How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

[PontiusPilate]

Weren't the gospels of Luke and Matthew written before Marcion?

So the consensus. But obviously I follow the my way.

My question is what criteria is used to determine Marcion is a historica historical figure?

That has nothing to do with this topic. Any thoughts on that?

Yes, sorry about the typo corrected above. You asked whether the gospel of Luke and Matthew were written before Marcion, no? What date range is estimated to be for this Marcion? Sorry, english is not my native language.

My question is about Joseph of Nazareth, please read the opening post.

[MrMacSon]

Weren't the gospels of Luke and Matthew written before Marcion?

So the consensus. But obviously I follow the my way.

The idea that G.Luke was written before Marcion (and that Marcion butchered G.Luke) has been well challenged in recent years by several scholars: Joseph B Tyson, Jason BeDuhn, Markus Vinzent, and Matthias Klinghardt (and before them, others such as Tyson's mentor John Knox, in his 1942 study Marcion and the New Testament).

eta: Vinzent thinks all 4 canonical gospels are post-Marcion

[DCHindley]

Hello guys,

I have been reading some of the topics on this forum with great interest but I am quite new here. I am not a native English speaker, so I apologize for my grammatical mistakes.

To come straight to the point, I have a question about Joseph of Nazareth. Today it is generally believed by most scholars that the birth narratives in Luke and Matthew were inventions to let Jesus fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. (That the Messiah should be born in Betlehem.) I personally agree on this.

Since these stories are not historical, we have no other references to the name of Joseph in the entire New Testament. I am wondering if Matthew and Luke used a common source for the name of Joseph. Any thoughts on this? (Or is there any historian who did research to this?)

With kind regards,

Pontius Pilate

Hijacking someones ancestry and then treating it as someone else's is not unheard of in biblical literature. Ezra, the supposed restorer of the Law, is attributed the same genealogy as Jesus, son of Jehozadak, who co-ruled with Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, as his High Priest.

Now Africanus, a kind of well-off, well educated, and also well off in outer space when he weighed in on the differing genealogies in the Gospels of Matthew & Luke. He explained it so that one could be Jesus' heritage through his father and the other through his *mother.* Yet both lists have names that are common to one another, including a father Joseph, prince Zerubbabel and his father Shealtiel, king David (of course), and Abraham (also of course).

The anecdotes he relays about Jesus' genealogical history seem, IMHO, to relate best to Hasmonean family history when the families of Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II were in open revolt. Christian always called Jesus their "Lord" (kyrios), which suggests a kind of benevolent rule, while the Hasmoneans operated more like despots. Africanus called the descendants of Jesus "desposyni" (little despots). This is my impression, but I am open to contrary opinions.

The common names are:

[Jesus] the son of
Joseph ...
...
Zerubbabel, the son of
Shealtiel ...
...*
David, the son of
Jesse, the son of
Obed, the son of
Boaz, the son of
Sala, the son of
Nahshon, the son of
Amminadab ...
...
Hezron, the son of
Perez, the son of
Judah, the son of
Jacob, the son of
Isaac, the son of
Abraham ...

* The corresponding section of 1 Chronicles 3:1-19 (David to Zerubbabel) has quite a few more generations than even Luke.

In short, I don't know if the authors of the genealogies of Matthew and Luke relied on a common source, and what it may have said.

DCH

[Charles Wilson]

In short, I don't know if the authors of the genealogies of Matthew and Luke relied on a common source, and what it may have said.

DCH --

As far as Matthew goes, I offer an idea:

Josephus, Ant..., 14, 1, 3:

"It is true that Nicolatls [sic] of Damascus says, that Antipater was of the stock of the principal Jews who came out of Babylon into Judea; but that assertion of his was to gratify Herod..."

Matthew 1: 11 - 12 (RSV):

[11] and Josi'ah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
[12] And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoni'ah was the father of She-al'ti-el, and She-al'ti-el the father of Zerub'babel,

As to Luke, I do not know except that it appears somewhat antagonistic to Matthew. Why bother to dispute something that could not be verified in any event, unless that after the writing of Matthew it was too obvious that Matthew's Genealogy had been appropriated from Josephus (and Nicholas of Damascus). That opens up a whole 'nother can of worms.

I would welcome ANY serious ideas on Luke.

CW

[Martin Klatt]

' ' '

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Luke's narrative was not part of Marcion's Gospel and was probably a later addition. The Lucan redactor probably just took the name from Matthew's Nativity. Where Matthew got it, who knows? Messiah ben Joseph, maybe

[PontiusPilate]

Hmm, seems only Matthew did the thinking here. Mark as primary source has named four brothers of Jesus but no father, Matthew first follows that up but makes a slight change from Joses to Joseph. But that sequence of brothers then goes Jacob, Joseph, Judas, Simon. Considering that naming a first born son after the grandfather was sort of in vogue in Jewish circles at the time Matthew wrote, for him the choice was now easy to plausibly name the grandfather Jacob and the father Joseph just like he did.

This is quality, thank you very much. I have to say that I am not in the mythicist camp, but more into Bart Ehrman's line of thinking. I follow the general consensus about this topic, so I have to say that I am skeptical about posts including words like "outer space". The general historical consensus is that Luke did not borrow from Matthew, right? (Correct me if I am wrong.) The explanation about Matthew's thinking makes a lot of sense to me, but then I still wonder where Luke did get Joseph's name from.

[PontiusPilate]

Luke's narrative was not part of Marcion's Gospel and was probably a later addition. The Lucan redactor probably just took the name from Matthew's Nativity. Where Matthew got it, who knows? Messiah ben Joseph, maybe

This is also a plausible explanation for me, thank you. I wonder if there is any literature on this? Couldn't find any.

[Martin Klatt]

. . .

[PontiusPilate]

Hmm, seems only Matthew did the thinking here. Mark as primary source has named four brothers of Jesus but no father, Matthew first follows that up but makes a slight change from Joses to Joseph. But that sequence of brothers then goes Jacob, Joseph, Judas, Simon. Considering that naming a first born son after the grandfather was sort of in vogue in Jewish circles at the time Matthew wrote, for him the choice was now easy to plausibly name the grandfather Jacob and the father Joseph just like he did.

This is quality, thank you very much. I have to say that I am not in the mythicist camp, but more into Bart Ehrman's line of thinking. I follow the general consensus about this topic, so I have to say that I am skeptical about posts including words like "outer space". The general historical consensus is that Luke did not borrow from Matthew, right? (Correct me if I am wrong.) The explanation about Matthew's thinking makes a lot of sense to me, but then I still wonder where Luke did get Joseph's name from.

Depends on what you mean with general historical consensus. There is a majority historical consensus of Markan priority and there is within that group probably a majority consensus of the Mark-Q hypothesis but then we have the Farrer–Goulder–Goodacre hypothesis that dispenses with Q and that one holds that Luke did borrow from both Mark and Matthew and there are several more hypotheses about synoptic interdependency around so I don't see a meaningful general consensus atm on that topic, btw a skeptic shouldn't care to much about consensus positions as they shift all the time.

Only the name of Joseph would already suggest that Luke did indeed borrow from Matthew. But interesting, I have to read more about the 2 different hypotheses.

On the other hand, if Luke was really aware of Matthew's gospel, I would say that he would certainly have included some of the more spectacular stories of in it. (Especially the stories about the earthquake, open tombs and raised bodies of the saints when Jesus died.)

Difficult, it might also have been possible that the name of Joseph was simply in the Q-source and that Matthew and Luke did form their own birth stories.