Matthew says there are 41 generations, and Luke says there are 77. Almost none of the names match. Someone has some explaining to do.
This conflicting genealogy is the sort of thing I don’t want to read about, because I know that the devil could use it to tempt people to believe that the Bible isn’t accurate. And let’s be honest, on it’s face it really does make you wonder. Why don’t the names in the genealogy of Christ from Matthew line up with the names in Luke? Two different people can’t be your dad, right?
There are several different theories out there, and I am not an expert on any of them. In fact, I can’t be considered scholarly, or even trained on this particular topic. You should probably look elsewhere for a scholarly discussion on the topic. I read an article by Steven J. Cole (click his name to read the link) in order to gain some insight on the topic. Cole suggests several explanations, I mention only two of them here because they stick in my mind: 1. Matthew is recording the royal lineage and Luke is recording the actual lineage 2. Matthew is recording the father’s lineage and Luke is recording the mothers lineage. Neither one can be proven, so we shouldn’t create any doctrine based on on them. Cole says that Mary was also from David’s line, because no one contested Jesus as the Messiah…and they would have, knowing that Joseph wasn’t the father. Remember, the Messiah had to come from David’s family. Like I said, there are other theories, read the link if you’re interested.
While I am musing about the differences I had a couple of observations:
1. Both family tree’s survive. If one of them was clearly in error, then it wouldn’t have been widely copied and published. The people of Jesus’ day had some reason to nod in agreement with both of these recordings. It might not make sense to me today, but it must have been easy to accept at one time.
2. Luke was no dummy. There’s no way that his recording can be so far off the mark without some legitimate explanation. The same thought goes for Matthew. These were respectable men. Luke says that he “carefully researched everything”…and his Gospel suggests that he had in depth conversations with Mary. Maybe she provided lineage through her family tree to Luke.
3. In the same way that Joseph adopted Jesus and he was known as Joseph’s son, other men could have adopted a boy in order to advance the family line back through history. Actually, that is part of one of Cole’s explanations.
Either way, there aren’t enough generations mentioned for the earth to be more than several thousand years old at the time of Christ.
The manuscript survives in hundreds, perhaps thousands of ancient copies, and none of the authors of other letters contest it.
Food for thought.
Pastor RIck