Yet More Biblical Genealogy

Back to the genealogies of Jesus found in Matthew 1 and Luke 3...

So if we backtrack and use the assumption that one tree is that of Joseph and the other is that of Mary, when we get back to their most recent joint ancestor, they should be the same from that point on back to Abraham. Zerubbabel. ("What?!" you ask. "Is that even a word?") Their most recent joint ancestor is Zerubbabel. From Zerubbabel on to Joseph, the lines are quite different, but before that, they ought to be exactly the same back to David and to Abraham, which they are not. And Zerubbabel himself is part of a terrible documentation tangle, which I'm going to skip for just a moment, as I haven't answered it to my entire satisfaction yet anyway. But the fact remains, the lines are NOT the same back from Zerubbabel back to Abraham. Why?

Well, part of the reason stems from language usage. Just because someone uses the word "father" or "son" doesn't make the relationship an actual physical father-son relationship. As we noted above, sometimes it meant "son-in-law" or "adopted heir."

But also "father" or "son" can be more figurative. In American history, the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of the American Revolution are not, of course, children of some goddess named Freedom or the physical offspring of a war. They were/are organizations of individuals all devoted to the same ideals and goals. And George Washington, the Father of our Country, did not actually physically father any human being, though he was a beloved step-father to the children of his bride, the widowed Martha Dandridge Custis. He was merely the founder and establisher of our nation and governmental system (along with the other Founding Fathers; ooh! more fathers!).

We genealogists and historians might call our ancestors "forefathers" and less frequently or more poetically as "fathers." I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I get the impression that in Hebrew, the concept translates to just "fathers". So "father" means ancestor of whatever degree, and "son" means descendant. (I love it in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia where the animal characters refer to the human boys as "sons of Adam" and to the girls as "daughters of Eve.")

And in various societies and even in English we say that one can be a son of a tribe or clan or royal house. As part of the ancient Hebrews, the tribe of Judah, and the House of David, this would definitely be such a case for Jesus and his ancestors.

So, given the basic historical dates involved, when Matthew uses the following phrase to introduce his genealogy, we know that there is some kind of figurative speaking going on: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Matthew wanted to point out first that Jesus was the Messiah (thus the title Christ) who was descended from royalty (King David) and from the patriarch and founder of the Jewish people (Abraham).

And then both Matthew and Luke proceed to list the generations from Abraham to David and even from David down until the exile in Babylon by judiciously skipping generations that didn't matter to their worldview. (Luke actually takes the list all the way from Adam to Jesus, though as far as I can tell, he didn't skip too many between Adam and Abraham.) And so there are gaps in both genealogies right from the start.

We have very little extra input from these family trees. They are a bare line of paternal names that should have dotted lines showing descent, as there might have been additional generations in between.

How do we fix this? Stay tuned.