The Messianic genealogies given by Luke and Matthew have a glaring difference (Luke 3:25-31; Matthew 1:6-16). They each claim that Jesus descended from a completely different son of David. Matthew traces Jesus’ Davidic line through Solomon, son of David. Luke traces Jesus’ line through Nathan, son of David.1 But both Matthew and Luke’s genealogy comes back to Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father. Why would these two gospels be accepted as, well, “gospel” in the first century with such a blatant difference?
We don’t have to wonder how at least some of the earliest Christians explained these differences, as we have commentaries on the matter going back to around the end of the second century. And even if we didn’t have differences between Matthew and Luke, there’s still a question that begs to be asked: if Jesus was supposed to descend from David “according to the flesh”, how could this happen through Joseph, since Matthew and Luke portray Jesus as being conceived by the spirit of God, not Joseph? Following prophecies of the Old Testament, New Testament writers were adamant that their messiah in fact descended from David according to the flesh.2 But how?
What Difference?
Another interesting observation that we could make is that none of the earliest church fathers up to near the end of the 2nd century leave us with an explanation for the glaring difference between Luke and Matthew’s messianic genealogies. This silence has not gone unnoticed by modern scholars, either.3 The second century scholars who passed over this difference were also among the first generation of Christian intellectuals to defend the faith, and included well-known Tertullian, who was a trained lawyer, and who wrote on Matthew’s genealogy. It’s also interesting that Matthew and Luke themselves never try to explain what their lineage is doing, when it seems quite possible that one of them would have at least known about the other’s account. Nor were there early attempts to smooth over differences between them. I’d like to suggest that there is at least a possibility that the reason we find no such attempts to explain the differing genealogies is because they did not think one was needed: that the reasoning for the differing genealogies should have been understandable to someone who understood the mysteries of the gospel(s).
Yet Another Biblical Mystery
I will explain in another series just what I mean by the mysteries of the New Testament, and even in the Hebrew Bible. I do not mean any foo-foo mystical ideas, which you’ll know if you’ve seen only a fraction of my other lessons. I am referring to the myriad literary messages of the Bible which often go unexplained, at least in the books in which they’re found, though sometimes later books of the Bible will provide more expansion on them; and there is clear evidence that many of these latter interpretations are in fact the intent of the original authors and/or redactors of such seminal works as even the Torah.
And one such mystery of the Torah, which Matthew does not fail to use, is the mystery of God using defiled (or seemingly defiled) women to accomplish his purposes, which Matthew lists significantly in an “all-male” genealogy, women whose stories constantly seem to involve the setting aside or even overriding of law, a topic which I cover in another lesson, but which I’ll briefly review here: Tamar was somehow more righteous than Judah, who had failed to ensure that she produce offspring before Moses gave the law of levirate marriage to Israel, yet the way she did so was via incest, which would also be condemned by that law; Rahab a Canaanite prostitute who according to the law should have been wiped out along with the rest of her town, and whom they were forbidden to marry; Ruth the Moabitess who consorted with a man at night not her husband, and whom the children of Israel were also commanded not to mix with; and the “wife of Uriah the Hittite;” note that Matthew identifies her with the name of her Gentile husband; and David took her while in her uncleanness and very unlawfully, and he murdered her husband, and yet he himself did not suffer the penalty of the law for this; though the first child of that union would die as a consequence, a later child of theirs would be the man through whom the son of God and prince of peace would enter the world and usher in God’s eternal kingdom on earth, or so the most prolific story of the Bible goes. But Matthew does not just bring in the story and mystery of four defiled women who bring in the Messiah who will finally complete the law; no, just as his Messiah brings in things new that seem to be greater than things that are old, Matthew adds a fifth and final woman to this list, who is found with child before marriage; and once again, the law of Moses required such a woman to be stoned, and yet she is not only spared but is even chosen by God to bring forth his divine Son.
I say all that to say this: such literary motifs and mysteries are deep, and yet our gospel writers seem to expect us to understand them without lengthy elaboration. And it may very well be that the differences in their genealogies should also have equally been expected to be understood by the careful reader.
To further support this theory that at least Matthew expected the reader to understand mysteries in this genealogy itself, let’s focus on another detail. He says that there were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the fall of his dynasty when Babylon carried the children of Israel into captivity, and another 14 generations from captivity until the coming of Jesus. Now let’s for the moment set aside the way that the ancients often used numbers in a symbolic fashion and not always literally, as Matthew has to skip some generations in order to get to his counts of 14; just note that 7 for the Hebrews often was symbolic of completeness, as in the final day of Creation when God rested from his work and saw that all was good; and Matthew is doubling 7, or completeness, then multiplying it times 3, another favorite number of the Hebrews. Some have even noted that fourteen is the numerical total of the sum of the letters in David’s name in Hebrew, whose letters also represented numbers. But if you read Matthew carefully, you see that he does not actually give us 3 lists of 14 names each. He actually leaves out a 14th name in the final period, from Babylon to Christ. Now, one possibility is of course that Matthew made a mistake, but Matthew is an extremely careful writer who packs all sorts of literary devices into his work, so most scholars assume that this was not an error. There are frankly multiple logical theories as to why he would choose 13 for the final set, so it’s hard to argue for one over another, but fortunately we don’t have to get to the bottom of this. I just mention it because we do in fact have what appears to be a late second century explanation of this passage.
Clement of Alexandria wrote Stromata right before or after the end of the 2nd century, and in it he plainly states that this final set of 14 continues the genealogy, not down to Joseph, but down to Mary. Some have argued that this is because Matthew’s genealogy originally mentioned Mary as the last descendent, which would explain why no one seemed to notice that he contradicted Luke until after the 2nd century, and why Matthew seemed to think that there were 14 names in his last list. But another possibility is that Clement is interpreting Matthew to be including Mary based on the stated 14 of the last set of names, and despite the fact that he brings the lineage down to a guy named Jacob, “the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born.” It could have merely been that Matthew plugged Joseph to complete his all male lineage, yet also included Mary because he knew that she was the one who produced a son of David according to the flesh, something Joseph could not have done according to Matthew’s own account. Regardless of what Matthew was doing, Clement, our earliest explanation of this genealogy, obviously does not think Matthew contradicts Luke’s genealogy.
Earliest Witnesses to Mary Descending from David
Justin Martyr does actually give us earlier evidence that Mary was considered “of the family of David,” as he more than once refers to her this way, and he died in about 165, but he does not try to explain this in light of either Matthew or Luke’s genealogy. So it’s quite possible, likely even, that he believed either Matthew or Luke provided her genealogy, and even possible that he didn’t even think this needed explaining.
Certainly the New Testament writers viewed Mary as having herself Davidic descent, as the comments about Jesus being descended from David “according to the flesh” are everywhere, such as in Romans 1:3 and 2 Timothy 2:8, but especially in the gospel of John and the first letter of John.
Another early church father named Victorinus agrees with Clement that Matthew gives us Mary’s genealogy, and he wrote in the third century.4
Irenaeus, who is one of the earliest patristic writers, wrote Against Heresies around 180 AD. He draws some very interesting conclusions about Luke’s genealogy.5 He spends a fair amount of time explaining that Luke’s genealogy, unlike Matthew’s, goes all the way back to Adam to recapitulate and reverse the Fall in the very beginning. He references Paul’s Romans 5 explanation of Jesus as a new Adam, but Irenaeus does the same thing, making Mary the new Eve. However, although he spends a lot of time speaking of Mary and Luke’s genealogy, he does not make explicit that he thinks that Luke gave her genealogy; of course she fits into it since she was Jesus’ mother. But we should note that he makes no mention of seeing an issue between Matthew and Luke’s messianic lineages.
Augustine of Hippo, who was born in the mid 4th century, gives us one of our earliest explicit statements that Matthew gave us the “natural” or biological genealogy of Jesus (through Mary), and Luke gave the “legal” line (through Joseph) which also made him heir to the throne.
The Opposite View
Interestingly, what appears to be the more popular view in modern times is the opposite of the earliest views we’ve been noting. This later view is that Matthew gave Joseph’s biological lineage through men who were actual kings of Israel, which would seem to be a better way to show Jesus’ legal descent, and Luke gave Mary’s biological lineage to show that Jesus was son of David according to the flesh. This is often explained by saying that Luke 3 saying that Joseph is son of Heli merely means that he is in fact his son-in-law, that Heli is actually Mary’s father. This view as Luke presenting Mary’s lineage finds earliest evidence in a 5th century manuscript, which said it was a view that many believed. Another detail cited by moderns who hold to this view is that the house of Jehoiakim and his son Jeconiah (who are found in Matthew’s lineage) was cursed in Jeremiah 36:30; but this simply could have been viewed as fulfilled by the fact that the Davidic dynasty, at least in the obvious earthly sense, ended shortly after them, never to be restored. At least so far….
Other Theories
There is a theory that there is an interpolation where Mary’s name was replaced by Joseph’s in Matthew’s lineage, which I’ve already alluded to; if this is true, then the early manuscript that portrayed one of the lineages as Mary’s would have needed no explanation; if Mary’s name was overwritten, then it would seem likely that the motivation for doing so would simply be because she was a woman, which seems plausible enough for that time, but consider too that doing so would have created the huge discrepancy between the genealogies. Furthermore, we have no manuscript evidence for Mary’s name being at the end of either genealogy.
There are of course other theories for how Luke and Matthew’s genealogies could be different yet still correct, such as a levirate marriage theory, where Matthan (descended from Solomon) and Melchi (descended from Nathan) married the same woman. But this is probably a less popular view and not necessary for my main focus, which is that the earliest views saw little to no need to explain the differences between Matthew and Luke’s genealogies.
Endnotes
- 2 Samuel 5:14; 1 Chronicles 3:5; 14:4
- E.g., Romans 1:3
- E.g., “Matthew 1, 16 and the Mattaen Genealogy”, Studia Evangelica II, by H.A. Blair, 1964
- “Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John 1.”
- Book III, ch. 22