Who were Jesus' ancestors?
Read Matthew's Gospel and you get one answer. Read Luke's (3:23-37) and you get another. Mark isn't interested in the question, and John starts a lot further back – "In the beginning was the Word."
Matthew and Luke are very different, though. How are they to be reconciled?
Back in the earliest days of the Church, people noticed the contradiction. One answer sometimes offered is that one gives Jesus' descent through Mary and one his descent through Joseph. Unfortunately this isn't what the Bible says, and both are concerned to stress his descent from Joseph.
Another idea draws on the custom of 'levirate marriage', in which two branches of the same family were brought together through the marriage of a widow with her deceased brother's husband. Julius Africanus (AD c160-c240) said he had been told by descendants of James of a connection which meant that the legal father of Joseph was Eli (as in Luke) while his biological father was Matthan (as in Matthew). The family tree is very complicated at this point.
Another idea is even more interesting. Matthew gives the legal line of descent from David, saying who was the heir to the throne in each case, but Luke gives the actual biological descent from David. If the Jacob in Matthew's list was childless, Joseph, son of Eli in Luke's list, might have been his heir.
These are all fascinating speculations. What does seem unlikely is that the lists were simply invented. Geneaologies, lines of descent, were very important in the ancient world.They said something about a person and who he was. Whether they have been garbled in being passed down – orally perhaps – or for whatever other reason, these lists are meant to matter.
However, as Howard Marshall in his great commentary on Luke says: "It is only right, therefore, to admit that the problem caused by the existence of the two genealogies is insoluble with the evidence presently at our disposal."
What then do they mean?
Most Jews would tell the story of their ancestry beginning with Abraham. Not many would be able to go through King David and the kings through the Exile, as Matthew's list does. Jesus, by virtue of his royal descent, was a direct threat to Herod. But Matthew also adds women into the list – and most unlikely ones. There's a prostitute, a foreigner, an adulteress, a woman deeply wronged. Jesus came from these women.
Luke, on the other hand, carries the line all the way back to Adam, as a way of stressing the universal significance of Jesus for the whole human race, not just for Jews. Luke wrote for Gentiles: it was vital for him that they knew Jesus was for them too.
The geneaologies in Matthew and Luke can be daunting, but they are more than just lists of names: they tell us more about who Jesus is.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
