The Genealogies Of Jesus
A Study Of Bad Christian Apologia
This essay will examine two of the most commonly employed apologetics(excuses)
regarding the inadequate genealogical qualifications of Jesus to be a king
Messiah. Those excuses are:
1) The genealogy of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is presented
in the Luke gospel.
2) Adoption is a valid vehicle into a bloodline.
The only places in the New Testament where a genealogy of Jesus is outlined
appears in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 and these two genealogies contradict each
other. They both attempt to trace Jesus through Joseph and do not agree
with each other. This isn't all that surprising since the Matthew and Luke
gospels don't agree on other issues concerning Jesus either.
One of the bedrock claims of the New Testament(NT) is that Jesus was the
long awaited king Messiah or Christ that Jewish scriptures indicate would
rule on the throne of Israel. According to Christian claims, to deny that
Jesus was the Christ or Messiah means you are an anti-Christ who denies
not only Jesus but God as well.
1 John 2:22
Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the
Christ(or Messiah). Such a man is the antichrist--he denies the Father and
the Son.
This bombastic claim sets the stage for all the threats that Christianity
uses to bring someone to God. In other words, if you deny Jesus or question
that he was indeed a valid Messiah, you are a hopelessly lost liar who mocks
God himself. The next step is threats of hell, eternal damnation, and eternal
punishment if you don't immediately repent of your unbelief and confess
Jesus is Lord.
Threats are wonderful tools to keep people unquestioning and willing to
submit to any doctrine or teaching that an authoritative hierarchy wants to
impose. Fortunately, not all people are intimidated by threats of this nature
and actually look beneath the surface to investigate for themselves if dogmatic
claims like this are accurate.
Often, the claims can't hold up under scrutiny. Such is the case concerning
the NT claims that Jesus was a valid king Messiah.According to the Old Testament(OT),
the Christ or Messiah would be the physical offspring of King David(and
Solomon his son), the Root of Jesse, and he would be sitting on the throne
when Israel was elevated and glorified at some future date.
The New Testament provides two conflicting genealogies of Jesus as "proof"
Jesus was the offspring of David. The problem is that in the Gospel of Matthew,
the author claims Jesus was born of a virgin and had no earthly father.
The Gospel of Luke doesn't indicate this as strongly, however since fundamentalist
Bible believers claim the Bible has no errors, it is generally accepted
that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth with no earthly father. It
should be noted that the claim of a virgin birth cannot be found or confirmed
anywhere else in the NT.
The problems with this claim are immense for Christianity because the virgin
birth destroys the physical connection between Jesus and David which is
required to be a valid king Messiah.
First, let's establish the basic requirements:
The king Messiah must be the physical offspring of David. David is considered
the starting point from which a king Messiah must originate. God promised
to David:
2 Sam 7:12-16
When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I
will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own
body, and I will establish his kingdom.
He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will
establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does
wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by
men.
But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it
away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.
Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me
; your throne will be established forever.
Solomon would be punished when he did wrong but as 2 Sam 7:12-16 indicates,
Solomon would never have God's favor taken from him. Solomon was the son
who would carry on the physical line of his father David which would be established
forever as shown in the following:
1 Chron 28:5-7
Of all my sons--and the LORD has given me many--he has chosen
my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of the LORD over Israel.
He said to me: `Solomon your son is the one who will build my
house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his
father.
I will establish his kingdom forever if he is unswerving in
carrying out my commands and laws, as is being done at this time.'
Solomon's kingdom was carried on through his descendant Asa who followed
the Lord's heart as King David had done. Technically, the king Messiah must
also descend from the righteous King Asa also.
1 Kings 15:11
Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father
David had done.
Of paramount importance is that the connection of the Messiah to David
had to be physical. This wasn't an optional requirement:
Psa 132:11-12
The LORD has sworn in truth to David;
He will not turn from it:
"I will set upon your throne the fruit of
your body.
If your sons will keep My covenant
And My testimony which I shall teach them,
Their sons also shall sit upon your throne forevermore."
Psa 89:34-37
My covenant I will not break,
Nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips.
Once I have sworn by My holiness;
I will not lie to David:
His seed shall endure forever,
And his throne as the sun before Me;
It shall be established forever like the moon,
Even like the faithful witness in the sky."
Even the NT claims that the Messiah had to be the physical offspring
of David.
Rom 1:3
concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born
of the seed of David according to the flesh,
Acts 2:30
Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had
sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according
to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne
The genealogy of Jesus via Joseph(the husband of Mary who gave birth
to Jesus) in the Matthew gospel does pass through David, Solomon, and Asa
as required by scripture.
However, since Joseph wasn't the biological father of Jesus, the genealogy
is irrelevant. The basic requirement that the Messiah was to be the physical
offspring of David is not met because Jesus had no biological father.
How do Christians get around this problem of Jesus not being linked to
David by blood? The acrobatics Christians are forced to use to explain away
this problem are a sight to behold. These acrobatics are also disingenuous.
One ploy used to get around this problem is to claim that while Jesus had
no earthly father, his mother Mary was a descendant of King David so the
blood connection requirement is met.
In doing this, they claim that the genealogy of Jesus presented the Luke
gospel traces Jesus through his mother Mary. However, there is absolutely
nothing in the Luke genealogy that mentions even
the name MARY. There is not one word about her in any way.
Christians assume that the Bible has no errors so the Matthew genealogy
cannot possibly contradict the Luke genealogy. The Luke genealogy must be
about Jesus through Mary because Matthew gave the genealogy of Jesus through
Joseph.
There is no reason other than expediency and the desire to escape a fatal
dilemma that drives Christians to resort to this rationalization. Mary's
name never appears anywhere in the list. The list begins as follows:
Luke 3:23
Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty
years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son
of Heli,
Jesus was the "supposed" son of Joseph because of the virgin birth.
It was generally thought by the public that Jesus was the biological son
of Joseph and according to Luke, Joseph was the son of Heli.
The only way to insert Mary into any of this is to claim that Heli was
really the father of Mary and that Heli was the father-in-law of Joseph.
Does the text say that Heli was the father of Mary? No, it does not.
The text clearly states that Joseph was the son of Heli, not his son-in-law.
Christians will then claim that it's implied in the genealogy that Joseph
was the son-in-law of Heli. This is where Christian dishonesty becomes glaring.
If the Bible is supposed to have any integrity and be the word of God then
the text means what it says. The text cannot be twisted about to make it
conform to whatever doctrine a reader wants to invent.
If Joseph was the son-in-law of Heli it would be stated as such in the
text. Christians are claiming that Luke 3:23 really means this:
Luke 3:23 (as revised by Christians)
Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about
thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph,
the son-in-law of Heli,
The dishonest merits of this type of excuse making are exposed by simply
looking at text examples from God's word where an in-law relationship is
mentioned. When the Bible wishes to express an in-law relationship, it is
clearly expressed. For example:
1 Sam 18:18,22
So David said to Saul, "Who am I, and what is
my life or my father's family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to
the king?"
And Saul commanded his servants, "Communicate
with David secretly, and say, "Look, the king has delight in you, and all
his servants love you. Now therefore, become the king's son-in-law."'
Another example of the son-in-law relationship being clearly expressed:
Neh 6:18
many in Judah were pledged to him, because
he was the son-in-law of Shechaniah the son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan
had married the daughter of Meshullam the son of Berechia
Even the author of Luke was capable of expressing an in-law relationship
where it was justified.
Luke 12:53
Father will be divided against son and son
against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law
against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
The idea that although the author of Luke didn't write that Joseph was
the son-in-law of Heli but really meant that to be the interpretation is
ridiculous. That God would inspire a deceptive, misleading verse about something
as vital as the genealogy of the Messiah is to assume that God is
a trickster who hides the truth by inspiring a writer to deliberately obfuscate
the truth. That calls into question the whole nature of the "truth" which
the word of God is supposed to represent.
If you can't trust what you read in the Bible to be accurate, you may as
well put the book away and seek spiritual comfort and truth somewhere else.
If this particular Christian excuse (that Joseph is actually the son-in-law
of Heli and not his son as stated) is valid, then their God is a cosmic
prankster not worthy of praise or worship.
It should also be noted that the issue of whether Mary is the subject of
the Luke 3 genealogy is moot because women cannot pass kingships or bloodlines
in the Bible. Genealogies are exclusively male as shown in Num 1:2,18
. Women simply didn't count when it came to establishing a bloodline for
a kingship.
There is not one genealogy in the Bible that is about a woman nor any instance
where a king inherits rights to a throne via his mother. A woman could not
pass on what she could never possess herself.
Furthermore, there is not one single verse in the entire Bible which establishes
that Mary was even from the House of David. Mary was the cousin of Elizabeth
who was a Levite(Luke 1:5,36). That is the only scriptural reference
to what tribal identity Mary was connected to. When asked to produce a verse
which shows that Mary was Davidic, Christians can produce nothing because
there is nothing to produce.
Not a single word can support their wishful thinking that Mary was the
offspring of David. All the concocted excuses of Christians regarding to
the validity of Jesus as a king Messiah lead nowhere when probed beneath
the surface.
To further disqualify Jesus as a valid king Messiah, the Luke 3 genealogy
doesn't include Solomon anywhere in the list so it cannot produce a king
Messiah regardless of any other consideration. As shown earlier, the king
Messiah had to descend from Solomon as well as David.
In order to get around all these problems, Christians attempt to invent
a hybrid genealogy. They claim Jesus was adopted by Joseph and inherits the
legal rights to the throne via Joseph in Matthew and had a blood connection
to David via Mary in Luke. Christians try toss all the names from the Luke
and Matthew genealogies into a pot and then manufacture a valid Messiah
from it.
But the adoption ploy fails almost as badly as the Mary ploy. Although
it is assumed that Joseph adopted Jesus, there is no actual scripture that
says anything about a formal adoption and if Joseph had announced that Jesus
wasn't his actual son, it seems reasonable that people would have asked
him whose son Jesus really was. Since Jesus was the product of an out of
wedlock impregnation, God's laws were violated.
According to scripture, Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph and was
impregnated by a source other than her husband or betrothed.
Matt 1:18-19
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ
came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before
they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.
Because Joseph her husband was a righteous
man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to
divorce her quietly.
If Joseph did not want to expose Mary to public disgrace, would he have
ever announced that he adopted Jesus? There is nothing to support the claim
that Joseph ever "adopted" Jesus in any legal sense. There also isn't any
wiggle room in God's law on this issue of a woman being impregnated by a source
other than her husband or husband-to-be:
Deut 22:22-24
If a man is found sleeping with another
man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You
must purge the evil from Israel.
If a man happens to meet in a town a
virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her,
you shall take both of them to the gate
of that town and stone them to death--the girl because she was in a town
and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's
wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
Now, Christians will claim that since Mary was impregnated by God and not
an ordinary man this impregnation is not a violation of the law but is excused
under the divine right of God to do as he pleases.
Unfortunately this claim is hollow. Are we to believe that a holy, righteous
God would give out laws that he will ignore and transgress himself?
Would a holy and righteous God involve a human woman in the transgression
of the very law he commanded his people to follow at all times?
Does this holy, righteous God practice situational ethics where rules are
bent and violated at his whim?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then this deity does not occupy
the moral high ground his followers constantly claim that he occupies.
In a very real sense, Jesus was a bastard. Jesus was the product of an
illegitimate relationship. According to God, bastards and their offspring
are not allowed into the congregation of the Lord.
Deut 23:2
"One of illegitimate birth shall
not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of
his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD.
Of course, Christians will claim that Jesus wasn't a bastard because Joseph
and Mary were eventually married but what real difference does that make?
Jesus was the product of an impregnation that was not in keeping with God's
laws to humanity. Perhaps God can exempt himself from his own standards
and laws but Mary was human and was supposed to be subject to the same statutes
as any other human.
God repeatedly claimed he would severely punish anyone who violated his
rules.
Lev 26:14-18
"`But if you will not listen to
me and carry out all these commands,
and if you reject my decrees and
abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant,
then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting
diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life.
You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. I will set
my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who
hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing
you.
`If after all this you will not
listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over."
Are we to believe that God would violate his own laws and involve a human
named Mary into this transgression? The NT writer of the Gospel of Matthew
would have us believe that God had no problem looking the other way at violations
of the law after he made it clear how important following the law was.
It should be noted again that the virgin birth is only found in Matthew
and Luke. Paul makes no such claims nor does he seem to be aware of this at
all. In fact, Paul claims Jesus was the product of a perfectly legal conception
and birth.
Gal 4:4
But when the time had fully come,
God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law,
There is no evidence that Paul was aware of a God/human mating or a virgin
birth that the later author of Matthew claimed was the origin of Jesus.
As previously shown, Paul thought that Jesus was descended from David "
according to the flesh."
Gods who impregnate women are found throughout pagan belief systems and
Christians would do well to consider this when they assert that Jesus was
the product of such a relationship.
This aspect of the idea that Joseph adopted Jesus is seriously flawed as
it assumes that Joseph actually announced that he was not the real father
of Jesus and that God would violate his own commands to humanity.
The final nail in the coffin of the adoption ploy is that the genealogy
in Matthew has a cursed king in it which disqualifies any of the descendants(adopted
or otherwise) of this king from sitting on the throne of Israel. Joseph
could never have sat on the throne, nor could Jesus, even if he was the
biological son of Joseph. The cursed king(Jeconiah) in the lineage prevents
this unconditionally.
Matt 1:12
After the exile to Babylon:
Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
Jeconiah(also called Coniah or Jehoiachin) was cursed by God.
Jer 22:29-30
O land, land, land, hear the
word of the LORD!
This is what the LORD says:
"Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime,
for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David
or rule anymore in Judah."
All Jeconiah's descendants(which include Joseph) were under the curse and
none of them could ever sit on the throne of David.
This is where Christians will claim that since Joseph only adopted Jesus
and didn't actually pass his bloodline to him, the curse on Jeconiah's offspring
doesn't apply to Jesus so he can sit on the throne.
In other words, Christian apologists want adoption to count or be valid
if it can serve to connect Jesus to the rights to sit on the throne but they
don't want adoption to count or be valid when it comes to inheriting the
effects of the curse on Jeconiah's offspring which would nullify any claim
for Jesus to sit on the throne.
The dishonesty Christians exhibit in this desperate attempt to supply Jesus
with legitimate credentials to sit on the throne of David is an excellent
example of the type of tactics which Christians are forced to use to hold
their New Testament assertions together.
In Summary:
Christians commonly combine two excuses together in an effort to concoct
the following doctrine to validate Jesus as a king Messiah:. That doctrine
asserts:
The genealogy in Matthew represents the royal or legal line of Jesus and
the genealogy in Luke represents the physical line of Jesus.
As has been demonstrated, this hybrid rationalization falls apart once
the individual components have been examined in detail.
1) Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus as required by scripture.
2) Genealogies and thrones are only passed through males.
3) The Matthew genealogy contains a cursed king, none of whose descendants
can ever sit on the throne.
4) The Luke genealogy fails to include Solomon. The king Messiah must also
be the physical offspring of Solomon.
5) There is no evidence the genealogy of Mary is presented anywhere in
Luke 3.
6) There is no evidence that Mary was even descended from David, nor would
it matter as she was a woman who cannot pass a kingship regardless of what
tribe she was from.
7) There is no evidence Joseph or Mary ever announced or acknowledged to
the public that Joseph adopted Jesus, nor would it matter as a biological
connection was needed to fulfill the requirements of being a king Messiah.
8) The impregnation of Mary by the Holy Spirit occurred outside the confines
of God's moral law.
According to Christians, the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus is
supposed to represent the most important event in the history of the universe.
Remember what the New Testament says:
1 John 2:22
Who is the liar? It is the
man who denies that Jesus is the Christ(or Messiah). Such a man is the antichrist--he
denies the Father and the Son.
The acceptance of Jesus as the Christ or Messiah is critical for anyone
who wants to have a relationship with God. If you don't accept that Jesus
was a valid Messiah then you deny God and are a liar.
What kind of holy, righteous
God would condemn people to hell for their failure to accept Jesus as a
valid Messiah when the evidence for his qualifications to be a legitimate
Messiah is so utterly invalid???
Was the Bible God only kidding when he outlined how the king Messiah would
be identified?
Further invalidating Jesus as a king Messiah is the fact that Jesus never
sat on the throne of David nor is there anything in the OT
scripture that states a king Messiah would come once and then require a
second coming to accomplish what he was supposed to do the first time.
According to the NT, the angel Gabriel promised Mary the following:
Luke 1:32-33
He will be great and will
be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne
of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;
his kingdom will never end."
This promise was not even remotely fulfilled by Jesus.
The Old Testament makes it very clear that the expected king Messiah would
reign on the throne of David and in his days Judah would be saved
and Israel would live in safety.
Jer 23:5-6
"The days are coming,"
declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a
King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah
will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which
he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.
In his days, Jesus never sat on the throne and Judah/Israel were under
Roman occupation.
Jerusalem was also destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.
To repeat: There
is nothing in the OT which declares that a king Messiah would come once
and require a second coming to accomplish what he failed to do the first
time.
The only way to claim that Jesus was a valid king Messiah is to ignore
the OT, ignore parts of the NT, and invent new rules which attempt to jam
a square peg into a round hole. This is exactly what Christians have done
and continue to do.
It's time to see things as they really are instead of trying to maintain
a belief system at the expense of honesty. It's time to drop the threats
of hellfire and other fear tactics used to keep people from questioning traditional
teaching and doctrines.
The Christian rationalizations used to validate Jesus as a king Messiah
make a mockery of the perfect, infallible God they claim set up the universe.
If the Christian God will assign people to hell for their failure to reach
a particular conclusion which can't even be supported by the very book that
is supposed to be this God's word, then it's high time to look elsewhere
for divine righteousness and integrity.