The Two Genealogies

Matthew and Luke have handed down the genealogy of Christ differently in their Gospels, and many think they contradict each other. Every one of the faithful, not knowing the truth, has been eager to invent some clever explanation of the passages. So let us set out the account of the matter that has come down to us, which Africanus, whom we mentioned a little earlier, recorded in his letter to Aristides on the agreement of the genealogies in the Gospels. After refuting the opinions of others as forced and false, he sets out the account he himself had received, in these very words: [a]

“In Israel the names of the family lines were counted either by nature or by law. By nature, when legitimate offspring succeeded; by law, when another man fathered a child in the name of a brother who had died childless. For since no clear hope of resurrection had yet been given, they imitated the promise to come by a mortal resurrection, so that the name of the man who had passed away might not die out. [b] Of those entered in this genealogy, then, some succeeded their fathers as true sons, while others were born to one man and assigned by name to another. So both are recorded: those who actually fathered children, and those counted as having fathered them. Thus neither of the Gospels is false, as they reckon by both nature and law. For the two families, the one descended from Solomon and the one from Nathan, were woven into each other by the raising up of children for the childless, by second marriages, and by the raising up of offspring, so that the same persons are rightly reckoned now to some and now to others—sometimes to their supposed fathers, sometimes to their real ones. So both accounts are strictly true, and they come down to Joseph by a tangled path, but an exact one. [d]

“To make what I am saying clear, I will explain how the family lines interchanged. If we count the generations from David through Solomon, the third from the end is Matthan, who fathered Jacob, the father of Joseph. If we count, with Luke, from Nathan the son of David, the third from the end is likewise Melchi; for Joseph was the son of Heli, the son of Melchi. [f] With Joseph, then, as our object, we must show how each of them is recorded as his father—Jacob, who traced his descent from Solomon, and Heli, who traced his from Nathan. First we must show how these two, Jacob and Heli, were brothers; and before that, how their fathers, Matthan and Melchi, though of different families, turn out to be Joseph’s grandfathers. Matthan and Melchi married the same woman in turn and fathered sons who were brothers by the same mother. The law did not forbid a woman left without a husband, whether she had been divorced or her husband had died, to marry another. By Estha, then—for tradition says this was the woman’s name—first Matthan, who traced his descent from Solomon, fathered Jacob. When Matthan died, Melchi, who traced his line back to Nathan, being of the same tribe but of another family, as I said before, married her as a widow and had a son, Heli. So we will find Jacob and Heli to be of two different families, yet brothers by the same mother. When Heli died childless, one of them, Jacob, took his wife and by her fathered the third, Joseph. By nature Joseph was Jacob’s own son—and rightly so, which is why it is written, ‘Jacob fathered Joseph’—but by law he was the son of Heli, for Jacob, being his brother, raised up offspring for him. [h] So the genealogy traced through Heli will not be made void either. Matthew the evangelist, in his list, puts it this way: ‘and Jacob fathered Joseph.’ But Luke, on the other hand, says: ‘who was the son, as was supposed’—for he adds this as well—‘of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Melchi.’ It was not possible to express descent by law more plainly. And in this kind of fathering he left out the word ‘fathered’ all the way to the end, counting backward until he reached ‘Adam, the son of God.’ Nor is this unproven or made up on the spot. [i]

“For the Savior’s relatives according to the flesh have handed down these things as well—whether to show off or simply to inform, but in any case telling the truth. Idumean robbers attacked Ascalon, a city of Palestine, and from the idol temple of Apollo, which stood by the walls, they carried off as a captive, along with the rest of their plunder, Antipater, the son of a certain temple slave named Herod. Since the priest could not pay a ransom for his son, Antipater was brought up in the customs of the Idumeans, and later became a friend of Hyrcanus, the high priest of Judea. [j] He was sent as an envoy to Pompey on Hyrcanus’s behalf, and he freed for him the kingdom that his brother Aristobulus was cutting away from him. Antipater himself prospered and was named administrator of Palestine. He was treacherously murdered out of envy at his great good fortune, and his son Herod succeeded him. Later, by decree of the senate, Antony and Augustus judged that Herod should be king of the Jews. His sons were Herod and the other tetrarchs. These things are found in the histories of the Greeks as well. [k]

“Up to that time the families of the Hebrews had been registered in the archives, along with those who traced their descent back to converts, such as Achior the Ammonite and Ruth the Moabite, and the mixed people who came out of Egypt with them. Herod gained nothing from the lineage of the Israelites, and he was stung by the knowledge of his own low birth. So he burned their genealogical records, thinking he would seem well-born if no one else could trace his family from the public register back to the patriarchs, or to the converts, or to the mixed people called sojourners. [l] A few careful people, however, having private records of their own—either because they remembered the names or because they had them from copies in some other way—take pride in preserving the memory of their noble birth. Among them happened to be those mentioned above, who are called Desposyni because of their connection with the Savior’s family. Starting from Nazareth and Cochaba, Jewish villages, they went about the rest of the country and explained the genealogy we have given from the Book of Days, as far as they could. [m] Whether the matter stands this way or another, no one could find a clearer explanation; so I think, and so does every fair-minded person. Let this be our explanation, even if it has no witness to support it, since we have nothing better or truer to say. In any case the Gospel speaks the truth.” And at the end of the same letter he adds this: “Matthan, descended from Solomon, fathered Jacob. When Matthan died, Melchi, descended from Nathan, fathered Heli by the same woman. So Heli and Jacob were brothers by the same mother. When Heli died childless, Jacob raised up offspring for him by fathering Joseph, his own son by nature, but Heli’s by law. So Joseph was the son of both.”

So much for Africanus. Now that Joseph’s line has been traced in this way, Mary too is shown in effect to be of the same tribe as he, since by the law of Moses it was not allowed to marry into other tribes. For the law commands marriage with someone of the same district and the same clan, so that the family’s inheritance may not pass from tribe to tribe. Let that be enough on this. [n]