Because everyone seems to enjoy inferring arguments in my posts that I'm not making, I'll make it explicit from the outset on this one: This is to point out a single contradiction between two of the gospels. I am not attempting to discredit every word of the Bible, disprove religion, insult your mother, etc. Mainstream Christians probably won't even be phased by this. However, if you take the Bible to be the infallible Word of God, then this is meant to give you pause for a second. Aside from that, I just wanted to bring up a few points about how the gospels address this topic that might be of some interest. 
One of the easiest contradictions to find within the Bible is that of the two genealogies of Jesus, the first in Matthew 1, the other in Luke 3 (neither Mark nor John include a genealogy). In viewing the two (placed in convenient column format to your left), a few things should be apparent. Both start with David, and end with Joseph and Jesus (in fact, both trace David back to Abraham, Luke even going further back all the way to Adam, but since these parts of the account agree, they are irrelevant to the topic at hand). Aside from David and Jesus, only four names are shared between the two lists.
Matthew has 28 generations, and Luke has 43 between David and Jesus. This can be accounted for by tracing Jesus' lines through two different
descendants of David, Matthew through Solomon and Luke through Nathan. Presumably the lines cross again at Salathiel and Zorobabel, then diverge again until reconvening at Joseph, although it is never explicitly stated as such (maybe Salathiel and Zorobabel were common names back then).
Then we run into the obvious issue that Joseph seems to have a different father depending on which gospel you study. The common apologetic response to this is that one of these accounts traces Jesus' lineage through Mary. This would make sense at first glance, until one realizes that Mary is not mentioned anywhere in Luke, and only arises incidentally in Matthew.
The format Matthew's genealogy takes is straightforward, reading of the vein "Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud," and so on until: "Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born." The only reason the format changes at Joseph is because Matthew makes it quite clear that Jesus was the result of a virgin birth, so Joseph was not
technically Jesus' father. To claim that this is the genealogy of Mary becomes difficult to argue, since what is the point of having a genealogy if every single person listed isn't related to the person whose ancestors are being chronicled? Both genealogies clearly pertain to Joseph, not Mary.
More evidence for this view can be found when it is noted that not a single genealogical record of any woman within the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or in any other part of the Greek Bible (New Testament). In fact, once place in the Bible, in Numbers 1:18, we are given an example for how at least this genealogy was assembled: "...declared their pedigrees after their families, by the house of their fathers."
One of the main reasons Jesus' genealogy was included in these gospels was to fulfil the Jewish prophecy that the Messiah would be a direct descendent of David. Apparently for the authors of these gospels, being the son of the wife of a descendent of David was close enough. This again lends credence that neither genealogy was of Mary, since women were not entitled to be heirs to the throne of David, meaning Mary could not pass on what she never herself possessed. Knowing this about why these lists were put in, we see a problem with the list in Matthew. Jeremiah 22:28-30 has YHWH proclaiming Jechoniah "as if childless... none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David." If none of Jechoniah's children were to be part of the Davidic legacy, how can Jesus be if he is descended from Jechoniah's child as Matthew 1:12 states? Jesus would be under the curse of Jechoniah.
The final problem we find with the concept of these lineages is that of direct descent. According to Jewish prophecy, the Messiah would be a blood descendent of King David (2 Samuel 7:12-13, Psalms 89:3-4, 132:11). Obviously Joseph isn't portrayed as a flesh and blood relation to Jesus, so Jesus cannot be a flesh and blood relation to David through Joseph. Even if one does take Luke to be the ancestry of Mary, 1 Chronicles 22:9-10 tells us that the Messiah will also be descended from Solomon, but we see that the line Luke traces goes through Solomon's brother, Nathan.
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Comments (112)
That's it. I change my vote to Yes to a having an atheist-ish.
@nyclegodesi24@xanga - While I agree that non-Christians need a place to discuss things, I don't see why Christians can't address these sorts of issues right here on revelife. If you're going to base your life on the teachings in a book, hadn't you better make sure that book is correct first?
How do you reconcile these contradictions with the belief that the Bible is the word of God? I don't think it's an unfair question to ask.
@LadyLibellule@xanga -
"I don't see why Christians can't address these sorts of issues right here on revelife."
To be fair though, you should then agree that Christians could go to an atheist-ish (if/when there is one) to post up what they think are inadequacies of materialism/atheism.
"If you're going to base your life on the teachings in a book, hadn't you better make sure that book is correct first?"
Yes, we should. There should be a medium between atheists and Christians to dialogue. I don't think Revelife is the place. As I think of it, an atheist-ish site isn't the ideal place, either.
To the O/P:
I enjoyed the read. Good way of expanding the conflicts in/between the genealogies. I would only wish you spent a paragraph or two at least mentioning the explanations offered for them. I attempt one here: You said "If none of Jechoniah's children were to be part of the Davidic legacy, how can Jesus be if he is descended from Jechoniah's child as Matthew 1:12 states? Jesus would be under the curse of Jechoniah."
A few responses can be made. The verse you refer to seems to be about the man not prospering "in his days." One can reasonably interpret that to refer to only his immediate descendents who are kept from ruling. This view is supported by a look at Haggai, where he blesses Zerubabbel, a descendent of Jechoniah. This either means that the curse was not applicable, or was rescinded by Haggai's blessing. Rabbinic tradition holds this view. To sum, that Jechoniah was cursed is not a stopper for his later descendents to be rulers, since the context of the verse probably is about his immediate children, and further that Haggai blesses his later descendents.
@nyclegodesi24@xanga - Feel free to bring those issues you have with atheism to my site until an atheist-ish site springs up.
Not bad research. However, this was already regarded as a more or less worn-out argument even in the oldest book on the subject I've read (1907). While the points raised here are not without interest, there are also some other facts that pretty much put the argument to rest. Consider:
- Every single person ever born can trace their genealogy in two separate lines. Try it sometime; it's fun. (If you can't do this, you may want to have a little talk with your parents.)
- In Jewish culture, a married man is regarded as the "son" both of his father and of his father-in-law. (This leads to a great gag in Fiddler on the Roof-- "I always wanted a son, but I had hoped for one a little younger than myself!") This completely clears up the seeming confusion about Joseph and Mary.
- Matthew specifically states that he is tweaking his genealogical record to create symmetry in the epochs of Jewish history, hence the "missing" generations (1:17). This was an accepted literary convention.
- Since Jesus was not the biological child of Joseph (as Matthew makes clear), he would not have been under the curse of Jeconiah. Meanwhile he was still a blood descendant of David via Joseph's father-in-law. Thus both prophecies were fulfilled.
- To assume that this was a slip-up on the part of the Gospel writers assumes that they were very ignorant of their own cultural practices, history, and holy books, whereas we in a distantly removed culture and time now know much better. That's a very tough pill to swallow when you think about it.
- If this is such an obvious "contradiction" proving the Bible is unreliable, why did it never occur to anyone over the past 2,000 years of church history to correct it? (We study the Bible pretty carefully too, you know.) It would have been ridiculously easy to do that if it was being made up, and not hard even if it was perceived as problematic by the people in the culture in which the Gospels were originally composed. Any scribe might easily have said "That doesn't match, let me fix it." Yet there are not any edited genealogies in the manuscript record, suggesting that to the Bible's intended audience, it simply wasn't a problem. Nor is it for us.
I think it's important for faiths to examine their own contradictions and shortcomings.
Just a reminder that all faiths are created and upheld by *fallible* people.
Here are comments I left on the original blog.
Taken from christianity.about.com
Reasons For the Differing Accounts:According to one of the oldest theories, some scholars assign the
differences in genealogies to the "Levirate marriage" tradition. This
custom said that if a man died without bearing any sons, his brother
could then marry his widow, and their sons would carry on the dead
man's name. For this theory to hold up, it would mean that Joseph, the father of Jesus,
had both a legal father (Heli) and a biological father (Jacob), through
a Levirate marriage. The theory suggests that Joseph's grandfathers
(Matthan according to Matthew; Matthat according to Luke) were
brothers, both married to the same woman, one after the other. This
would make Matthan's son (Jacob) Joseph's biological father, and
Matthat's son (Heli) Joseph's legal father. Matthew's account would
trace Jesus' primary (biological) lineage, and Luke's record would
follow Jesus' legal lineage.
And here is another possible explanation from Wiki.
A more straightforward explanation is that Luke’s genealogy is of Mary, with Heli being her father, while Matthew’s describes the genealogy of Joseph.[1]
Luke’s text says that Jesus was “a son, as was supposed, of Joseph, of Heli” (in the Greek: υιος ως ενομιζετο ιωσηφ του ηλι).[66]
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 Heli.”[67] In this interpretation, Jesus is called a son of Heli because Heli was his maternal grandfather, his nearest male ancestor.[1] A variation on this idea is to explain “Joseph son of Heli” as meaning a son-in-law,[68] perhaps even an adoptive heir to Heli through his only daughter Mary.[3] An example of the Old Testament use of such an expression is Jair, who is called “Jair son of Manasseh”[69] but was actually son of Manasseh’s granddaughter.[70]
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.
@GodlessLiberal@xanga - Sure will.
@nyclegodesi24@xanga - "To be fair though, you should then agree
that Christians could go to an atheist-ish (if/when there is one) to
post up what they think are inadequacies of materialism/atheism."
Of course. But since there isn't an atheist-ish site (and I don't think the focus should necessarily be atheism, either; there's a lot more to the spectrum of belief than just atheism and Christianity), revelife will do nicely.
We are talking about the Bible here, after all.
I was going to write an answer to this and realized two things...
1. It takes quite a bit of time to retort and explain these types of "apparent" contradictions and I am a very slow typer... And
2. It was a question like this that was shown to me that really made me question Christianity and almost walk away from the faith. So If this question bothers you, do the leg work and find the answer! There are a million questions like this that demand answers! But just so everyone knows... I have yet to be let down by the answers I have found. Answers that employ logic, reason and context. And Im one of those people that does not accept the "if it says it, I just believe it's true" types of people.
Choosing to believe the scriptures because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside is not a good reason to believe. We believe it because it's true! It's historical and true! We Christians are a lazy bunch. It's time we do our homework and develop our apologetics so when tough questions come along we are able to give an answer that adds up...
Grace and peace!
~Michael
Not a contradiction. Your answer lies with the daughters of Zelophehad.
Lets establish the facts.
1. Genesis 3:15 is commonly known as the Protoevangelium or "First account of the gospel". Look at the wording of verse 15:
Genesis 3:15 (ESV)
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
The verse is careful to call this Messiah "her offspring". This wouldn't be so weird except all Jewish genealogy is traced through the males.
Jesus Christ is blood related to Mary alone. Joseph was simply Jesus' stepdad who (at that time) abounded by grace where the law had failed by marrying Mary and adopted Jesus has his earthly son.
2. daughters of Zelophehad.
Numbers 26:33, Numbers 27:3, Joshua 17:3
Zelophehad had 5 daughters and no sons. They went to Moses and said, "If our dad dies, who can inherit his land," Moses went to God with this problem. Solution: So long as Zelophehad adopts the daughters' husbands as sons, then the adopted sons can inherit the land for their wives.
3. Jeremiah 22 is dead on where God curses the bloodline and promises that they will never sit on the throne of David.
4. By kingship, Jesus is related to David via Solomon by the way of Joseph's adoption
5. Because Heli (having no sons) having to adopt Mary's husband Joseph in order for Mary to receive the inheritance, then Jesus is now blood related and entitled to kingship to David via Nathan (David's other son).
When God makes a covenant, it gets done. No matter what.
@musterion99@xanga - Your 2nd argument was already addressed in the OP.
Yawn; the same tired old arguments which have been addressed for centuries. Gee, do you really think that you are the first person to 'discover' this? I had it addressed in Religion 101 decades ago! Others have already noted the facts which respond to it. But, I guess if someone trots out that same old arguments years later, they hope someone will have forgotten the truth and wonder. Even more sad is that this has been responded to on the Internet.......it's not as if it could not have been found without a minimal effort. Is this really the 'scholarship of the 21st century'?
@ChozSun@xanga - The verse in Gen 3:15 doesn't refer to the messiah at all. It is YHWH addressing Adam directly about the punishment for himself and for Eve.
@Pass_the_Aura@xanga - [Matthew specifically states that he is
tweaking his genealogical record to create symmetry in the epochs of
Jewish history, hence the "missing" generations (1:17). This was an
accepted literary convention.]
Matthew doesn't actually say anything about "tweaking" the record, he simply states the symmetry. And wouldn't this be evidence for the view that these accounts cannot be taken as literal history?
@HLPU@xanga - I never said this was new or unique to me. But I'm always amazed by how many people have never heard of things like this. And they certainly don't get it from the majority of posts here on Revelife. Tell me, did you have such disdain for the post on what timetravel would mean for Christianity?
I just finished reading Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman.
acrossHe speaks to this very thing saying;"Of all the many thousands of accidental mistakes made
in our manuscripts, probably the most bizarre is one that occurs in a minuscule
manuscript of the four Gospels officially numbered 109, which was produced in
the fourteenth century. Its peculiar error occurs in Luke, chapter 3, in the
account of Jesus' genealogy. The scribe was evidently copying a manuscript that
gave the genealogy in two columns. For some reason, he did not copy one column
at a time, but copied
the two
columns. As a result, the names of the genealogy are thrown out of whack, with
most people being called the sons of the wrong father. Worse still, the second
column of the text the scribe was copying did not have as many lines as the
first, so that now, in the copy he made, the father of the human race (i.e.,
the last one mentioned) is not God but an Israelite named Phares; and God
himself is said to be the son of a man named Aram! - Misquoting Jesus Ch 3 pg 93,94 Texts of the New Testament,
additions, manuscripts and differences. pg 93,94
I wish I would have asked Revelife to put in this link before they posted, but I'd like everyone to remember the recent entry:
Online Arguments: How to Debate in a Godly WayYou try your best and I'll try mine.
@Da__Vinci@xanga - Erhman is on the fringe of biblical scholarship, although most people who read him probably don't realize it because his books are more "pop-culture" than the more academic writings of his peers.
I also think we need to give ancient scholars the benefit of the doubt. If Luke and Matthew's purpose was to trace the genealogy of Jesus in order to prove that he was a descendant of David, do we really believe that they were incompetent enough to even make up a usable lineage? Perhaps you may not understand their methods, but it seems silly to think they screwed up this simple task. There are many aspects to consider, many of which have already been mentioned. The fact that Luke tells the whole birth narrative from Mary's viewpoint, while Matthew uses Joseph's, definitely supports the idea that they different lineages all together. Secondly, there's biblical precedent for 'son of' or 'begat' to mean 'descendant' - not necessarily a literal son.
if you keep on queshtunin this shit yer gunna bern in hell you just nheeda aksept the geneologeez azzif they wer dinosaur bonez plantid by gawd to test yer faythe now pullit together & letz sang anna rouzin chorus of evry sperm iz sakred
@Theophilus166@xanga - He's not actually very "fringe." Lately he's been publishing popular books, but he has a series of undergraduate level textbooks that are staples of most major universities' religious studies departments, and comes very highly regarded from all my profs here at the U of MN.
[I also think we need to give ancient scholars the benefit of the doubt.]
Then why should we not also give the benefit of the doubt to writers of the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon, etc etc.? Also, it would not have been such a "simple task," because a) they were not first-hand sources, and as such never asked Jesus himself about his lineage,and b) the Jewish Bible was not a set series of canonical books until after the gospels were written. Besides, what if they had made it up to make it look like Jesus was of the line of David? Who in their time could have fact-checked this?
@LadyLibellule@xanga - The bible, though it may be the word of God, was written by flesh and blood, fallible human beings. Even if God is perfect, his message may have been mangled by the people who wrote it.
"Obviously Joseph isn't portrayed as a flesh and blood relation to Jesus, so Jesus cannot be a flesh and blood relation to David through Joseph."
I just don't see a problem here. Jesus isn't blood related from David through Joseph, but from a worldview that sees Christians as adopted heirs and sons of God, there's no issue to us as to whether Jesus was physically in the lineage. It's perfectly consistent that a Christian God would take "from your loins" and "lineage" in the broader sense than just the biological sense.
@EarthsAzureLight@xanga - It was addressed but not refuted, and people reading this probably haven't read OP.
@musterion99@xanga - I would say it's pretty well refuted in the post at the top.
@stunning_dor2@xanga - Well, I know that. But a lot of other people don't seem to. Those are the people we want answers from... not the people who realize that the Bible had a lot of editors.