The virgin conception theology is one of the most sublime expressions of the human spirit, liberated from the dungeons of ignorance, from bondage to sin and ego, and enlightened by God’s Spirit to confess with reverence and awe, “I believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son, I believe in God the Holy Spirit.”
Genealogies in Matthew and Luke
¶ The genealogies in our two gospels, Matthew and Luke, may seem to be uninteresting topics for discussion. We are mostly bored by a long list of names, many of which are unfamiliar and never referred to in another Biblical passage. Numerous genealogical tables in the Old Testament are never listed as favorite passages for our devotional reading. But these tables are of high importance because they provide the background for an understanding of the need for and the purpose of the genealogical tables in our gospels.
There are numerous examples in the Old Testament of historical crises in the life story of God’s people, Israel, when their future, both physically and spiritually, was in jeopardy. One of the most serious of these was the exile to Babylon in B.C.E. 587. The land of Judah was devastated, Jerusalem and the temple in shambles, and their religious heritage threatened by exposure to a superior religious culture. The people of God survived this threat largely because of the devotion and commitment of their religious leaders, the prophets and priests. A new chapter began in their religious development in B.C.E. 540 with the rise to power of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great. He gave them a choice—remain in the land of Babylon or return to Jerusalem. Many chose the second option. Their problems did not abate, however, since they had to rebuild their homes and restore the land to productivity. A first option was the rebuilding of the temple, a very important option since the Mosaic law required worship and sacrificial rituals that could not be observed apart from the temple. There were threats from the inhabitants of the land, especially the descendants of the northern Israelites, whose capital had been Samaria. There had been rivalry and strife between the northern Israelites (Ephraim) and the southern Israelites (Judah) ever since the breakup of David’s kingdom after the death of Solomon. The northern kingdom came to an end in B.C.E. 721 when Samaria was destroyed by the Assyrians and the people deported and scattered throughout that vast kingdom. The Assyrians imported exiles into Samaria from many parts of their kingdom and eventually religious practices and ideals changed radically as a result of their influence upon the Samarians. Intermarriage resulted in ethnic differences as well.
Upon their return from Babylon, the Judahites were confronted by the problem of relationships with the inhabitants of the land—Samarians to the north and descendants of their own people who had not gone into exile. The latter had belonged to a lower class of society and the lack of spiritual leadership had resulted in a degeneration of their faithfulness to the Mosaic religion. Intermarriage with Samarians and with people brought into the land by the Assyrians had also weakened their religious loyalties. Their desire to share in the rebuilding of the temple and in the worship of the new community founded by those who came from Babylon led to conflict. Those who had returned from Babylon did not consider the inhabitants of the land to be true Israelites. They excluded them from the congregation of God’s people and rejected their overtures for help in rebuilding the temple.
Conditions for Membership in the Community of Israel
When Nehemiah came from Persia to become the head of the new community in Jerusalem, he enacted a number of conditions for membership in Israel. Two of the more important were faithfulness to the Mosaic religion and second, proper birth credentials. Genealogical tables came to be highly important because intermarriages with the inhabitants of the land now made it incumbent upon the member of the community to document his lineage to meet the second of the above criteria. Nehemiah even enacted legislation to forcibly separate intermarriages, since they did not meet the requirements for membership in the community. This episode in history accounts for the preparation and inclusion of genealogical tables in the Old Testament and throws light upon the reason for the preparation of a genealogy for Jesus, two of which are included in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Difficult questions were raised for the Christian community by the Jews of the time about the legitimacy of Jesus. They rejected the use of their scripture by the Christians to prove that Jesus was the Messiah and counterattacked by questioning his legitimacy. Jewish sources from the time respond to Christian propaganda by stating that Jesus was born from an illicit union between Mary and a Roman soldier. It was necessary, therefore, for the Christians to refute this slander by demonstrating that Jesus was a true Jew of proper birth and that he was faithful to the Mosaic tradition in his teaching and in his deeds. Since the gospels of Matthew and Luke speak to this issue specifically by presenting a genealogy of Jesus, it is apparent that it was a very live question at the time of their writing.
A Comparison of the Two Genealogies
A comparison of the two genealogies raises new problems, however. Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham and traces the family tree in a descending line to Jesus through Joseph. Luke begins with Joseph and traces the family tree in an ascending line to Adam the son of God. Matthew’s genealogy is more provincial; Luke’s more universal. But serious discrepancies appear between the two lists. Matthew’s list is constructed in a symmetrical pattern of three groups of fourteen names. A count demonstrates that a name is missing in group three, which was probably the result of a scribal omission very early in the history of the transmission of the text, since there is no textual evidence for the necessary fourteenth name to complete the symmetry. Matthew’s forty-two names (actually forty-one in our texts) from Jesus to Abraham become fifty-seven in Luke’s list. There are fifteen names, not fourteen, from Abraham to David and forty-two names, not twenty-seven, from David to Jesus in Luke’s family tree.
The internal discrepancies are even more serious, since Matthew traces the descent from David through Solomon and Luke from David through Nathan. From that point there is total disagreement between the two lists except for the two names Zerubbabel and Shealtiel during the period of the Babylonian exile. In fact, the grandfathers of Jesus are different in the two genealogies, Joseph being the son of Jacob in Matthew and the son of Heli in Luke. Every effort to reconcile the two lists has ended in failure and there have been some ingenious proposals. For example, it has been suggested that Matthew traces the physical descent of Jesus and Luke his legal descent. This is a remote possibility, since Jewish Levirate marriage required that a younger brother marry the widow of his deceased elder brother whenever that brother died without an heir. This was to assure in perpetuity the family line and the rights of inheritance. This possibility suggests that Nathan, an elder brother of Solomon, died without an heir; Solomon married the widow, and the son born to this union was physically his son, but legally the son of his deceased brother Nathan. This stretches the limits of credulity, however, since the two lists converge again with Zerubbabel during the exile, separate after Shealtiel, and converge once more with Joseph as the father of Jesus. The only possible explanation is that the two lists represent two different traditions that developed in different Christian communities confronted with the same need to legitimize the person of Jesus and provide him with proper birth credentials.