Submit your own questionBack Q: Could you elaborate more on the genealogies that don´t match? Which one is of Mary and which is of Joseph?
Submitted by Jason P 6/16/2004 12:00:17 PM
A: I asked my son Steve, who is a pastor to help me completely and accurately answer your question and this is what he found in the book entitled, ‘Answers to Tough Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith’, Page 60-61 by Josh McDowell & Don Stewart copyright 1980 Campus Crusade For Christ Inc.
"At first glance the impression is created that the account in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 are tracing the family line of Jesus through His earthly father Joseph, in which case we would be faced with an obvious contradiction because Matt 1:16 indicates Jacob as Joseph’s father while Luke 3:23 tells us that Heli is the father of Joseph. A plausible solution to this difficulty is to understand that Matthew is indeed giving us Joseph’s family line, but Luke is tracing the genealogy of Mary.
The reason is that Mary is not mentioned in Luke 3 is because she has already been designated the Mother of Jesus in several instances. The usual practice of a Jewish genealogy is to give the name of the Father, grandfather, etc. of the person in view. Luke follows this pattern and does not mention the name of Mary, but the name of the legal father. However Luke is quick to add that Joseph is NOT the father of Jesus, since Jesus had been virgin born. (Luke 1:34,35)
A literal translation of Luke 3:23 would be -- ‘Jesus when He began was about 30 years old, being the son of Joseph as it was thought, of Heli’ This does not at all mean that Jesus was the son of Heli, but that Jesus was a decedent on His mother’s side of Heli. The word son has this wider meaning -- thus Luke is tracing the roots of Jesus through His mother Mary who was a descendant of Heli etc. Joseph’s name is mentioned according to the common practice but he is clearly portrayed as the supposed father of Jesus, and not as the actual father. The purpose of the two genealogies is to demonstrate that Jesus was in the complete sense the descendant of David through his foster father Joseph, inherited by law, the royal line, while through His mother He was a flesh and blood descendant of David. Thus Jesus had the proper credentials to the throne of David."
