burt@sequent.uucp ([Burton Keeble]) (03/25/91)
I have begun a serious inquiry into the Christian faith and one of my concerns is the kinfolk of Jesus and their descendents. Maybe someone can offer an explaination for this question...... It would seem that since geneology was a major issue with the Jews, they would have continued the practice of keeping family records even after their conversion. Jesus had many relatives on his mother's side. Why wouldn't they have had even greater reason to feel proud of their blood relationship to him, and to pass that information down through the generations? Nit pick, nit pick, that's me all right! burt@sequent.UUCP
chappell@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Glenn Chappell) (03/27/91)
In article <Mar.25.04.39.31.1991.7732@athos.rutgers.edu> burt@sequent.uucp ([Burton Keeble]) writes: >Jesus had many relatives on his mother's side. Why wouldn't >they have had even greater reason to feel proud of their blood relationship >to him, and to pass that information down through the generations? I've read that Jesus's family was prominent in the Jerusalem church for quite a while (can't remember where I read this....) Perhaps the tradition wasn't passed down to the present day because His family died out? That isn't too unlikely considering that the Roman Empire was very much into killing Christians back in the early days. GGC <>< [Certainly one gets the impression from Acts and Gal. that James, the brother of Jesus, was active in the Jerusalem church. --clh]
stevep@uunet.uu.net (Steve Peterson) (04/08/91)
In article <Mar.25.04.39.31.1991.7732@athos.rutgers.edu> burt@sequent.uucp ([Burton Keeble]) writes: >It would seem that since geneology was a major issue with the Jews, >they would have continued the practice of keeping family records even after >their conversion. Jesus had many relatives on his mother's side. Why wouldn't >they have had even greater reason to feel proud of their blood relationship >to him, and to pass that information down through the generations? It could have been out of humility, not wanting to draw attention to themselves as if they were somehow better or more special because of the relationship.... Best Regards...... Steve Peterson ---- stevep@cadence.com or ...!uunet!cadence!stevep
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (04/09/91)
In article <Mar.25.04.39.31.1991.7732@athos.rutgers.edu> burt@sequent.uucp ([Burton Keeble]) writes: > It would seem that since geneology was a major issue with the Jews, > they would have continued the practice of keeping family records even after > their conversion. Jesus had many relatives on his mother's side. Why wouldn't > they have had even greater reason to feel proud of their blood relationship > to him, and to pass that information down through the generations? In article <Apr.7.22.13.03.1991.28852@athos.rutgers.edu>, cadence!stevep@uunet.uu.net (Steve Peterson) writes: > It could have been out of humility, not wanting to draw attention to themselves > as if they were somehow better or more special because of the relationship.... I'm surprised that our Worthy and Knowledgable Moderator didn't comment. The answer is 1. Read "The History of the Church", by Eusebius. Jesus's relatives *DID* keep track of this information. Eusebius quotes an earlier historian who claimed to have found out from the Desposyni how to reconcile the two genealogies of Jesus. 2. Remember your history. We're talking about the time of the Roman Empire here. The Romans weren't noted for subtelty. They had had a lot of trouble with ``messiahs'' in Judaea. Letting it be known that you were a close relative of a ``messiah'' was a good way of avoiding old age. So they kept track of the information if they good, but mostly kept quiet, not out of humility, but in order to stay alive. -- It is indeed manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. -- Tertullian, on reincarnation. [Well, I don't comment on *everything*. And patristics is not exactly my strong suit. Fortunately, I know we have a number of readers who are able to comment. Desposyni is probably a term many of our readers aren't familiar with. As I understand it this refers to a group of Christians that claimed to have leaders directly descended from Jesus, and that generally rejected many of Paul's concepts of Christianity. (My source here is "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", which is not what I'd normally choose as a reliable source of information, but I haven't seen the term anywhere else.) --clh]
mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) (04/14/91)
In article <Apr.9.04.22.05.1991.6000@athos.rutgers.edu>, ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: > The answer is > 1. Read "The History of the Church", by Eusebius. > Jesus's relatives *DID* keep track of this information. > Eusebius quotes an earlier historian who claimed to have found > out from the Desposyni how to reconcile the two genealogies of > Jesus. Ummm. Yes, it is worth while reading Eusebios -- besides it's near the start of his turgid and boring work, so you can find it easily. Let me quote at some [limited :-)] length, starting at chapter 7: "The genealogy of Christ has been differently recorded for us in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Most people see a discrepancy in this, and through ignorance of the truth each believer has been ---------------------- only too eager to dilate at length on these passages. So I feel ---------------------------------------------------- justified in reproducing an explanation of the difficulty that has ----------------------------------------- come into my hands. This is to be found in a letter which Africanus, ------------------ to whom I referred a little while back, wrote to Aristides on the harmony of the gospel genealogies. Having first refuted other people's theories as forced and demonstrably false, he sets out the explanation he had himself received." Note a) the discrepancy was common knowledge and b) there was no commonly accepted "solution" to the problem in the early 4th century. Eusebios is scorning OTHER theories and presenting Africanus'. Eusebios' previous note of him, in ch.6, simply says "according to Africanus -- and he was no ordinary historian -- the best authorities say that Antipater, Herod's father, was son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the temple slaves of Apollo..." -- an observation not confirmed in Josephus, I might add, and pretty clearly just a bit of anti-Herodian propaganda. This is the source of Eusebios' proposed "solution" to the insoluble genealogy problem. Eusebios later (in chapter 31) cites Africanus as the author of one other letter (to Origen: "In it he cast the gravest doubts on the authenticity of the story of Susannah in Daniel." Biblical inerrantists aren't going to be happy about Africanus.) Africanus' theory is essentially the one we have been regaled with recently: that one of the genealogies is "biological" and the other "legal" -- to cite Africanus (as Eusebios does verbatim) "The names of the families in Israel were reckoned either by nature or by law; by nature, when there was genuine offspring to succeed; by law, when another man fathered a child in the name of a brother who had died childless... I should note that I would like Talmudic confirmation of this assertion and not otherwise take it as truth. "If we reckon the generations from David through Solomon, we find that the third from the end is Matthan, who begot Jacob, Joseph's father [Matt. 1:15-16]; if we follow Luke and reckon from David's sont Nathan, the corresponding third from the end is Melchi, Joseph being the son of Heli, Melchi's son... I must explain how these two, Jacob and Heli, were brothers, and before that how their fathers, Matthan and Melchi, members of different families, are stated to have been Joseph's grandfathers. Well now, Matthan and Melchi, successive husbands of the same wife, fathered half-brothers... The wife in question, whose name is given as Estha given by whom? this *may* be a genuine tradition recorded by Africanus -- but how is it to be confirmed? first married Matthan ... and bore him Jacob; then on the death of Matthan the widow married Melchi ... and by him had a son Heli. When Heli died childless, his brother Jacob took his wife and by her became the father of Joseph..." this goes on a bit more to the point that "Matthew the evangelist in his account says, 'Jacob begat Joseph', whereas Luke says, 'Who was, as people imagined' -- note this comment -- Eusebios or Africanus is here playing the fool -- Luke's commment is clearly towards the fact that, in Luke's account, Joseph is only imagined to be Jesus' father. 'the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Melchi'. and I observe the translator's note "It is impossible to say why Africanus omits two generations." Cf. Luke 3:23-24. If I may say so, the "obvious" explanation is that Africanus was in the grip of a "beautiful" theory that allowed him to ignore an ugly fact or two. Later on in his verbatim citation of Africanus, Eusebios has: "This is not dogmatic assertion or mere guesswork: the Saviour's human relations, either in ostentatious spirit or simply to give information, but in either case telling the truth, have handed down this information too." This is the full reference to the information of the Desposyni; even Africanus has some doubts here: he says of their testimony "This may or may not be the truth of the matter; but in my opinion and that of every fair-minded person no one else could give a clearer exposition, and we must content ourselves with it eve if unconfirmed, as we are not in a position to suggest a better or truer one." I, personally, see NO grounds for Africanus' to claim that the Desposyni WERE telling the truth "in any case" -- what he next says only increases my doubts. He goes on to the story of Antipater as a former temple slave captured by the Idumeans; this is amusing, but I will skip down to the main point of concern here: "But in the archives were still inscribed the Hebrew families ... So Herod, who had no drop of Israelitish blook in his veins and was stung by the consciousness of his base origin, burnt the registers of their families, thinking that he would appear nobly born if no one else was able by reference to public documents to trace his line back to the patriarchs... A few private people had private records of their own, having either remembered the names or recovered them from copies, and took pride in preserving the memory of their aristocratic origin. These included the people mentioned above, known as Desposyni..." The thing that needs to be noted here is that *if* Africanus is right, and Herod burned the archives, *then* there was no constraint on invention, and ambitious families can claim an "aristocratic" descent they do not "deserve." The problem has appeared in later Jewish history -- however scrupulously any given family of Kohanim may have preserved their lineage, there is no way to "protect" against those who have somewhere in the distant and forgotten past a fraud for an ancestor who has no basis for his claim to this rank. Suppose the Desposyni *did* have family genealogical records; now suppose that their records disagreed with BOTH Matthew AND Luke? Do you think they have any way to introduce THEIR version against either evangelist? Or is it not the better part of valor to go along, as vaguely as possible, with the enthusiams of the Church? NOTHING in the data, as Africanus already notes sometime around 200, is in fact subject to confirmation -- and he is relying only on the "honesty" of the Desposyni, admitting that it is open to no confirmation, and at the same time providing all the extenuating circumstances that might bring their very testimony into question. And I revert at the end to what I said at the start -- Eusebios in c. 300 A.D. already admits that the matter has NO accepted resolution. -- Michael L. Siemon We must know the truth, and we must m.siemon@ATT.COM love the truth we know, and we must ...!att!attunix!mls act according to the measure of our love. standard disclaimer -- Thomas Merton [I doubt that inerrantists are going to have any problem with Africanus' comments about Susannah. That chapter is not present in the Hebrew version of Daniel, and is thus considered part of the apocrypha by Protestants. --clh]
burt@sequent.uucp (Burton Keeble) (04/14/91)
In article <Apr.7.22.13.03.1991.28852@athos.rutgers.edu> cadence!stevep@uunet.uu.net (Steve Peterson) writes: >In article <Mar.25.04.39.31.1991.7732@athos.rutgers.edu> burt@sequent.uucp ([Burton Keeble]) writes: > >>It would seem that since geneology was a major issue with the Jews, >>they would have continued the practice of keeping family records even after >>their conversion. Jesus had many relatives on his mother's side. Why wouldn't >>they have had even greater reason to feel proud of their blood relationship >>to him, and to pass that information down through the generations? > >It could have been out of humility, not wanting to draw attention to themselves >as if they were somehow better or more special because of the relationship.... > > >Best Regards...... > >Steve Peterson > >---- > stevep@cadence.com or ...!uunet!cadence!stevep Well, you might have a good point there. However, I would argue that such records would also serve for purposes of identification, and clarification for future generations. Obviously, it came in handy for establishing the link between David and Jesus. It was very important for Joseph to be able to trace his ancestry back to Abraham, and further, thereby giving him a legitimate family line and elegibility for betrothal to Mary, who was also of Davidic ancestry. Perhaps after the resurection, the christians didn't feel the need to keep such detailed records. And yet, it seems like such a simple thing for them to have done. So, two generations later, someone might say: " my greatuncle was John, who was the brother of Jesus." Not out of pride, but simply for accuracy of records (deeds, for ex.). But is there anyone living today, gentile or jew, who can trace his ancestry back to OT times? -burt