BECAUSE: OF THE TWO NATURES IN JESUS, THE EVANGELISTS GIVE HIM A TWOFOLD DESCENTAS THE LOGOS OR WORD INCARNATE, HE IS DESCENDED FROM GOD THE FATHER, WHOSE EQUAL HE ISAS MAN, HE IS DESCENDED FROM DAVID BY JOSEPH, HIS FATHER, ACCORDING TO THE LAW, AND BY MARY, HIS MOTHER, BY BLOOD COMPARISON OF THE GENEALOGY IN ST. MATTHEW WITH THAT IN ST. LUKE THEIR RESPECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS. (St. John i, 118; St. Matthew i, 117; St. Luke iii, 2338.)
THE first questions that arise with regard to a man who attracts public attention are these: Whence does he come? Who is he?
The Evangelists assign to Jesus a twofold originthe one divine and eternal, the other human and earthlyinasmuch as they distinguish in Him two natures, two different elements, divinity and humanity. He has one genealogy as the Son of God, and another as the Son of Man.
St. John has given us the first;1 St. Matthew and St. Luke have compiled the second. We shall study them separately.
It is in the very bosom of God, above and beyond all creatures, that the fourth Evangelist seeks the divine origin of Christ. "In the beginning was the Word,"2 and in this first assertion, he establishes the eternity of Him Whom he wishes to make known to us. For if the Word was before the beginning, the truth is that He had no beginning. If he already existed before all things were created, it must be that He was not created Himself. It is vain to trace back in imagination the series of possible ages; wherever our calculations cease, we find that the Word already existed, and whatever we do, we can find nothing anterior to Him; for if He was in the beginning of all things, He has always existed. He then is before all time, He belongs to eternity. Therefore many theologians by "the beginning" understand eternity as the rational beginning of time. For eternity alone can serve as an absolute startingpoint for our thought which, if it remains in time, always conceives a moment anterior to that in which it actually is placed.
"And the Word was with God." Hence the Word is personally distinct from God the Father, with Whom, however, we shall soon behold Him united in community of essence. To be with some one: does not this signify a relation between two persons? Is not he who is with another distinct from him with whom he is? The Word, a real Person and not a divine mode, has therefore always been with God; this permanent union is essential to Him. An eternal movement of love bears Him toward His Father; He is in Him, in perpetual and active relation with Him. This is what the Evangelist has told us with a boldness of diction impossible to render in a translation of the text.3
"And the Word was God," he continues. Hence the Word, though distinct from the Father, is no less one with God in essence, and the Son, as well as the Father, is God; for though He is another Person, He is not another being beside Him with Whom He is. Without being the Father, He is consubstantial with Him. While He is, indeed, the Word, He is perfectly God.
Such, then, is the gradation followed by the Evangelist: the Word, or Logos, is before all creation, and, consequently, He is eternal; He is with God, constituting in Him a distinct person; but, as nothing is eternally in God, unless it is God, St. John concludes, constructing his phrase so as to place in relief4 the word that expresses his chief thought"And the Word was GodDeus erat Verbum."5
Here, then. is "the Word who in the beginning was with God," fully characterized and known in the very mystery of His eternity in the bosom of the Father; He belongs to the divine essence, being to God what the Word is to the thought. He lives by Him interiorly, and He reveals Him to the world, to us in two chief works: the Creation of the world and the Redemption.
"All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made."
The fundamental power over life, the primal source, is the Father from Whom all things proceed; but nothing comes into existence without the intervention of the Word, Who gives form, order, beauty, life.6 The great craftsman of the Father is, therefore, the Son. Through Him, as through eternal reason and wisdom, passes the activity of the Father, and all things, whether spiritual or material, are born of His breath, bear His impress, and follow His governing. For, it is He Who, by His unceasing action, creates all that subsists. He is the universal life of visible and invisible beings.7 "In Him was life," not meaning His own life, which was manifest enough, but ours, "and the life was the light of man"; life so plentiful that all may draw therefrom without lessening it. In that life all beings find nutriment, as well the beings of the lower and material order as those of the superior and spiritual. The Word is, indeed, the sun of understandings, and as the sun manifests objects to the eyes of the body, so does the Word show the truth to the eyes of the intellect. "Reasonable souls," says St. Augustine, and with him all Catholic theology repeats it, "have no true light other than the Word of God Himself. He it is that ever gives them nourishment."8 However, it is vain for the sun to shine for him who does not desire to see it; bad faith ever guards its right to close the eyes. Such has been the lot of mankind ever since the fall of the first man. Vainly had the Word projected His life and His light into the darkness of the world; the darkness withstood this divine illumination. He was forced to prepare a more startling revelation. The Word resolved to speak directly, face to face with mankind, so that man, entering into communication with the Word, might himself become a son of God. In this, blood, birth, human achievement were of no avail; it was by faith that entrance could be gained into the family of God.
Therefore "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." The Evangelist asserts that He has been seen, contemplated he himself is an immediate witnessin His glory, which was that of the onlybegotten Son, descended from the Father, and full of grace and truth. John, the man sent from God to give testimony of the light, the Precursor authorized by heaven, has publicly testified to the divine generation of Jesus. He has proclaimed Him the onlybegotten Son of God, Who has come down from heaven to earth to reveal the secrets He has read in the bosom of the Father, and in virtue of this to distribute grace and truth.
Such is the first genealogy of Jesus. He is essentially the Son of God, begotten of the Father from all eternity, and not created; God of God, light of light, true God born of the true God before all ages. His divine nature is loudly proclaimed, and this is what the fourth Evangelist will especially set forth in his biography of the Savior.
His three predecessors do not contradict him. They, too, call Jesus Godwithus, Emmanuel, Son of God, absolutely and without restriction.9 They recognize that this is His true name, a reality,10 and that God decreed it for Him on two solemn occasions, with special complacence; and yet they do not seek to know the eternal and mysterious history of this Divine Person Who is incarnate in Jesus. The epoch at which the oral Gospel was formed did not require the clear exposition of sublime theology that we find in St. John. Judaism was still the great religious power, whose transformation was sought. Care had to be taken neither to startle it by the deeper mysteries of Christian teaching nor to disturb its most cherished convictions by the open preaching of a doctrine that seemed to be in opposition to the national monotheism. Therefore, seeking above all to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah, the Synoptic writers apply themselves in preference to establish that all the prophecies have found their perfect realization in Him.
Among these prophecies, His descent from David was one of the most important. The prophet had said: "There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root."11 They looked, therefore, to find growing up from this mutilated trunk that still remained in the soil after the great royal tree had been thrown down, from this root, trodden under foot and lifeless, the Restorer of Israel. That is why the Evangelists, by their genealogical tree, undertake to prove, each in his own way, that Jesus, the Son of the great King, is, indeed, the rod of salvation foretold by the prophets.
As a general proposition, we may say that His contemporaries never denied Him that honor. From the woman of Chanaan, and the blind men of Jericho, and the people of Jerusalem to the Apostles, who make this assertion the basis of their apologetic demonstrations, every one acknowledges that the blood of kings coursed in His veins. "He comes, as the Angel said, to raise up and to sit on the throne of David, his grandfather."
In order to obtain legal confirmation of His descent, St. Matthew and St. Luke prepared two genealogies, which do not agree, but which both plainly depend upon historical data worthy of confidence.
Genealogy of Jesus according to St. Matthew:
Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
Judas and his brothers
Phares and Zara of Thamar
Esrom
Aram
Aminadab
Nassson
Salmon
Booz of Rahab
Obed of Ruth
Jesse
14 David
Solomon
Roboam
Abia
Asa
Josaphat
Joram
Ozias
Joatham
Achaz
Ezechias
Manasses
Amos
Josias
28 Jechonias and his brothers
Salathiel
Zorobabel
Abiud
Eliacim
Azor
Sadoc
Achim
Eliud
Eleazar
Mathan
Jacob
Joseph
(Mary ?)
42 Jesus
Genealogy of Jesus according to St. Luke:
Joseph
Heli
Mathat
Levi
Melchi
Janne
Joseph
Mathathias
Amos
Nahum
Hesli
Nagge
Mahath
Mathathias
Semei
Joseph
Juda
Joanna
Reza
Zorobabel
Salathiel
Neri
Melchi
Addi
Cosan
Helmadan
Her
Jesus
Eliezer
Jorim
Mathat
Levi
Simeon
Judas
Joseph
Jona
Eliakim
Melea
Menna
Mathatha
Nathan
David
Jesse
Obed
Booz
Salmon
Naasson
Aminadab
Aram
Esron
Phares
Judas
Jacob
Isaac
Abraham
Thare
Nachor
Sarug
Ragau
Phaleg
Heber
Sale
Cainan
Arphaxed
Sem
Noe
Lamech
Mathusale
Henoch
Jared
Malaleel
Cainan
Henos
Seth
Adam
God
These lists were taken probably from the official records of the nation.12 It is known that the Israelites carefully preserved the genealogy of the sacerdotal family, and particularly that of the royal family which was to produce the Messiah.13
At first glance, the two genealogies present a strange anomaly. Both Evangelists seem to make His descent from David pass through Joseph; but both expressly declare that Joseph counted for nothing in the miraculous and supernatural conception of Jesus. Can it be that both admit that simple adoption is sufficient to justify all that the prophets foretold of His royal Sonship? It is not probable; at any rate, it is easy to see that these two genealogical trees arrive at a result that is apparently contradictory. From David they follow different lines and assign to Jesus different grandfathers; St. Matthew gives Jacob, and St. Luke Heli. True, many ingenious explanations have been invented to show how Joseph could at the same time be the son of Jacob and of Heli. According to some, Jacob represents the direct descent from the kings and the immediate right to the throne of David; Heli represents only the descent collateral with the royal line. Joseph was thus the son of Heli by the collateral branch and heir of Jacob by the direct branch; and this would justify the Evangelists in calling him, at the same time, the son of Jacob and the son of Heli, the legal son, or, better, the heir of the one and the real son of the other. With the Judeans, as with us, when the direct line become extinct, the inheritance passes to the collateral branch; hence the frequent coincidences that occur in the two genealogies. Thus, after Jechonias or Joachim, who dies without children, Salathiel of the collateral branch assumes the royal succession in the family of David. Three generations later the descent separates again; Eliacim, the eldest son of Juda (Abiud), represents the direct inheritance, and Joseph, the second son, the collateral descent. It is probable that the lines reunite in Mathat or Mathan, the grandfather of Joseph. He has two sons; the elder, Jacob, inherits the right to the throne of the descendants of David; but he dies without male issue,14 and Joseph, the son of his brother Heli, falls into the succession of the nobility to transmit it to his adopted son Jesus.
According to many others, Jacob and Heli were half brothers, sons of the same mother. The former died without children, and the other, following the Mosaic law, took his sisterinlaw in order to perpetuate the name and family of his brother. Thus Joseph was placed upon one list as the son of him who had really begotten him, and on the other as the son of him to whom the Leviratic precept ascribed him.
But all these hypotheses leave us dissatisfied; they are more ingenious than probable; and as they establish between Jesus and the royal line of David a relation merely external and purely legal, we are irresistibly inclined to believe that at least one of these genealogies extends to Jesus through Mary His mother, and not through His adopted father Joseph.
St. Matthew, an Evangelist essentially Israelitic, must have occupied himself principally with the legal view of the question. For the surroundings in which he dwelt, it was important to prove that Joseph, the reputed father of Jesus, really belonged to the race of David; this was an easy task. It is solely because, according to the official records and public opinion, this descent of Joseph was indisputable, that the title of son of David, given to Jesus, was not contested. By his marriage Joseph had not only guarded Mary's honor, he had above all communicated to Jesus the last ray of glory and the Messianic hopes that attached to the descendants of the ancient kings of Israel.
St. Matthew sought to establish this on the very first page of his Gospel. His genealogical tree is divided into three sections of fourteen members each, and extends from Abraham, the father of the faithful, down to Jesus, the Messiah. To obtain this perfect regularity, he had to sacrifice certain names;15 but, in addition to the love the Orientals have for such parallel divisions, which aid the memory, the number fourteen had the advantage of comprising, in an eminent degree, seven, the sacred number, and of representing the numerical value of the name David, the real source of this genealogy. The first series extends from Abraham, the chief of God's people, to David, emphatically called the king; it recalls all the great memories of the patriarchs. The second extends from Solomon to the captivity, and reminds us of the decadence and the evergrowing ingratitude of the kings of Israel. The third extends from the return out of captivity down to Jesus, the Restorer of the fallen glory of Israel. This last series, however, has only thirteen members.
It was at one time thought that careless copyists had omitted one name, but this is not probable; for, even in the time of Porphyry this omission had been pointed out. The Evangelist, however, has counted fourteen generations in this series; how is this to be explained? The name which seems to be wanting is probably that of Mary, which we do not count and which he, probably with reason, may have counted. For the Davidic descent passes from Joseph to Jesus, not directly as from father to son, but through Mary, to whom Joseph has communicated it by his marriage. Mary is the middle term that binds two strange men one to the other; that is why the Evangelist becomes extremely circumspect when he comes to the name of Joseph, and is careful in his expressions to determine the descent of Jesus: "Jacob," he says, "begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus Who is called the Christ."16
With regard to Jesus, Mary takes the part of father as well as mother; she, therefore, is worthy of constituting alone a separate degree in the royal genealogy, and thus we find that from Salathiel to Jesus there were fourteen generations.
St. Matthew's work is, then, complete, in its way, and perfectly exact; his thoroughly Judaic origin reveals itself in his characteristic observation of details. At last, he obtains the desired result, in demonstrating the accomplishment of two apparently contradictory prophecies. For the Messiah was to be born of a virgin, and at the same time was to be the heir to the throne of David. But, since women were excluded from the royal heredity, how could a virgin communicate to her son rights which she did not possess? By becoming the wife of the heir of David, and by acquiring, through this union, the official rights which she would transmit even to the child who was not its fruit. Joseph is the son of David, Mary is Joseph's legitimate wife; therefore Jesus is the heir of David. Such is the summingup of His civil standing; it sufficed for the views of the Evangelist and for the exigencies of Mosaic-Christian society.
However, we can prove more than that. Jesus was not connected with the royal family by mere adoption, by a purely external tie; His descent was real, and was founded in the very essence of things. As the Angel,17 the Evangelists,18 and the Apostle Paul19 attest, He had received the blood of David into His veins through Mary herself.
Side by side with this characteristically Judaic genealogy preserved by St. Matthew, there was, then, room for the more realistic genealogy of St. Luke. This latter was to be devoted particularly to proving that Jesus, son of a virgin, was, according to the flesh, the descendant of the kings of Israel. But, among the Greeks as among the Judeans, women occupied no place in the genealogical list. The child was the son of the father, not of the mother. But, as the father was wanting in this case, Jesus must be referred to the grandfather, the name of the mother being suppressed, and a mere mention made of the reputed father, Joseph.
St. Luke has done this with all the keenness of his Hellenic intellect. "Jesus Himself," he says, "was beginning about the age of thirty years, beingas it was supposed the son of Joseph, of Heli, of Mathat," etc.20
It is remarkable that, according to the rabbis, Mary was the daughter of Heli.21 If they were inspired by the genealogy as St. Luke gives it, then they interpret it as we do; if they followed Judaic tradition, then our genealogy is in conformity with the most accurate historical data. It is possible that Heli is only an abbreviation of Eliachim, and that Eliachim is synonymous with Joachim,22 the name which the common belief of the Church gives to the father of the Virgin Mary. In any case, it is still possible that Heli was also called Joachim. This was the supposition of Nechonias BenCana in the passage reported by Galatin: "There was in Bethlehem of Juda a young virgin called Mary, daughter of Joachim Heli." This, again, was the response, according to the same author, that Judas the Just made to the consul who questioned him: "The maternal grandfather of the Messiah must be called Heli and Joachim."23
The genealogical tree in St. Luke is quite in harmony with the ideas and character of the third Gospel and of St. Paul. He does not stop, as St. Matthew does, with the father of the faithful, but traces back even to God. The Savior and the GoodTidings are not for one people only, but for all. Jesus is not only the son of Abraham and a Judean, He is the son of Adam and the brother of all mankind. His Redemption will be as universal as His family.
The genealogy in St. Matthew followed the descending course of the generations, and was a reproduction of an existing record whereon the individuals had been inscribed in the order of birth. We see there the hand of a man who has revelation as a startingpoint, and who advances calmly from cause to effect. The genealogy given by St. Luke goes from effect to cause; it retraces the course of time. It is clear that the author has transcribed a record already in existence, but without adding his own reflections, as St. Matthew did. He proceeds with care, as on ground not his own. If we include God and Cainan, whom he has taken from the Septuagint, and who are not found in the Hebrew text, his genealogy comprises seventyseven members; in other words, the most felicitous combination of the sacred number seven. But it is probable that St. Luke thought less of obtaining this ingenious combination than of observing the most scrupulous exactitude. Apparently he has not omitted a single member of the illustrious family. In fact, the line he follows, beginning with David, has none but obscure names over which there can be no dispute for or against; but the number of generations he establishes corresponds with sufficient correctness to the number of years elapsed. Twice he seems to coincide with St. Matthew, in Salathiel and Zorobabel, first, and in Mathan or Mathat, later on; but he parts from him immediately,24 and assumes a liberty of procedure that reveals a writer sure of his documents and careless of their agreement with the data that others may possess.
While St. Matthew seems to have derived his information, for the genealogy as well as for the narratives of Jesus's childhood, from the relations of Joseph, everything inclines us to believe that St. Luke was informed from sources emanating from Mary. However that may be, both have engraved for all ages this incomparable title of nobility, and have gloriously inscribed it at the beginning of their history of Jesus: St. Matthew on the first page of his Gospel, and St. Luke, as a souvenir perhaps of the place occupied in the book of Exodus25 by the genealogy of Moses, at the moment when the young Carpenter of Nazareth is on the point of commencing His public career.
All the glory, the virtue, the faith, the piety of this grand race of Israel descends therefore upon Mary's Son, the Heir of the divine promises. Poor and outcast as He may seem to us in His humble beginning, we cannot but salute, upon His brow, so many glorious memories of the past, and in the blood that throbs in His heart we feel the very life of His most illustrious ancestors.
More than this, having learned from St. John that not only was He sprung from kings, but was, in His own Person, the very Word of God, we are justified in declaring that heaven and earth have united in the Messiah all that they accounted most precious in both.
And now that we have penetrated the secret of this Personality in Whom two distinct natures are united, let us stand firmly by the twofold profession which is to guide us in the exposition of this difficult biography: Jesus is God and man together. This thought will enlighten many obscurities and will initiate us fully into the secret of a life which each of us must imitate and adore.
1 Many difficulties have been raised about the doctrine of St. John concerning the Logos. Neither the idea of the divine Being nor the name by which He is designated should surprise us. All that is affirmed of the Word in the prologue, all that is said of His preexistence before the creation, of the identity of His Nature with that of the Father, of His activity in the world previous to His Incarnation, is clearly developed in the discourses of the Fourth Gospel in which Jesus speaks of Himself. The name Logos is borrowed not from Philo, with whom the doctrine of St. John has nothing in common, but from the language of the Old Testament (cf. Dorner, The Doctrine of the Person Of Christ, vol. i, Introd. B). The sacred writers often speak of divine envoy, Maleach, distinct from Jehovah. but ordinarily identified with Him (cf. Gen. xvi, 7, with xvi, 13; Exod. xxiii, 21; 0s. xii, 45; Zach. xii, 10, etc.), and who was to be the final Mediator. They personify; divine Wisdom (Prov. viii) and represent It as participating in the work of creation. Finally the Memra, or the Word of the Eternal, appears to them to be a particular agent of divine activity in the world (Ps. cvii, 20; cxlvii, 15; Isa. lv, 11). God says to His Wisdom (Ps. cix, 1): "Sit thou on my right hand." As the Word, the organ of divine revelation, possesses in an eminent degree the Wisdom of God, and as It is also His personal agent, Its part in the Mosaic theology is predominant. St. John, wishing to characterize the Messianic action of Jesus, could find nothing better than to identify the Savior with the Angel of the Covenant, the Wisdom and the Word of Jehovah, all three being the personal, external manifestation of God. It may be that he gave Him the name Logos or Word in order to point out to the Jews of Greece, who were disciples of the Alexandrine philosophy, that they must seek in Jesus alone the personification of the necessary mediator between God and the world. The Logos they dreamed of in their philosophical speculations was an intangible abstraction; that which St. John announces is a reality which the disciples have seen and touched in the person of Jesus. (Cf., concerning St. John's theory of the "Word," B. Weiss, Biblical Theology Of the New Testament, vol. ii, p. 337, etc.) Since St. John's time theologians have taken the Logos in a triple sense; for it signifies, at the same time, the interior Word or Reason, the exterior or enunciated Word of God, and finally the revealing Word of the Father, because He is the Person Who enunciates and proclaims it. Hence in Generating His Word or His Son, God the Father expresses all that He is Himself, tells to Him all that He wishes done or what He is doing, and through Him communicates to His creatures what He wishes. (Cf. Ginoulhiac, Hist. du dogme Cath., 1re part., livre ix, ch. 1.)
2 A series of ten propositions of almost equal rhythm, and divided into three strophes in which each proposition has for its first word the last and most important word of the preceding one,
`En arch hn o Logos,
Kai o Logos hn pros ton Qeon,
kai Qeos hv o Logos, k. t. l.
defines what the Word is in Himself and with relation to God, with relation to the universe, and with relation to man. It ends with eight other verses which, arranged according to the same method of repetition and rhythmical cadence set forth a dogmatic affirmation of the Incarnation:
"And the Word was made flesh,
And dwelt among Us
And we saw His glory,
The glory as it were of the Onlybegotten of the Father,
Full of grace and truth."
With his customary clearness of vision, M. l'Abbe Loisy has made a remarkable study of the Prologue of St. John, with regard to substance as well as form, in the Revue d'Hist. d de Litter. Relig., 1897, pp. 43, 141, 249.
3 He employs the verb hn (He or It was) with a preposition signifying motion and taking the accusative, ppos ton qeon. These words mean not only in God, in the presence of God, with God, but also in substantial, active communion with Him.
4 He puts first the predicate of the proposition Qeos and the subject he puts in the place of the predicate: Qeos hn o logos. There can be no mistaking the true meaning. The Word has been the subject of the two preceding propositions, It remains so in the third, as It does also in the phrase following. The question here is not who God is, but who the Word is.
5 Theology has thrown a clear light on the very nature of the Word of God. As the sun is not without its splendor, it says, so God is not without His Word. This Word is the perfect and substantial image of His divine being, an image perpetually produced in an indivisible and eternally real manner, since God never for an instant ceases to know Himself, and in knowing Himself He generates His Word. (Cf. the magnificent work of Thomas in De Incarnationc Verbi Dei.)
6 The Son is inseparable from the Father in the creative act; He is His hand, His arm, His counselor, His strength, His energy, and hence He is equal to the Father in the work of creation.
7 Cf. the teachings of the Fathers on this point, particularly St. Athanasius Oratio contra Gentes, 4045; St. Greg. of Naz., Oratio xxxii, chs. vii, viii.
8 De Gen. ad Litt. 1, v, 30. (Cf. St. Thomas, contra Gentes, 1, iv, ch. xiii.)
9 St. Mark i, 1.
10 St. Luke i, 3335.
11 Isa. xi, 1.
12 Josephus in his Life, ch. i, mentions the dhmosiai deltoi, and declares that he found his genealogy there. Hillel also made use of them to prove his descent from David. See Bereschit rabba, 98; also Hegesippus's account in Eusebius, Hist. Ec., iii, 29, of the grandsons of Juda, brother of our Lord.
13 Whatever Julius Africanus may say in Eusebius, i, 6, it is scarcely probable that Herod burned the genealogical records in order to escape the humiliating comparison of his descent with that of his principal subjects. But, even had he committed this criminal act, we know that the Judeans of later than his time were acquainted with their line of ancestors. Paul knows quite well that he is of the tribe of Benjamin and by what genealogical ties he is connected with it. (Rom. xi, 1; Phil. iii, 5.)
14 Some think he was the father of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thus the royal succession would come directly to the Messiah through His mother, who would thus be the heiress in direct descent, and indirectly through His adopted father Joseph, the heiratlaw.
15 Between Joram and Ozias three wellknown names are omitted: Ochozias, Joas, and Amasias: between Joram and Jechonias, Joachim ought to be as son and as father.
16 The Syriac translation of the Gospels, found in 1895 at Sinai by Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis and her sister, contains a different reading which attracted lively attention in England and Germany. We read therein: Iaouseph damekira hewat leh Mariam betoulta aouled le Iesou demetqere Mesiha, that is "Joseph, to whom was affianced the Virgin Mary, begot Jesus who is called the Christ"; and farther on, verse 21, instead of "She shall beget a son," it says: tilad lak dein bera, which should be translated: "She shall beget thee a son," and in verse 25, weieldat leh bera, "and she begat him a son" Must we believe that the translator wished to deny the miraculous conception of Jesus? In that case he should have suppressed all the rest of the chapter which affirmed it so categorically. He did not do so, for the very simple reason that he did not have the intention attributed to him. The expressions he employs, however explicit they are in appearance, find their true sense in the context and, besides, their equivalent in the terms used by St. Matthew: `Iwshf ton andra Marias ex hs egennhqh Ihsous. The wife is supposed to beget her husband's child, and the Greek text says as much as the Syriac. But the context explains both clearly and reduces to its simple legal bearing the paternity of Joseph.
17 St. Luke i, 32.
18 St. Luke i, 27, 32, 69; ii, 5, etc. St. Matt. ix, 27; xii, 23, etc.; St. Mark x, 47, 48 Cf. Acts ii, 30; xiii, 23.
19 Romans i. 3. Compare with Gal. iv, 4; II Tim. ii, 8; Heb. vii, 14, etc.
20 Though all the other names have the article tou, Joseph, which ought especially to have it, if he is the principal support of the genealogical tree, is without it. This is a sign that he has no part in this descent and is mentioned only to indicate what the public opinion was.
21 Cf. Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae, in Lucam., ii, 23.
22 Cf. Judith xv, 9, and iv, 5711, with IV Kings xxiii, 34.
23 Pierre Galatin, De Arcan. Cath. Veritatis, vii, ch. 12.
24 It is thought by some that these names designate, in the two genealogies, different personages (see Wieseler). Others believe they are a consequence of the Leviratic law, and many think that the same personage is a real son in one branch and an adopted son in the other. (See Grimm, Einh. der Evang., p. 737, and the fol.; Hervey, Genealogies of Our Savior, London, 1853)
25 Exod. vi. 14.
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