46-52.

And the writer of the letter to the Hebrews assumes everyone knows that Jesus belonged to the tribe of Judah - he says: "For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah ..." Heb 7:14

Here is a table comaparing the geneology in Matthew with that in Luke, and also bringing in 1 Chronicles from the Old Testement part of the Bible. I had to rearrange some of it, because they go in opposite directions, and I also edited out names of wives and other children for clarity.

H.B.

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