To
claim Jesus as a family member sounds a bit trite, yet makes sense
genealogically. For we can all without great effort establish our
family relationship with Jesus (see the reason here)
if we are capable of tracing our families back to any nobility and
royalty. Here I use the genealogy of Luke 3:22 to list the ancestors
of Jesus. It is the most correct since Luke has 43 generations to
bridge the 970 years from king David up to
Jesus. Matthew in
1:1-14 has only 27 generations which is obviously wrong since it would
be "an absurdity to suppose that 27 following generations should
all be old bachelors before they married" as already Thomas Paine
noted in "Age of Reason." Otherwise the genealogies
in the Old Testament seem impressively correct when compared with
Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian chronology since it was written
by many scholars. The genealogies are
- as Matthew shows - less correct in the New
Testament which was
written
by individuals who had witnessed the life of
Jesus, but probably only heard of his ancestors from hearsay, as Luke
himself admits in 3:23. Luke's over all list is probably correct
given the amazing historical and genealogical awareness of common
Jews at the time, but he might have forgotten 3-4 generations between
Simon the Just and Jesus since it is not as long as the proven historical
list of king Herod's ancestors. Herod himself
was an old man by the
time Jesus was born year 5 B(efore) C(hrist).
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