|
by
Doug Ward |
The opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke emphasize that Jesus of
Nazareth is a special Son of God. Before the birth of Jesus the angel Gabriel
announces to Mary that her future child will be a Son of God both by virtue of
his miraculous conception (Luke 1:35) and by his status as a Davidic ruler (v.
32). Later, when the adult Jesus is baptized, a heavenly voice proclaims,
"You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased" (3:22).
After
describing the baptism of Jesus, Luke provides a genealogy, tracing Jesus'
legal ancestry back through Mary's husband Joseph (3:23-38). The list of names
proceeds backward in time to "Adam, the son of God" (v. 38). This
genealogy shows Jesus to be a Son of God in a different sense, the sense in
which all human beings are children of God as descendants of Adam. Here Jesus
is linked to all humanity as a second Adam. In Luke 4:1-13 he faces forty days
of testing and succeeds where the first Adam had failed.
|
Jesus
and Nathan |
Luke's genealogy of Jesus raises several questions. In particular, Luke lists
Joseph as the son of Heli, while Matthew's genealogy has Joseph as the son of
Jacob (Matt 1:16). The traditional explanation for the differing ancestries of
Joseph is that Jacob and Heli were close relatives, perhaps half-brothers, one
of them being Joseph's biological father and the other his legal father. In one
variation of this model, the one who was Joseph's biological father died, and
the other one then adopted Joseph as his son. In another variation, one of the
two died childless, but the other then married his widow and fathered Joseph in
order to continue the dead relative's line.1
Either scenario is possible.
Luke's
genealogy also differs from Matthew's in tracing Joseph's ancestry through
David's son Nathan (Luke 3:31) rather than through Solomon and the kings of
Judah (Matt 1:6). The Bible says little about this Nathan, but a tradition
later arose that he was a prophet, like the prophet of the same name from
David's court. For example, one manuscript of the Targum on Zechariah
identifies the "house of Nathan" in Zech
12:12 as "the house of Nathan the prophet, son of David."2
The
tradition that David's son Nathan was a prophet suggests that one purpose of
the genealogy in Luke 3 is to present Jesus as a prophet. Luke, in fact, often
portrays Jesus as a prophet.
We
see this first in Luke 1-2, where Luke brings out a number of parallels between
Jesus and the prophet Samuel. Samuel's birth is a miracle, the result of the
fervent prayer of his mother Hannah (1 Sam 1). Hannah's prayer of thanksgiving
(1 Sam 2:1-10) is similar to Mary's expression of rejoicing in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). In particular, both
Hannah and Mary state that God humbles the proud and exalts the humble.
Like
Mary and Joseph, Hannah and Elkanah made regular
pilgrimages to worship God (1 Sam 1:3; Luke 2:41). Samuel as a young boy served
under Eli the priest (1 Sam 2:11), while Jesus discussed aspects of Torah
with teachers at the Temple in Jerusalem when He was twelve years old (Luke
2:46-47). Luke emphasizes the connection between Samuel and Jesus when he
writes in Luke 2:52 that "Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor
with God and men," a reference to 1 Sam 2:26.
Luke
compares Jesus to Elijah the prophet in Luke 7:11-17, where Jesus resurrects a
young man at Nain. The man is the only son of a widow, as was the man brought
back to life by Elijah at Zarephath in 1 Kings 17. In
Luke 7:15 Luke notes that Jesus, after raising the man, "gave him to his
mother," quoting 1 Kings 17:23 from the Septuagint. The widow of Zarephath responds to Elijah's miracle by proclaiming,
"Now I know that you are a man of God" (1 Kings 17:24). Similarly,
the people at Nain exclaim, "A great prophet his arisen among us!"
(Luke 7:16)
Luke
records a number of other instances where either Jesus implies that he is a
prophet (Luke 4:24; 13:33) or someone else refers to him as a prophet. The men
on the road to Emmaus, for instance, describe Jesus as "a man who was a
prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people" (Luke 24:19).
|
Jesus
and Augustus |
We have already seen how the genealogy of Luke 3 connects Jesus with Adam and
with the prophets of Israel. This genealogy also makes an implicit comparison
between Jesus and a person well known to all of Luke's readers-Roman Emperor
Augustus Caesar, who is mentioned in Luke 2:1.
According
to popular legend, Augustus was a "son of the gods" in two different
ways. One of the ways was by conception. He was said to be the product of a
union between his mother Atia and the god Apollo. In
addition, Augustus was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, who claimed to be a
descendant of Aeneas, the son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite.3
In
response to these stories of Greco-Roman mythology, Luke presents Jesus as Son
of God in two ways as well. First, Jesus is a Son of God by a miraculous birth
(Luke 1:35). Second, as the legal son of Joseph he is a part of the Davidic
line, and Davidic kings are also designated as Sons of God (2 Sam 7:14).
Augustus
was credited with ushering in a golden age for Rome, the Pax
Romana. But Augustus died in AD 14, when Jesus was
young. In contrast, Gabriel declares that Jesus "shall reign over the
house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there
shall be no end" (Luke 1:33). Luke goes on to chronicle the resurrection
and ascension of Jesus, showing that Jesus defeated death and lives forever.
At
first glance the genealogy of Luke 3:23-38 may appear to be just a list of 77
names. After closer inspection, however, we see that this list is an integral
part of Luke's goal to present Jesus as a second Adam, a great Prophet, and an
eternal King greater than the rulers of this world.
1This "levirate
marriage" version goes back to Julius Africanus
(c. 225 A.D.) and is recorded in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Book
1, Chapter 7.
2See Marshall D.
Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, Cambridge University
Press, Second Edition, 1988, p. 241.
3See
Michael Kochenash, " ‘Adam, Son of God'
(Luke 3:38): Another Jesus-Augustus Parallel in Luke's Gospel," New
Testament Studies 64 (2018) 307-325.
File
translated from TEX by TTH,
version 3.66.
On 21 Oct 2018, 14:13.
