ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM OUR READERS
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EXPLAINING DIFFERENCES
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THE GENEALOGIES OF JESUS |
Question: How can we account for the differences in the
genealogies of Jesus recorded in Matthew 1 and Luke 3? In particular, both
genealogies include Zerubbabel as the son of Shealtiel, but Luke lists Shealtiel's
father as Neri rather than Jeconiah.
Answer: Both Matthew and Luke present genealogies of Joseph, the husband
of Jesus' mother Mary. Although Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus (Matt.
The two genealogies essentially coincide from the patriarch
Abraham through King David of
One theory for reconciling the two genealogies, first
proposed in the late fifteenth century, says that the genealogy in Luke 3 is
actually that of Mary rather than Joseph. According to this theory Heli was Mary's father, but Luke doesn't mention Mary in
his (all-male) list because of her gender. Although Mary could very well have
been a descendant of David--indeed, there are Christian traditions to that
effect--there are no hints in Luke 3 that her genealogy is being presented
there. As D.A.
The traditional explanation for the differing genealogies 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 This explanation, in one form or another, seems more likely than the "genealogy of Mary" model.
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Number Patterns |
Another thing one notices in comparing the two genealogies is a
substantial difference in the number of names listed. After David there are
forty-two names in Luke's genealogy but only twenty-seven names in Matthew's.
Here it is helpful to keep in mind the fact that biblical genealogies often do
not give-and do not intend to give-exhaustive accounts that include every
single generation. Instead, abridged lists that hit the "highlights"
of a longer genealogy are often presented. As we see in
Matthew 1:1, where Jesus is described as "the son of David, the son of
Abraham," Matthew's phrase "son of" has the broader meaning
"descendant of." The same thing is true in several other
biblical genealogies.2
Matthew chose which generations to include in his list
partly for the purpose of creating a numerical pattern with three groups of
fourteen generations each (Matt.
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Famous Names |
Finally, what about the differences in the ancestry of Shealtiel and Zerubbabel in
Matthew 1 and Luke 3? In this case it is possible that we are dealing with two
different Shealtiels and Zerubbabels.
Matthew's Shealtiel is the son of King Jeconiah of
In summary, there are multiple ways to harmonize the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3. We cannot say for certain which harmonization is correct because of a lack of available data. Unfortunately, some of the records used by Matthew and Luke are no longer extant. In particular, the portion of Matthew's list between Zerubbabel and Joseph and the the portion of Luke's list between Nathan and Joseph are not available to us from any other sources. As a result, we have no way to definitively answer a number of our questions about these sections of the lists. But the fact that no effort was made in the first century to harmonize the two genealogies is an indication that both evangelists were using real sources and not just fabricating a story. (One would expect a group that was inventing a story to make sure different versions of that story were as close to identical as possible.) Members of the family of Joseph and Mary knew how everything fit together, and no further explanation was needed for the original audience of the gospels.
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References: |
1.
Donald A. Carson, Matthew, Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume
8, Zondervan,
2. Walter C.
Kaiser, Jr., "Why Don't Biblical Genealogies Always Match Up?" pp.
48-50 in Hard Sayings of the Bible, InterVarsity
Press, Downer's Grove,
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.
2For further discussion of this point, see [2] as well as the article "To Add or Not to Add? A Closer Look at Biblical Genealogies" in Issue 1 of Grace and Knowledge.
3I Chron. 3:19 lists Zerubbabel as the son of Shealtiel's brother Pedaiah. This may be another case where the biological and legal fathers were different.
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