bill@emx.utexas.edu (Bill Jefferys) (01/04/90)
[For those who have forgotten, this discussion is about Dave Mielke's attempt to reconcile Mat's and Luke's geneologies of Jesus. Luke says Jesus was the son (apparently) of Joseph, the son of Heli, ... Mat gives a rather different list of ancestors. Dave's interpretation of Luke is that Heli was Mary's father, so that Luke is to be read as Jesus was the "son" of Heli, where "son" is used loosely enough to include grandson. In the last posting, Bill suggested that this interpretation did violence to the text and showed that inerrancy can be maintained only by contortions. Dave responded that father and son are used in Scripture to refer to direct but not necessary immediately descent, so Luke's wording is completely appropriate to the relationship just mentioned. --clh] I am well aware of the usages of the term "son" in scripture, and you need not repeat them. It does not save your theory. In Lk. 3:23, the phrase "which was the son of Heli" OBVIOUSLY refers to JOSEPH, not Jesus. The translations and commentaries are perfectly clear, unless one has a very peculiar understanding of English grammar and syntax. Of course, I am depending on the accuracy of the various translations to which I have access. If anyone can state with authority whether the original Greek allows for Dave's interpretation, it would be very useful. Michael? Charles? In any case Farrar, a scholar of Greek who was intimately familiar with Luke's original language, disagrees strongly with your theory. He says that if your theory were correct, Luke would have written something quite different from what he actually wrote. G.A. Williamson, in his translation of Eusebius, also disagrees with you. After discussing the letter of Julius Africanus he writes, "One CERTAINTY is that the discrepancy CANNOT BE EXPLAINED AWAY by the ABSURD suggestion that one genealogy is that of our Lord's mother." [p. 56fn; my emphasis - whj.] Other scholars vehemently dismiss the "genealogy through Mary" theory. I have had a very hard time finding ANY reputable scholar, liberal or conservative, who considers the theory even possible, much less likely, and no one willing to defend it. I believe you are reading into Scripture that which you wish to be there, not that which is actually there. That is your privilege, of course, but there is no reason to expect others to distort the plain words of scripture just because you choose to do so. I had occasion to discuss this with my father today--he is an ordinary clergyman "out in the trenches," not a scholar--but for what it is worth, he also thinks your theory is without merit. As I said before, the ancient Church knew NOTHING of your theory. If it is as obviously true as you claim, why did NO ONE think of it before the end of the 15th century? Indeed, if the discrepancy between Matthew and Luke could be so easily resolved, the ancient Church would not have been so concerned about the problem! If your reading of Lk. 3:23 were as obvious as you claim it is, native speakers of Greek in the early Church would surely have read it as you do. But they did not. Instead, from early on the Church knew that there was a discrepancy, which it tried to resolve without distorting Luke's language as you wish to do. This in itself is sufficient to show me how dubious your theory is. We seem to have come to a dead end. Each of us is repeating what we said before, adding little that is new. Unless someone can provide new evidence that is not just a repeat of what has been said before, I will refrain from replying to further postings on this subject. As Charley Wingate once remarked during a previous go-round on this topic, the question of the two genealogies is of little theological import except to inerrantists. Not being an inerrantist, I have little motivation to pursue it further. Bill Jefferys [Literally, the passage says "Jesus ..., being son, as was supposed, of Joseph, of Eli, of Matthat ... of Adam, of God". I.e. the word "son" is not repeated. I don't have a detailed commentary here, so I don't want to say much more. But given the wording, I'd think the issue is not so much whether "son" can refer to grandson, but whether "of xxx", which everywhere else in the series refers to the previous name, would in this one case skip Joseph and go back to Jesus. I think if I wanted to explain the difference I'd use a different approach than Dave's. I can think of several. (Among other things, I doubt either list is intended to list every ancestor). What I find more interesting in Luke is that Jesus is made son of God through Adam. The virgin birth is sometimes criticized as being an overly simplistic way of explaining Jesus' role as Messiah, by making him a direct, physical son of God. It looks like that isn't true of Luke, at any rate. --clh]