Loading...As I have pointed out, the reader who first comes to the New Testament, and so begins at the beginning, with Matthew chapter 1, first finds him/herself confronted with a genealogy. This may not seem like an auspicious beginning, but the genealogy is highly significant for understanding Matthew’s Gospel, since this genealogy is mean to emphasize Jesus’ “credentials” precisely as the messiah. And so v. 1 indicates that Jesus he was “the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (“son of” in this context obviously means: “descendant from”). And why highlight his relationship to David and Abraham in particular, before giving the details in the genealogy? It is because Matthew’s ancient reader would realize full well that Abraham was “the father of the Jews,” and David was the greatest king in the history of Israel, whose descendant was to resume his rule, enthroned in Jerusalem, reigning over a sovereign state of Israel as God’s anointed. This son of David would be descended from the Jewish greats and would, in fact, be the messiah. Thus Matthew begins his Gospel by indicating that Jesus was a Jew (from Abraham) in the line of the ancient kings (from David)l
This emphasis on Jesus’ Jewishness and his royal family lineage is confirmed by what follows, in the genealogy that traces his family line all the way back to the father of the Jews, Abraham himself. The genealogy is patterned consistently, almost monotonously, tracing fathers and sons first from Abraham (v. 2) to King David (v. 6), then from David to the deportation to Babylon (v. 12), and then from the deportation to Jacob (the father of Joseph, v. 16).
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I always find it peculiar that in first century Palestine it was possible to trace one’s lineage back 42 (!) generations, while the best I can do is well shy of ten.
I don’t want to do the math, but with 28 generations between David and Jesus, wouldn’t the potential number of possible messiahs have been huge? I bet every mother in Judea was claiming that her son would be the messiah since their husband could trace his lineage back to David.
Yes — and David had multiple sons! Lots of messianic options out there…
Of course, it’s common for fundamentalists to claim that Luke’s geneology is really that of Mary, but James Tabor also tries to use this argument in support of his royal interpretation. Are you aware of any other contemporary scholars that try to defend this on serious scholarly grounds. Excluding those do so because of misguided claims of inerrancy, of course.
No, off hand I don’t know of any…
My email box is filling with criticisms of your Newsweek article which I widely circulated. I find this very discouraging because it was such a good article. Does anyone ever criticize the historical facts in your writings or is the criticism always about your being biased and having an agenda and ….?
My blood-pressure solution is not to read them. 🙂 And no, rarely does anyone want to deal with the facts….
Some feel that fourteen is the gematria of David’s name. Still I find it curious for someone to go through all that trouble just to say something that could be said as a one liner. In Matt’s time I would guess that unless you had a lot of cash, you wouldn’t have an OT scroll on your coffee table at home. This would mean going down to the synagogue, digging out the Chronicles scroll and memorizing a bunch of names. Hey that’s it, the answer to the mystery; Matt could only memorize at most 14 names at time; or maybe not ….
Do you think the contemporary audience of Matthew would have noticed he deliberately omitted some generations in order to make his 14-14-14 pattern to work?
Don’t know. It’s striking that hardly *anyone* today (even avid Bible readers) notices unless someone points it out….
I’m sure the 16 year old Pentecostal girl who read the Bible 160 times must have noticed. 🙂
Yeah, I wondered about htat. Then I realized that I had probably read the passage over 160 times before someone pointed it out to *me*. But she’s clearly ahead of me at 16….
i counted the third set of fourteen generations and its as you said contains only thirteen wow
i have a question how could a woman (TAMAR) which was a prostitute be included by Matthew in Jesus genealogy
and also can the history proves that the number of generations between David and the Christ or between Ibrahim and the Christ is wrong regardless of the names ?
All four women in the genealogy were involved in questionable sexual activities. Maybe Matthew is trying to say something about Jesus’ own mother, that it would not be unthinkable, given the line of David, for her too to be questioned for her sexual activities.
Hello Wonderful Bart 🙂
I’m confused.
You write that “There were fourteen generations between Abraham and David, fourteen between David and the deportation to Babylon, and fourteen between the deportation to Babylon and the messiah, Jesus.” However, by my count (and please correct me if I have made a “scribal error”, lol) there are in fact only thirteen “generations *between* [emphasis added] Abraham and David” and also only thirteen “between the deportation [of Jechoniah] to Babylon and the messiah, Jesus.”
Am I missing something here?
Here’s how I count ’em:
Thirteen generations *between* Abraham and David:
1. Abraham
2. Isaac
3. Jacob
4. Judah
5. Perez
6. Hezron
7. Aram
8. Aminadab
9. Nahshon
10. Salmon
11. Boaz
12. Obed
13. Jesse
14. David
Fourteen generations between David and the deportation of Jechoniah to Babylon:
1. Solomon
2. Rehoboam
3. Abijah
4. Asaph
5. Jehoshaphat
6. Joram
7. Uzziah
8. Jotham
9. Ahaz
10. Hezekiah
11. Manasseh
12. Amos
13. Josiah
14. Jechoniah “at the time of the deportation to Babylon”
Thirteen generations between the deportation to Babylon (of Jechoniah) and the messiah, Jesus:
1. Salathiel
2. Zerubabbel
3. Abiud
4. Eliakim
5. Azor
6. Zadok
7. Achim
8. Eliud
9. Eleazar
10. Matthan
11. Jacob
12. Joseph “the husband of Mary”
13. Jesus “who is called the Messiah”
Many thanks.
That’s right, the third set has 13, not fourteen. I wasn’t arguing that it contained fourteen; Matthew himself claims that it does. He evidently didn’t check or count closely!
There is another interesting issue Dr Bart which is to link Jesus to his grandfather, so to speak, Abraham through the linage of Solomon son of David as in Matthew, whereas he is linked to Abraham through the linage of Nathan son of David as in Luke.
Also compare the fathers of David up to Abraham in both Matthew & luke…. interesting.
Could it still not be so that Jesus was, or believed he was, a descendant of David, and regarded as the head of the Davidian dynasty, king in a formal sense, just as there are heads of dethroned dynasties today (e.g. Hapsburg and Romanov)?
This could have given Jesus motivation for his ministry and made him extra dangerous for the Roman authorities. And when Jesus died without children, the title, by the rule of primogeniture, was passed to his oldest brother James, who is hardly mentioned in the gospels and didn’t join the Jesus movement until after his death…
The Matthew genealogy, although not entirely right, could then be regarded as a royal table, a list of the formal Davidian kings. I have seen claims that Jews in 1st century Palestine were very interested in genealogy.
Jesus is called “son of David” at other places in the gospels, and by Paul.
I don’t know how to interpret the totally different the genealogy in Luke, though….
Could these speculations have some merit, or am I on the wrong track completely?
It’s physically possible of course; but there would have been no records to prove it. Almost certainly Jesus would have known nothing about his own great-grandfather. Whether he considered himself a direct descendant of David is hard to know, but I very much doubt this was the family tradition.
Dr. Ehrman,
How long was a generation in the Bible? I’ve heard anywhere from 30 to 100 years. Is there a hard fast rule it can it vary?
It’s usually given as 40 years (e.g., in the Pentateuch when the “generation” that exited from Egypt at the exodus had to die off before the next generation could enter the promised land — and so they “wandered in the wilderness” during that stretch).
Dr. Ehrman,
Could it be longer than 40? Otherwise, wouldn’t everybody past 70 ce. say Jesus was a failed prophet?
Normally a generation is understood to be teh time between a man (male!) is born and when he typically would have a child. And so usually around 25 years. In the Bible it appears to be understood mainly as around 40. When Jesus *didn’t* come back in his own generation, then his followers started reinterpreting what he mean. They still are doing it!
Dr. Ehrman,
I’m also surrounded by a lot of preterist who believe Jesus did return in 70 ce. through prophetic judgment on the destruction of Jerusalem. They parallel a lot of OT apocalyptic language to make their point.
Can you write some material/articles addressing preterism and its errors or recommend some writings that addresses it from a scholarly perspective ? It seems to be growing as a way to exonerate Jesus from being a failed prophet and I’m trying to equip myself.
Of course peole can believe anything they want, and there is nothing to “prove” taht Jesus didn’t didn’t return on October 22, 1844, when some of the Millerites claimed he did. Or that he returned in 70. Or 135. Or 1000. Or 2000. Or just yesterday. When it doesn’t hapen, you just claim it did and point to “signs.” And there’s nothing to convince someone who won’t see reason!