,
The Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305
Origen, writing in the first half of the 3rd century, notes that the discrepancies between the genealogies were already a problem for many Christians. However, he does not provide an explanation for why the differences are present. Most
Church Fathers held that both accounts are true.
Eusebius of Caesarea, in his
Church history,
dedicates the 7th chapter of the first book to that issue, arguing that the divergences are based on whether one is considered as being father by nature or by law. Similarly, in his book
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,
John Damascene argues that Heli of the tribe of Nathan died childless, and Jacob of the tribe of Solomon
took his wife and raised up seed to his brother and begat Joseph, in accordance with scripture, namely,
yibbum (the
mitzvah that a man must marry his brother's childless widow); Joseph, therefore, is by nature the son of Jacob, of the line of Solomon, but by law he is the son of Heli of the line of Nathan. Modern scholarship tends to see the genealogies of Jesus as theological constructs rather than factual history: family pedigrees would not usually have been available for non-priestly families, and the contradictions between the two lists are seen as clear evidence that these were not based on genealogical records. Additionally, the use of titles such as 'Son of God' and 'Son of David' are seen as evidence that they do not come from the earliest Gospel traditions.
Raymond E. Brown says the genealogies "tell us nothing certain about his grandparents or his great-grand-parents".
Marcus Borg and
John Dominic Crossan contend that both genealogies are inventions to support Messianic claims. Sivertsen sees Luke's as artificially pieced together out of oral traditions. The pre-exilic series
Levi, Simeon, Judah, Joseph consists of the names of tribal patriarchs, far more common after the exile than before, while the name
Mattathias and its variants begin at least three suspiciously similar segments. The contradictions between the lists have been used to question the accuracy of the gospel accounts since ancient times, and several early Christian authors responded to this.
Augustine, for example, attempted on several occasions to refute every criticism, not only because the
Manichaeans in his day were using the differences to attack Christianity, but also because he himself had seen them in his youth as cause for doubting the veracity of the Gospels. His explanation for the different names given for Joseph's father is that Joseph had a biological father and an adoptive father, and that one of the gospels traces the genealogy through the adoptive father in order to draw parallels between Joseph and Jesus (both having an adoptive father) and as a metaphor for God's relationship with humankind, in the sense that God "adopted" human beings as his children. Some view this argument as problematic since both trace their genealogy through Joseph, but Luke may have replaced Mary with Joseph (Heli's son-in-law) in order to conform with the patriarchal genealogical structure.
Eusebius of Caesarea, on the other hand, affirmed the interpretation of
Africanus that Luke's genealogy is of Joseph (not of Mary), who was the natural son of Jacob, though legally of Eli who was the uterine brother (i.e, maternal half-brother) of Jacob.
Levirate marriage The earliest tradition that explains the divergence of Joseph's lineages involves the law of
levirate marriage. A woman whose husband died without issue was bound by law to be married to her husband's brother, and the first-born son of a
Yibbum was reckoned and registered as the son of the deceased brother (Deuteronomy 25:5 sqq.).
Sextus Julius Africanus, in his 3rd-century
Epistle to Aristides, reports a tradition that Joseph was born from just such a levirate marriage. According to this report, Joseph's natural father was Jacob son of Matthan, as given in Matthew, while his legal father was Eli son of Melchi (
sic), as given in Luke. It has been questioned, however, whether levirate marriages actually occurred among uterine brothers; they are expressly excluded in the
Halakhah Beth Hillel but permitted by
Shammai. According to
Jesuit theologian
Anthony Maas, the question proposed to Jesus by the Sadducees in all three Synoptic Gospels regarding a woman with seven levirate husbands suggests that this law was observed at the time of Christ. Luke's text says that Jesus was "a son, as was supposed, of Joseph, of Eli" (υἱός, ὡς ἐνομίζετο, Ἰωσὴφ, τοῦ Ἠλὶ.) The qualification has traditionally been understood as acknowledgment of the virgin birth, but some instead see a
parenthetical expression: "a son (as was supposed of Joseph) of Eli." In this interpretation, Jesus is called a son of Eli because Eli was his maternal grandfather, his nearest male ancestor. perhaps even an adoptive heir to Eli through his only daughter Mary. An example of the Old Testament use of such an expression is Jair, who is called "Jair son of Manasseh" but was actually son of Manasseh's granddaughter. In any case, the argument goes, it is natural for the
evangelist, acknowledging the unique case of the virgin birth, to give the maternal genealogy of Jesus, while expressing it a bit awkwardly in the traditional patrilinear style. According to
R. A. Torrey, the reason Mary is not implicitly mentioned by name is because the
ancient Hebrews never permitted the name of a woman to enter the genealogical tables, but inserted her husband as the son of him who was, in reality, but his father-in-law. Lightfoot which, as he reads it, refers to "Mary daughter of Eli"; however, both the identity of this Mary and the reading are doubtful.
Patristic tradition, on the contrary, consistently identifies Mary's father as
Joachim. It has been suggested that
Eli is short for
Eliakim, for whom Joachim is named. The theory is consistent with early traditions ascribing a Davidic ancestry to Mary. It also aligns with Luke's greater focus on Mary, in contrast to Matthew's focus on
Joseph's perspective. On the other hand, there is no explicit indication whatsoever, either in the Gospel or in any early tradition, that the genealogy is Mary's. A Jewish tradition ascribing a Davidic ancestry to Mary is recorded in the
Doctrina Jacobi (written in 634), in which a Tiberian rabbi mocks the Christian veneration of Mary by recounting her genealogy according to the tradition of the Jews of
Tiberias: Why do Christians extol Mary so highly, calling her nobler than the Cherubim, incomparably greater than the Seraphim, raised above the heavens, purer than the very rays of the sun? For she was a woman, of the race of David, born to Anne her mother and Joachim her father, who was son of Panther. Panther and Melchi were brothers, sons of Levi, of the stock of Nathan, whose father was David of the tribe of Judah. A century later,
John of Damascus and others report similar information, only inserting an extra generation,
Barpanther (Aramaic for
son of Panther, thus indicating a misunderstood Aramaic source). A certain prince Andronicus later found the same polemic in a book belonging to a rabbi named Elijah. The claim that Luke gives Mary's genealogy is mentioned in a single extant 5th century text, in which
pseudo-Hilary cites it as an opinion held by many, though not himself. This claim was revived by
Annius of Viterbo in 1498 and quickly grew in popularity. Modern scholars discount this approach:
Raymond E. Brown called it a "pious deduction"; and
Joachim Gnilka "the desperation of embarrassment". D. A. Carson calls this reading "painfully artificial" and would not be apparent to Luke's audience.
Maternal ancestry in Matthew A minority view holds that while Luke gives the genealogy of Joseph, Matthew gives the genealogy of Mary. A few ancient authorities seem to offer this interpretation. Although the Greek text as it stands is plainly against it, it has been proposed that in the original text Matthew had one Joseph as Mary's father and another as her husband. This neatly explains not only why Matthew's genealogy differs from Luke's, but also why Matthew counts fourteen generations rather than thirteen. Blair sees the various extant versions as the predictable result of copyists repeatedly attempting to correct an apparent mistake. argue that here the
Aramaic original of Matthew used the word
gowra (which could mean
father), which, in the absence of vowel markings, was read by the Greek translator as
gura (
husband). In any case, an early understanding that Matthew traced Mary's genealogy would explain why the contradiction between Matthew and Luke apparently escaped notice until the 3rd century. It is difficult, however, to imagine that Matthew provides the genealogy of Mary, more so without mentioning her husband, since he is called a "son of David" in
verse 20, tying him thematically to the genealogy given in prior verses.
Lukan version of Levirate marriage theory Although most accounts ascribing the Luke genealogy to Mary's line do not include a levirate marriage, this is added by the above sources. Each of these texts then goes on to describe, just as in Julius Africanus (but omitting the name of Estha), how Melchi was related to Joseph through a levirate marriage.
Bede assumed that Julius Africanus was mistaken and corrected
Melchi to
Matthat. Since
papponymics were common in this period, however, it would not be surprising if Matthat were also named Melchi after his grandfather.
Panther Controversy has surrounded the name
Panther, mentioned above, because of a charge that Jesus' father was a soldier named
Pantera.
Celsus mentions this in his writing,
The True Word, where he is quoted by Origen in Book 1:32. "But let us now return to where the Jew is introduced, speaking of the mother of Jesus, and saying that "when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera."
Epiphanius, in refutation of Celsus, writes that Joseph and Cleopas were sons of "Jacob, surnamed Panther." Two Talmudic-era texts referring to a "Jesus, son of Pantera (Pandera)" are Tosefta
Hullin 2:22f: "Jacob… came to heal him in the name of Jesus son of Pantera" and
Qohelet Rabbah 1:8(3): "Jacob… came to heal him in the name of Jesus son of Pandera" and some editions of the
Jerusalem Talmud also specifically name Jesus as the son of Pandera: Jerusalem Abodah Zarah 2:2/7: "someone… whispered to him in the name of Jesus son of Pandera"; Jerusalem Shabboth 14:4/8: "someone… whispered to him in the name of Jesus son of Pandera"; Jerusalem Abodah Zarah 2:2/12: "Jacob… came to heal him. He said to him: we will speak to you in the name of Jesus son of Pandera"; Jerusalem Shabboth 14:4/13: "Jacob… came in the name of Jesus Pandera to heal him". Because some editions of the Jerusalem Talmud do not contain the name Jesus in these passages the association is disputed.
Legal inheritance One of the traditional explanations is that Matthew traces not a genealogy in the modern biological sense, but a record of legal inheritance showing the succession of Jesus in the royal line. According to this theory, Matthew's immediate goal is therefore not David, but Jeconiah, and in his final group of fourteen, he may freely jump to a maternal grandfather, skip generations, or perhaps even follow an adoptive lineage in order to get there. Attempts have been made to reconstruct Matthew's route, from the seminal work of Lord Hervey to Masson's recent work, but all are necessarily highly speculative. As a starting point, one of Joseph's two fathers could be by simple adoption, as Augustine suggests, or more likely the special adoption by a father-in-law with no sons, or could be a maternal grandfather.
Saint Thomas Aquinas in "Summa Theologica" finds the st. Augustine's explanation as fully acceptable: st. Joseph's natural father was Jacob (mentioned in Matthew 1), who married the widow of his brother Heli (mentioned in Luke 3). Under the Jewish law (
Levirate marriage, Deuteronomy 25:5–10), it was legally proper, to call st. Joseph "son of Heli" - albeit his biological father was Jacob. Heli and Jacob were brothers born from same mother, but from different marriages. The lineges of both st. Joseph's fathers (biological and legal) lead to King David - in the Matthew through
King Solomon; in the Luke through David's youngest son
Nathan. On the other hand, the resemblance between
Matthan and
Matthat suggests they are the same man (in which case Jacob and Eli are either identical or full brothers involved in a
levirate marriage), and Matthew's departure from Luke at that point can only be to follow legal line of inheritance, perhaps through a maternal grandfather. Such reasoning could further explain what has happened with Zerubbabel and Shealtiel. However, there is evidence in both biblical, rabbinical, and other Jewish literature that testify to the practice and legitimacy of adoption within early Judaism, with the adoption of Moses by the Pharaoh's daughter being one such example, which was interpreted as a legitimate adoption in the
Talmud. ==Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel==