The Pedigree of Jesus
My twelve year old grandson was given a question to answer for his homework. This was,
“Discuss the differences between the genealogies in Matthew and Luke and the introduction to John’s gospel?”
The short biographies of Jesus given in Matthew and Luke have similar perspectives which is why the first three gospels are called ‘Synoptic’ or having the same view. They were written to convince the readers that Jesus really is the Messiah (Hebrew word) or Christ (Greek word) for ‘God’s chosen king’ that the Old Testament repeatedly said was going to come to earth. There are over three hundred and thirty prophecies about the Messiah in the Old Testament. Amongst the details given is his birthplace,
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.” Micah 5:2
He would die to take the sins of many people but would then come back to life,
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have go be astray and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death . . . After the suffering of his soul he will see the light of life and be satisfied. . . by knowledge of him my righteous servant will justify many.” Isaiah 53:4-12
Pedigree of the Messiah
This is a major aspect of these Old Testament prophecies cocerning God’s Messiah. He will be a descendent of Adam. God gave this first prophecy to the serpent who had deceived Adam and Eve,
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heal.” Genesis 3:15
Abraham was also told that the Messiah for all people would be one of his direct descendants.
“ . . . all people of the earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:1
“Look up at the heavens and count the stars – if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’” Genesis 15:5
A major problem was that Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was sterile. Abraham had a son, ‘Ishmael’ with Hagar, Sarah’s servant but God made it clear that he was not to be the means by which a Saviour would come. Then Sarah bore a son Isaac who was to become the ancestor of both King David and eventually of God’s chosen King, Jesus. This is why Jesus is called Jesus Christ, Jesus ‘God’s chosen King’.
The Bible then continues to trace the line through which the Messiah would come as a baby, Isaac had two sons Jacob and Esau but it was Jacob who God blessed even though he was a cheat! Jacob was renamed Israel and he had twelve sons. One of these was picked out to be the ancestor of Jesus, Judah. When Jacob blessed Judah, he said that from his descendants God’s ruler would come.
“The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations shall be his.” Genesis 49:10
There are four strange stories in the Old Testament that should make people wonder why they are given such prominence. The first is the sordid story of Tamar, told in Genesis 38. She pretended to be a prostitute and Judah, her father in law who had mistreated her, got her pregnant. She had twins, Perez and Zerah. Why is this story about Tamar given a whole chapter in the book of Genesis? Another is the story of Rahab, a prostitute in the city of Jericho when it was attacked by Joshua’s troops (told in Joshua 2). She had protected two of Joshua’s spies and so was given immunity. She subsequently married one of the commanders of Joshua’s army, Salmon, and they had a son called Boaz. Why is this so important? Another strange story is that of Ruth who, although she was a Midianite woman, has a whole book about her in the Old Testament! Her significance is that she became faithful to the Lord and subsequently married a farmer named Boaz. They had a son called Obed and he had a son called Jesse whose son was King David and his descendant would be Jesus, the Messiah.
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him . . . Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash round his waist.” Isaiah 11:1-5
Jesse was the father of King David. King David lived around 1000 BC. It was from David’s line that the Messiah would come. Isaiah, writing around 750 BC makes this clear,
“In love a throne will be established; in faithfulness a man will sit on it – one from the house of David – one who in judging seeks justice and speeds the cause of righteousness.” Isaiah 16:5
Another prophet, Jeremiah, who lived around 600 BC also spoke about the future Messiah’s pedigree,
“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD our righteousness’” Jeremiah 23:5-6
This is astounding to Jewish ears – how can a man also be the LORD God?
The fourth remarkable story is the account of how King David seduced Bathsheba, and then arranged for the murder of her husband of Uriah the Hittite. Their first son died but their second, Solomon became king after David.
Matthew’s Gospel
Matthew wrote his gospel primarily for Jewish readers so it was essential for him to show that Jesus did fulfil all these Old Testament prophecies so he begins his book with the known genealogy of Jesus. It is in two sections with King David being emphasised in the centre. He starts with Abraham, the Father of the Jews, mentions Judah and interestingly stresses the four women already discussed:
“. . . Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, . .” Matthew 1:2-3
“Salmon, the father of Boas, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and David the father of King David.” Matthew 1:5-6
After this comes the royal line of Kings including Solomon, Hezekiah and Josiah. The genealogy reads,
“David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.” Matthew 1:6
So scandalous was that story that Bathsheba’s name is not even mentioned. There was no glory in these notorious Old Testament stories so they must be included for another reason. Why are no other mothers mentioned until Mary is described as the mother of Jesus?
This is extraordinary as the question must be asked how these Old Testament authors, writing centuries before Jesus, knew that God would precisely fulfil his promises about giving a Messiah with this pedigree. How did these authors know that these four women whose stories are highlighted in the Old Testament would all be ancestors of the Messiah. The end of the genealogy reads,
“. . . and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Matthew 1:16
Matthew does not say that Joseph was the Father of Jesus but only that he was Mary’s husband. This is important as the gospel writers were adamant that Jesus had a virgin birth.
Matthew is therefore emphasising the royal pedigree that Jesus was born into, that legally he was in line to be Israel’s king and yet his ancestry included these four highlighted women.
Luke’s gospel
Luke, a Gentile, wrote his gospel for non-Jews. He gives the genealogy in reverse order and goes back to Adam, so showing Jesus’ relationship to the whole human race. This was Luke’s emphasis, Jesus came for people from every nation. Thus when Simeon praised God for the baby Jesus he included,
“For my eyes have seen you salvation which you have prepared for all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” Luke 2:30-32
From Abraham to David the genealogies of Matthew and Luke are virtually the same but they differ from David onwards. It is likely that Luke is tracing back the genealogy of Mary. Although this was unusual, so was a virgin birth! Luke makes it clear that Joseph was not Jesus’ father by writing at the beginning of the genealogy,
“He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph.” Luke 3:23
Luke had previously emphasised the supernatural virgin birth of Jesus in chapter one. Luke’s gospel goes on to show that Jesus was the Messiah by emphasising the miracles he did alongside his teaching. He stresses also that people must believe and follow Jesus if they are to be acceptable to God. After Jesus’ resurrection Luke, the Gentile, also emphasised the importance of the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, by quoting Jesus as saying,
“Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Luke 24:47
John’s Gospel
John probably wrote his gospel after the other three, so he supplements what the others have said. He also stresses that Jesus is divine, equal to God the Father and that it is only by accepting him as our Lord and Saviour that we can be saved. He doesn’t include a genealogy but emphasises that Jesus has come directly from God. He calls Jesus, ‘The Word’, God’s communication with mankind, and so starts his gospel or ‘good news’ with this introduction:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the life of men.” John 1:1-4
This ‘life’ is a great theme in John’s gospel, being mentioned thirty six times. His message is that eternal life is only given to those who believe in Jesus and receive him as their Lord. He writes,
“He came to that which was his own (the Jews), but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.” John 1:11-12
John finishes this prologue to his book with this fundamental message about who Jesus is, God come in the flesh:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
Conclusion
All four gospel writers are clear about the nature of Jesus, he is the divine embodiment of God. Yet as they were writing primarily for different audiences their emphases do differ, even thought their essential message is the same - Jesus is the Christ, he is the incarnation of Jahweh, he is Lord of all.
BVP
What are we to make of Jesus Christ? From: "God in the Dock" — C. S. Lewis
“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the tremendous difference that it really happened.” — C. S. Lewis
‘What are we to make of Jesus Christ?’ This is a question, which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of ‘How are we to solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and acts of this Man?’ This problem is to reconcile two things. On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point of saying, ‘I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of Christianity’ — and there seems to be a general agreement that in the teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism; it is full of wisdom and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.
The other phenomenon is the quite appalling nature of this Man’s theological remarks. You all know what I mean, and I want rather to stress the point that the appalling claim, which this Man seems to be making, is not merely made at one moment of His career. There is, of course, the one moment, which led to His execution. The moment at which the High Priest said to Him, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am the Anointed, the Son of the uncreated God, and you shall see me appearing at the end of all history as the judge of the universe.’ But that claim, in fact, does not rest on this one dramatic moment. When you look into his conversation you will find this sort of claim running throughout the whole thing. For instance, He went about saying to people, ‘I forgive your sins’. Now it is quite natural for a man to forgive something you do to him. Thus if somebody cheats me out of five pounds it is quite possible and reasonable for me to say, ‘Well, I forgive him, we will say no more about it.’ What on earth would you say if somebody had done you out of five pounds and I said, ‘That is all right, I forgive him? Then there is a curious thing, which seems to slip out almost by accident. On one occasion this Man is sitting looking down on Jerusalem from the hill about it and suddenly in comes an extraordinary remark — ‘I keep on sending you prophets and wise men.’ Nobody comments on it. And yet, quite suddenly, almost incidentally, He is claiming to be the power that all through the centuries is sending wise men and leaders into the world. Here is another curious remark: in almost every religion there are unpleasant observances like fasting. This Man suddenly remarks one day, ‘No one need fast while I am here.’ Who is this man who remarks one day, ‘No one need fast while I am here.’ Who is this Man who remarks that His mere presence suspends all normal rules? Who is the person who can suddenly tell the School they can have a half-holiday? Sometimes the statements put forward the assumption that He, the Speaker, is completely without sin or fault. This is always the attitude. ‘You, to whom I am talking, are all sinners,’ and He never remotely suggests that this same reproach can be brought against Him. He says again, ‘I am the begotten of the One God, before Abraham was, I am,’ And remember what the words ‘I am’ were in Hebrew. They were the name of God, which must not be spoken by any human being, the name which it was death to utter.
Well, that is the other side. On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most same and humble of men. There is no halfway house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him: ‘Are you the son of Brahma?’ he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, ‘Are you Heaven?’ I think he would have probably replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.’ The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion, which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are not looking for a piece of toast to suit you you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.
What are we to do about reconciling the two contradictory phenomena? One attempt consists in saying that the man did not really say these things; but that His followers exaggerated the story, and so the legend grew up that he had said them. This is difficult because His followers were all Jews; that is, they belonged to that Nation which of all others was most convinced that there was only one God — that there could not possibly be another. It is very odd that this horrible invention about a religious leader should grow up among the one people in the whole earth least likely to make such a mistake. On the contrary we get the impression that none of His immediate followers or even of the New Testament writers embraced the doctrine at all easily.
Another point is that on that view you would have to regard the accounts of the Man as being legends. Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there is no conversation that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put it in simply because he had seen it.
Then we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection. It is very necessary to get the story clear. I heard a man say, ‘The importance of the Resurrection is that is gives evidence of survival, evidence that the human personality survives death.’ On that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened to all men, the difference being that in Christ’s case we were privileged to see it happening. This is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers thought. Something perfectly new in the history of the universe had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door, which had always been locked, had for the very first time been forced open. This is something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion, Christ had had to assure them that He was not a ghost. The point is that while believing in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection as something totally different and new. The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the universe. Something new had appeared in the universe: as new as the first coming of organic life. This Man, after death, does not get divided into ‘ghost’ and ‘corpse’. A new mode of being has arisen. That is the story. What are we going to make of it?
The question is, I suppose, whether any hypothesis covers the facts so well as the Christian hypothesis. That hypothesis is that God has come down into the created universe, down to manhood — and come up again, pulling it up with Him. The alternative hypothesis is not legend, nor exaggeration, nor the apparitions of a ghost. It is either lunacy or lies. Unless one can take the second alternative (and I can’t) one turns to the Christian theory.
‘What are we to make of Christ?’ There is no question of what we can make of Him; it is entirely a question of what He intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story.
The things he says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, ‘This is the truth about the universe. This is the way you ought to go,’ but He says, ‘I am the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.’ He says, ‘No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved.; He says, ‘If you are ashamed of Me, if, when you hear this call, you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you from God and from me, whatever it is, throw it away. If it is your eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carrying a heavy load, I will set that right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out, I can do that. I am Re-birth, I am Life. Eat ME, drink Me, I am your Food. And finally, do not be afraid, I have overcome the whole Universe.’ That is the issue.