Matthew does not mentionany name before Abraham.
According to Matthew
14 David 15 Solomon 16 Rehoboam 17 Abijah 18 Am 19 Jehoshaphat 20 Joram 21 Uzziah 22 Jotham 23 Ahaz 24 Hezekiah 25 Manasseh 26 Amos 27 Josiah 28 Jechoniah
Deportation to Babylon
29 Shealtiel 30 Zerubbabel 31 Abiud 32 Eliakim 33 Azor 34 Zadok 35 Achim 36 Eliud 37 Eleazar 38 Matthan 39 Jacob 40 Joseph 41 Jesus
According to Luke
35 David36 Nathan37 Mattatha38 Menna39 Melea40 Eliakim41 Jonam42 Joseph43 Judah44 Simeon 45 Levi 46 Matthat47 Jorim48 Eliezer49 Joshua50 Er51 Elmadam52 Cosam53 Addi54 Melchi55 Neri56 Shealtiel57 Zerubbabel58 Rhesa59 Joanan60 Joda 61 Josech62 Semein63 Mattathias64 Maath65 Naggai 66 Esli 67 Nahum 68 Amos 69 Mattathias 70 Joseph 71 Jannai 72 Melchi 73 Levi 74 Matthat 75 Heli 76 Joseph 77 Jesus
VARIATIONS IN THE MANUSCRIPTS AND IN RELATION TO THEOLD TESTAMENT
Apart from variations in spelling, the followingmust be mentioned:
The genealogy has disappeared from the CodexBezae Cantabrigiensis, a very important Six century manuscript inboth Greek and Latin. It has completely disappeared from the Greek textand also a large part of the Latin text. It may quite simply be thatthe first pages were lost.
One must note here the great liberties Matthew hastaken with the Old Testament. He has pared down the genealogies for thesake of a strange numerical demonstration (which, in the end, he doesnot give, as we shall see).
- Before Abraham: Luke mentions 20 names; the OldTestament only mentions 19 (see table of Adam’s descendants in the OldTestament section of this work). After Arphaxad (No. 12) , Luke hasadded a person called Cainan (No. 13), who is not mentioned in Genesisas the son of Arphaxad.
- From Abraham to David: 14 to 16 names are foundaccording to the manuscripts.
- From David to Jesus.
The most important variation is the Codex BezaeCantabrigiensis which attributes to Luke a whimsical genealogytaken from Matthew and to which the scribe has added five names.Unfortunately, the genealogy of Matthew’s Gospel has disappeared fromthis manuscript, so that comparison is no longer possible.
CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE TEXTS
We are here faced with two different genealogieshaving one essential point in common, i.e. they both pass via Abrahamand David. To make this examination easier, we shall separate the wholeinto three critical sections:
-From Adam to Abraham.-From Abraham to David.-From David to Jesus.
Matthew began his genealogy with Abraham so we arenot concerned with his text here. Luke alone provides information onAbraham’s ancestors going back to Adam: 20 names, 19 of which are to befound in Genesis (chapters 4, 5 and 11), as has already been stated.
Is it possible to believe that only 19 or 20generations of human beings existed before Abraham? The problem hasbeen examined in the discussion of the Old Testament. If one looks atthe table of Adam’s descendants, based on Genesis and giving figuresfor the time element contained in the Biblical text, one can see thatroughly nineteen centuries passed between man’s appearance on earth andthe birth of Abraham. Today it is estimated that Abraham Was alive incirca 1850 B.C. and it has been deduced from this that the informationprovided by the Old Testament places man’s appearance on earth atroughly thirty-eight centuries B.C. Luke was obviously guided by thesedata for his Gospel. He expresses a blatant untruth for having copiedthem down and we have already seen the decisive historical argumentsleading to this statement.
The idea that Old Testament data are unacceptable inthe present day is duly admitted; they belong to the ‘obsolete’material referred to by the Second Vatican Council. The fact, howeverthat the Gospels take up the same scientifically incompatible data isan extremely serious observation which may be used to oppose those whodefend the historical accuracy of the Gospel texts.
Commentators have quickly sensed this danger. Theytry to get round the difficulty by saying that it is not a completegenealogical tree, that the evangelist has missed names out. They claimthat this was done quite deliberately, and that his sole “intention wasto establish the broad lines or essential elements of a line of descentbased on historical reality.” [ A. Tricot, Little Dictionary of the NewTestament (Petit Dictionnaire du Nouveau Testament in “La SainteBible”, Desclée, Pub. Paris)] Thereis nothing in the texts that permits them to form this hypothesis. Inthe text it says quite clearly: A was the father of B, or B was the sonof A. For the part preceding Abraham in particular, the evangelistdraws moreover on the Old Testament where the genealogies are set outin the following form:
When X had lived n years, he became the father of Y. . . When Y had lived n years, he became the father of Z. . . .There is therefore no break.The part of Jesus’s genealogy according to Luke, which precedesAbraham, is not acceptable in the light of modern knowledge.
Here the two genealogies tally (or almost),excepting one or two names: the difference may be explained by copiers’errors.
Does this mean that the evangelists are to beconsidered accurate?
History situates David at circa 1000 B.C. andAbraham at 1800-1860 B.C.: 14 to 16 generations for roughly eightcenturies. Can one believe this? One might say that for this period theGospel texts are at the very limit of the admissible.
It is a great pity, but unfortunately the texts nolonger tally at all when it comes to establishing Joseph’s line fromDavid, and figuratively speaking, Jesus’s, for the Gospel.
Leaving aside the obvious falsification in the CodexBezae Cantabrigiensis concerning Luke, let us now compare what thetwo most venerable manuscripts have to offer: the Codex Vaticanusand the Codex Sinaiticus.
In the genealogy according to Luke 42 names areplaced after David (No. 35) down to Jesus (No. 77). In the genealogyaccording to Matthew 27 are mentioned after David (No. 14) down toJesus (No. 41). The number of (fictitious) ancestors given to Jesusafter David is therefore different in the two Gospels. The namesthemselves are different as well.
This is not all.
Matthew tells us that he discovered how Jesus’sgenealogy split up after Abraham into three groups of 14 names; firstgroup from Abraham to David; second from David to the deportation toBabylon; third from the deportation to Jesus. His text does indeedcontain 14 names in the first two groups, but in the third-from thedeportation to Jesus-there are only 13 and not 14, as expected; thetable shows that Shealthiel is No. 29 and Jesus No. 41. There is novariation of Matthew that gives 14 names for this group.
To enable himself to have 14 names in his secondgroup, Matthew takes very great liberties with the Old Testament text.The names of the first six descendants of David (No. 15 to 20) tallywith the data in the Old Testament, but the three descendants of Ioram(No. 20), given in Chronicles 11 of the Bible as Ahaziah, Joash, andAmaziah, are suppressed by Matthew. Elsewhere, Jechoniah (No. 28) isfor Matthew the son of Josiah, although Kings II of the Bible tells usthat Eliakim comes between Josiah and Jechoniah.
It may be seen from this that Matthew has alteredthe genealogical lines in the Old Testament to present an artificialgroup of 14 names between David and the deportation to Babylon. Thereis also the fact that one name is missing in Matthew’s third group, sothat none of the present-day Gospel texts contains the 42 namesmentioned. What is surprising is not so much the existence of theomission itself (explained perhaps by a very old scribe’s error thatwas subsequently perpetuated), but the almost total silence ofcommentators on this subject. How can one miss this omission? W.Trilling breaks this pious conspiracy of silence in his book TheGospel According to Matthew (L’Evangile selon Matthieu) [ Pub. Desclée, coll. ‘Parole etPrière’, Paris.] by devoting one line to it. It is a factwhich is of considerable importance because the commentators of thisGospel, including the Ecumenical Translation and CardinalDaniélou among others, stress the great symbolical significanceof Matthew’s 3 x 14. This significance was so important for theevangelist that he suppressed Biblical names without hesitation toarrive at his numerical demonstration.
To make this hold good, commentators will, no doubt,construct some reassuring statements of an apologetic nature,justifying the fact that names have been craftily suppressed andcarefully avoiding the omission that undermines the whole point of whatthe evangelist was trying to show.
COMMENTARIES OF MODERN EXPERTS INEXEGESIS
In his book The Gospels of Childhood (1967)Les Evangiles de l’Enfance) [ Pub.Editions du Seuil, Paris.], Cardinal Daniélou investsMatthew’s ‘numerical schematisation’ with a symbolic value of paramountimportance since it is this that establishes Jesus’s ancestry, which isasserted also by Luke. For him Luke and Matthew are ‘historians’ whohave completed their ‘historical investigations’, and the , genealogy’has been ‘taken down from the archives of Jesus family’. It must beadded here that the archives have never been found. [ Although the author assures us that heknows of the existence of these supposed family archives from theEcclesiastic History by Eusebius Pamphili (about whose respectabilitymuch could be said), it is difficult to see why Jesus’s family shouldhave two genealogical trees that were necessarily different justbecause each of the two so-called ‘historians’ gave a genealogysubstantially different from the other concerning the names of thosewho figure among Jesus’s ancestors.] Cardinal Daniéloucondemns out of hand anyone who criticizes his point of view. “It isthe Western mentality, ignorance of Judeo-Christianity and the absenceof a Semitic outlook that have made so many experts in exegesis loosetheir way when interpreting the Gospels. They have projected their owncategories onto them: (sic) Platonic, Cartesian, Hegelian andHeideggerian. It is easy to see why everything is mixed up in theirminds.” Plato, Descartes, Hegel and Heidegger obviously have nothing todo with the critical attitude one may have towards these whimsicalgenealogies.
In his search for the meaning of Matthew’s 3 x 14,the author expands on strange suppositions. They are worth quotinghere: “What may be meant are the common ten weeks of the JewishApocalypse. The first three, corresponding to the time from Adam toAbraham, would have been subtracted; seven weeks of years would thenremain, the first six would correspond to the six times sevenrepresenting the three groups of fourteen and leaving the seventh,started by Christ with whom the seventh age of the world begins.”Explanations like this are beyond comment!
The commentators of the EcumenicalTranslation-New Testament-also give us numerical variations of anapologetic nature which are equally unexpected: For Matthew’s 3 x 14:
a) 14 could be the numerical total of the 3consonants in the Hebrew name David (D= 4, V= 6), hence 4+6+4= 14.
b) 3 x 14 = 6 x 7 and “Jesus came at the end of thesixth week of Holy history beginning with Abraham.”
For Luke, this translation gives 77 names from Adamto Jesus, allowing the number 7 to come up again, this time by dividing77 by 7 (7x 11= 77). It is quite apparent that for Luke the number ofvariations where words are added or subtracted is such that a list of77 names is completely artificial. It does however have the advantageof adapting itself to these numerical games.
The genealogies of Jesus as they appear in theGospels may perhaps be the subject that has led Christian commentatorsto perform their most characteristic feats of dialectic acrobatics, onpar indeed with Luke’s and Matthew’s imagination.
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