The genealogies in the New Testament have long been a source of embarrassment for literalist Christians. Jesus' lineage is provided twice -- once in Matthew 1:1-17 and once in Luke 3:23-38, but the differences between them are immense, and the problems within them are complex. These inconsistencies cannot easily be explained away.

• Contrary to what many poorly-informed Christians assert, both genealogies trace Jesus' line through Joseph, even though both of the gospels also claim that Mary was a virgin when she conceived. Both Matthew and Luke seem to recognize the awkwardness of this, though they do not make any effort to explain it. Matthew 1:16 reads "Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born," suggesting that he's not quite able to bring himself to say "Joseph the father of Jesus." Similarly, Luke 3:23 says that Jesus was "the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli"; the parenthetical aside makes it clear that Luke doesn't quite know what to do with Joseph's relationship to Jesus. It would have been very easy for one of the evangelists, or for a later scribe, to shift the genealogy over to Mary. But none of them did.


• As can be seen even from the brief quotations above, the two genealogies diverge immediately, and they do not often mesh. Was Joseph's father Heli or Jacob? Was his great-grandfather Levi or Eleazar? Was his great-great-grandfather Melchi or Eliud? Was his great-great-great-grandfather Jannai or Achim? These are not minor glitches; what we see here are two completely different bloodlines. In point of fact, the two genealogies have only three names in common between David and Jesus. (David is one. The other two, for the record, are Shealtiel and Zerubbabel.)


• On the subject of Mary's lineage, Luke says in 1:36 that Mary was "kin" (suggenis) to Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother. Elizabeth, we are told, is a "daughter of Aaron," which is to say that she is from a priestly (Levite) family. This makes sense, since she is married to a priest, Zechariah, and Levites tended to marry within the tribe. If Mary is a blood-relation to Elizabeth, as suggenis suggests, then that means it's very unlikely that she is of Davidic stock (on which see below).


• Matthew's genealogy begins with Abraham, the father of the Israelites. This fits the generally "Jewish" orientation of Matthew's gospel, his interest in the Law, his portrayal of Jesus as a new Moses, and so on. Luke's genealogy, by contrast, goes all the way back to Adam, the first human being. This gels with Luke's interest in Christianity as a religion for the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike.
  
  Of course, this is not a contradiction strictly speaking; a genealogy that goes further back does not necessarily conflict with a genealogy that stops sooner. However, it is important to note that these genealogies are subtly supporting each evangelist's agenda, and therefore should be read with a critical eye.


• Matthew's genealogy is divided neatly into three groups of fourteen generations. Fourteen generations are counted between Abraham and King David, another fourteen between King David and the Babylonian Exile, and a third fourteen between the Babylonian Exile and the birth of Jesus. Matthew's point is that something significant happens to the Israelites every fourteenth generation.
  
  Various reasons have been suggested for this scheme. Seven is a significant number in many religions, and Judaism is no exception; twice seven, therefore, might be seen as a doubly perfect number. Also, the numerical value of David's name in Hebrew adds up to fourteen, which Matthew may have used as a way to emphasize the Messiahship of Jesus.
  
  But there's a problem. If you look carefully, you'll see that the final list contains only thirteen names. Go ahead. Count them yourself. I'll wait.
  
  (Some Christian traditions claim that the missing fourteenth means that Jesus should be counted twice: once for himself, and once for the Holy Spirit. As lovely as this explanation is, it simply is not supported anywhere in Matthew's text.)


• Luke does not use the system of fourteens, and he expresses no interest in the Babylonian Exile. Instead, he counts seventy-seven generations from the beginning of the world to Jesus, suggesting that he, too, is interested in sevens.


• Both evangelists trace Jesus' line -- or at least Joseph's line -- through David, Israel's most famous king. The reason for this is that the Messiah (literally, "the Anointed One," which is translated as Christos in Greek) was expected to be of Davidic descent. God's promises to this effect can be found in 2 Samuel 7:12-16, Jeremiah 23:5-6, Isaiah 55:3-5, Ezekiel 34:20-24, and so on.


• Both Luke and Matthew are keen to establish that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, David's birthplace (as we are told in 1 Samuel 16:18; for a relevant prophecy, see Micah 5:2). However, Jesus was known as Jesus of Nazareth, probably because he actually was from Nazareth, which meant that the evangelists had to come up with a way to get the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem. Luke and Matthew did this in very different ways.
  
  According to Luke, Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth but travelled to Bethlehem, his ancestor's birthplace, so that they could take part in a census. Not only do no records of this census exist anywhere in contemporary Roman sources, but no other New Testament book mentions it. Besides, the idea of returning to the birthplace of your ancestors every time there is a census seems surpassing odd. (To my e2 friends who are the children of immigrants: do you go back to your grandparents' homeland every time a census takes place there?)
  
  Matthew, for his part, has Jesus born in Bethlehem but his parents flee for Egypt in order to get away from the murderous rage of Herod. When they return, they hear that the new ruler in Bethlehem is just as bad as the previous one, so they settle in Nazareth instead. Luke mentions neither the trip to Egypt nor the slaughter of the innocents.


• It is true that "Jewishness" is traditionally passed down through the mother rather than the father. To this day, Conservative and Orthodox Jews both consider a child Jewish so long as its mother is Jewish. (Reform Jews consider a child Jewish if either parent is Jewish.) However, that doesn't get us out of the genealogy problem in the gospels. No genealogy in the Torah traces the ancestry of an important figure through women. Check for yourself: the genealogies in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 are typical, and other examples abound. I don't think that anyone would have doubted that Jesus was Jewish, but that's not the question in the first place. The question is how we get from David to Jesus. Despite the length of their genealogies, neither Matthew nor Luke answer that question at all satisfactorily.

Is it possible to be a Christian even after learning about all these complexities and inconsistencies in the gospel accounts? Of course it is. However, in my opinion, it is not possible to be a simplistic, literalist Christian, who claims that the Bible's message is free of conflicts and complications. There are lots of ways to read texts besides literal ways, and Luke's and Matthew's birth narratives require those other sorts of readings.

Further Information:

The first problem facing Bible translators is the differences in wording among manuscripts of the Scriptures. These differences have arisen because, even with the strongest determination to copy a text without error, a scribe copying a text of considerable length will almost inevitably introduce changes in the wording. It is understandable that mistakes can arise from inattentiveness brought on by weariness. For example instead of the correct reading, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand?" (Mark 4:21, RSV), several important manuscripts read "under the stand." This is obviously a scribal error in repeating the preposition "under" in the third phrase.

Sometimes a scribe's error of judgment works havoc with the text. One of the most atrocious blunders of this kind is in the minuscule Greek manuscript no. 109, dated to the 14th century. This manuscript of the four Gospels was transcribed from a copy that must have had Luke's genealogy of Jesus (3:23-38 ) in two columns of 28 lines in each. Instead of transcribing the text by following the columns in succession, the scribe of MS 109 copied the genealogy by following the lines across the two columns. ^*
- Bruce M. Metzger on Persistent Problems Confronting Bible Translators (1993)

The earliest writing material mentioned in the Old Testament is stone, and on it was written the Ten Commandments. Other materials included ink on plaster, clay, wood and as well as metal, and shards of pottery. The first manuscripts of the New Testament were on papyrus, a plant found along the Nile River. They were copied by hand on scrolls that were about thirty feet long and ten inches wide. The columns were usually 3 to 4 inches wide and scribes frequently wrote on both sides of the roll. Papyrus was used in Egypt as early as 3500 B.C. with the earliest existing reproductions of the New Testamen written on the leaves of papyrus then sewn together into a book with the columns of text called a codex. Until 1450 A.D. copies, versions, citations, etc. were hand written and subject to human mistakes. There are many variations found in the vast array of materials and they are referred to as Textual Variants and the reason there are marginal notes in most of Bibles published today. The text Professor of New Testament Language and Literature Bruce M. Metzger refers to is Codex 109, which has Luke's genealogy of Jesus. By following the lines across two columns rather than following the columns. Almost everyone is made the son of the wrong father; and God is called the "son of Aram"; "Phares" is the source of the whole race. No doubt the labor that goes into making a translation of the Bible is both thrilling and arduous. It`s exciting when translators regard the repayment, both devout and literary, that the interpretation will offer to their readers; it is draining when they deal with an assortment of problems, some of them outside the prospect of ever finding an answer.

The genealogies in the New Testament have long been a source of confusion for not only the secular community, but Christians as well. Even the contemporaries of Jesus had problems understanding it and were urged by other biblical writers to be discerning. Part of the dilemma is that all tribal genealogical records were destroyed with the Temple of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and in 70 A.D. Add to the mix that that people in Biblical times were known by several different names requires some scrutiny to get at what were probably the intentions of both Gospel writers.

As a general overview of the four gospels, Matthew precedes an account of John the Baptist by opening with the genealogy of Jesus, his birth, escape to Egypt, and his settling in Nazareth after the death of Herod. Mark opts to begin his Gospel with the Baptist. Luke has already commented on the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus then adds a trip to Jerusalem for the Passover that Jesus made when he was twelve. The apostle John has paved the way with a preamble in which Jesus is declared to be the Word made flesh. One idea that becomes crystal clear by reading these passages alongside each other is that all four Gospel writers are careful to point out that the ministry of John the Baptist is a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah. ¹ Their narratives illustrate that John the Baptist came to call the nation of Israel to repentance and that after many years of silence, God was once again speaking to his people through a prophet.

Since then the accepted Christian examination of the ongoing movement of God in the past dealings with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as fulfilling and completing the divine revelation confirmed in the Old Testament, is mirrored by the selection of formulas established with citations of scripture in the New Testament. As a result Matthew possessed the view that Hosea 11:1 as being confirmed or fulfilled by another event that was similar to it and happened at a later time.

As hapax notes, there are two family trees written about the ancestry of Jesus in the second part of the Bible, one in Matthew that outlines his descent from Abraham, and one in Luke, which reverses the order. ^{2 3} While Matthew's background is confined to the Abrahamic line , Luke's goes back to Adam. Some theologians suggest that it's a mnemonic device and that "Matthew or his source divided the generations from Abraham to Jesus into three groups of fourteen; fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to Jesus." ⁴ Several names were omitted to maintain proportion including the names of kings Ahazail, Joash, and Amaziah that were removed from the second list of fourteen between Jehoram and Uzziah. Further exclusions many have arisen in Matthew's third list of fourteen, since Luke, who offers a dissimilar line between Zerubbabel and Joseph, records nineteen names for the same period.

Deliberately created around a predetermined number Matthew's lineage is probably meant to depict Jesus heritage as one from a succession of kings. Bruce M. Metzger points out that, "in fact it is a new David: the sum of the numerical value of the Hebrew name "David" (d + w + d = 4 + 6 + 4) is fourteen, and Jesus is frequently called "son of David" throughout the gospel of Matthew."

Even though lineage was traced through males during biblical times four women are named in Matthew's list. ⁵ Luke never mentions them but what's even more surprising is that three of the women are non Israelites: Rahab the Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite and Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. By bringing them up in his narrative Matthew foretells the inclusion of Gentiles in the midst of Jesus' disciples. ⁶

Metzger discusses Luke's lineage back to Adam through Abraham saying that because the author of the Gospel's intention is to show that Jesus is not only the fulfillment of what has been prophesied thus far for Israel, but also that Jesus is the savior of the world. He explains:

The genealogy in Luke 3: 23-38 has variations in different textual translations. ^* According to most Greek manuscripts (followed by the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament), there are 11 x 7 generations from Adam to Jesus ( that is, from Adam to Abraham, 3 x 7 generations; 3 x 7 generations; from Isaac to David, 2 x 7 generations; from Nathan to Salathiel (preexilic) , 3 x 7 generations; from Zerubbabel (postexilic) to Jesus, 3 x 7 generations). Other Greek manuscripts, the Latin Vulgate and Syriac Peshitta record 76 generations and some Latin manuscripts list 72 generations.

After David, both authors seem to agree on two names Shealtiel / Salathiel and Zerubabel. Innumerable attempts to resolve the conflicting genealogies for both texts have been attempted however none of them has ever achieved widespread acceptance. Most theologians agree that the inconsistent lines of descendants are intended to act as literary devices for Matthew and Luke to meet the overall purposes of each author. They conclude that they are not written with the intentions of being interpreted like contemporary chronicles of ancestry adding that the genealogy of Jesus is important because of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah declaring that he would be a descendent of the house of David. ⁷

To highlight these conclusions are two places in the Bible where the subject of genealogy is mentioned, both in a highly critical sense. Timothy mentions "endless genealogies that promote speculations" and Titus cautions the reader to " avoid...genealogies...for they are unprofitable." ^{8 9}

Contrasted against the larger context of this commentary Metzger mentions that the references to myths may be about the "...various emanations ("aeons") between God and humankind. In gnostic belief." He also notes that because Titus 1: 14 is tied to Jewish myths and 1 Timothy 1:7 disputes the assertions of those who would wish to be teachers of the Law, "the genealogies referred to may be based on biblical sources but elaborated on in the same way as the Book of Jubilees or more generally aggadah.

Just as it's impractical to compare modern pedigrees with ancient genealogies it is also unrealistic to compare censuses taken two millennia ago with ones taken today. During ancient times most people, especially underprivileged Jews, did not travel far from their place of birth. Writers of other historical documents outside of the Christian community support the Biblical version of Joseph and Mary returning to their homes for a census. ¹⁰

Sources:

Berry ,George Ricker. The Original Bible, The Greek New Testament (1981) :
www.biblestudymanuals.net/original_bible.htm
Accessed July 24, 2005.

Metzger, Bruce M. Bibliotheca Sacra 150 Persistent Problems Confronting Bible Translators (July-September 1993): p. 273-84 .
www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_trans_metzger3.html
Accessed July 24, 2005.

Oxford Companion to the Bible, Russell Fuller and Bruce Metzger, author; Bruce M. Metzger, edited by Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 245.

Sanders, Phil. The Making of Ancient Books (Adapted from Neil Lightfoot's chapter in How We Got the Bible) :
www.god-answers.org/Online_Tools/ books/How_We_Got_the_Bible.pdf
Accessed July 24, 2005.