PontiusPilate wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2019 8:20 am
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