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

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

Post by Giuseppe »

A lot of people were and are deceived when they believe that the Jews questioned the Galilean origin of the Messiah:

John 1:46
46 And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”


Others said, “This is the Christ.”
But some said, “Will the Christ come out of Galilee? 42 Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?”

John 7:52
They answered and said to him, “Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.

...and not instead the Christian deniers of a Birth of Jesus on earth.

Hence, when Peter is questioned as being from Galilee, Peter becomes ipso facto the parodistic icon of these deniers of the earthly Birth of Jesus in Galilee. A Peter who denies that he is Galilean is a Peter who denies that Jesus is Galilean, too.

Galileans == Historicists. Anti-Galileans = Mythicists.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Charles Wilson
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Re: How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

Post by Charles Wilson »

PontiusPilate wrote: Sat Apr 20, 2019 8:20 amToday 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.
***
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?)
1. Welcome!

2. I do not believe that Matthew and Luke had a common source for their genealogies.

I can trace Matthew's to Josephus. I haven't found the Key to Luke (yet!)

Josephus, Antiquities..., 14, 1, 3:

"But there was a certain friend of Hyrcanus, an Idumean, called Antipater, who was very rich, and in his nature an active and a seditious man; who was at enmity with Aristobulus, and had differences with him on account of his good-will to Hyrcanus. It is true that Nicolatls 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, who was his son, and who, by certain revolutions of fortune, came afterward to be king of the Jews, whose history we shall give you in its proper place hereafter..."

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

No such Marker is found in Luke. If Luke is built on the collected Documents that went into Mark and Matthew, the genealogy of Matthew was rejected for the New!, Improved! genealogy found in Luke.

Don't know "Why". Only "That".

If you find out, let us know!

CW
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Difflugia
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Re: How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

Post by Difflugia »

Charles Wilson wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2020 12:12 pmI do not believe that Matthew and Luke had a common source for their genealogies.

I can trace Matthew's to Josephus. I haven't found the Key to Luke (yet!)
This is just speculation based on how Luke's Gospel "feels" to me, but I think one of Luke's goals was to make his narrative more plausible than Matthew's and for the genealogy, "more plausible" meant "more difficult to disconfirm." In addition to changing the genealogy, Luke also cut the more public miracles that Matthew claimed were known throughout Jerusalem and moved the sermon from the mountain to "a level place" where people had somewhere to sit.

As you note, Matthew traces the genealogy to names that are actually in the Bible as recently as the Persian period (Zerubbabel). I'm guessing that there was some sort of contemporary documentation that at least claimed to trace important families back that far. I could believe that Matthew took all but the last few names from that kind of document.

Luke's genealogy diverges from Matthew's as soon as possible after David, switching from Solomon to Nathan, a son about which nothing else is recorded. If every name after Nathan is fictional, one would be hard-pressed to find a competing genealogy going back far enough to show that Nathan didn't have a son named "Mattatha." A clue that the names might be made up is the presence of a "Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel" in the middle, as though Luke was getting bored of thinking up names and absentmindedly stuck in a pair that also appeared in Matthew.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

I do not know whence either the Matthean or the Lucan genealogies derived the names after those which appear on the pages of scripture, but my overall take on the Lucan genealogy is inspired mainly by Richard Bauckham.

The Lucan genealogy lists 77 human generations from Adam to Jesus, counting inclusively; that is, Adam is the first generation and Jesus is the seventy-seventh. Certain important people in Jewish history appear as the last generation within their own group of seven. For example, Enoch rounds out the first seven, Abraham the third, David the fifth, and Jesus the eleventh. Furthermore, another man named Jesus rounds out the seventh seven, in position 49, a jubilee figure. Thus Enoch is the seventh human generation ("seventh from Adam," according to Jude [1.]14), his son Methuselah the eighth. The genealogy, therefore, lists 70 human generations from Methuselah to Jesus, counting inclusively; that is, if we count Methuselah as the first generation after Enoch, Jesus is the seventieth.

The naming of Enoch in the seventh generation and of Jesus exactly seventy generations after him is probably no accident. The book of Enoch, also known as 1 Enoch, tells of the angels called the Watchers who had relations with human women, as per Genesis 6.1-4, and were thus condemned to be bound in the valleys of the earth until the great day of judgment, a total of seventy generations.

When were the Watchers bound? The Enochic literature is not entirely precise on that point, but on page 320 of Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church Richard Bauckham observes that "it certainly happened after Enoch's translation and during the lifetime of his son Methuselah. So a reader might easily suppose that it should be dated in the generation after Enoch's." The book of Enoch is divided into 5 sections, of which sections 1 and 3-5 are attested at Qumran; section 2, the parables, is not attested before Christian times. Methuselah does not appear in section 1 (or 2, for that matter), but each of sections 3-5 is set up as a direct address from the translated Enoch to his son Methuselah. Indeed, what Enoch is sharing with his son is vital information for posterity, for the generations of the world (82.1; 83.10).

We are probably justified, then, in seeing a connection, at least in hindsight, between these instructions to Methuselah for the generations and the seventy generations during which the Watchers are bound:

1 Enoch 10.11-14: 11 "And the Lord said unto Michael: Go and bind Semjaza and the rest with him who have had intercourse with women so as to have been defiled with them in their uncleanness. 12 And, when their sons have slain each other and they have seen the destruction of their loved ones, also bind them for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, until the day of their judgment and consummation, till the judgment of the age of the ages is fulfilled. 13 At that time they shall be led off into the chaos of fire and into the torment and into prison to be shut up for the age. 14 And whoever shall be burned and ruined will from now be bound together with them until the end of generations."

Thus, although the immediate context of this passage includes instructions to Noah, the son of Lamech (10.1), it is easy to see how one familiar with the Enochic literature might start counting the seventy generations with Methuselah as the first. (This is especially true given that, according to all three extant versions of the genealogies in Genesis 5.1-32, Masoretic, LXX, and Samaritan, the lifespans of Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah overlap to a great degree.) If Methuselah is the one receiving instructions for all the generations, then it makes sense that all the generations (the seventy) should start being counted with him. Whether or not this is how the original author(s) of the Enochic literature intended the generations to be counted, what matters for our purposes is that this is a valid and plausible reading on the part of a Jewish reader from century I.

It seems, at any rate, quite a coincidence that (A) an ancient book written as instruction from Enoch to his son Methuselah should number the generations of the world at 70 and (B) a genealogy for the messiah, supposed to appear at the climax of history, should place that messiah in generation 70 after Enoch. I think, rather, that this is no coincidence at all. It is intentional.

It also helps explain the presence of Admin in the Lucan genealogy (Luke 3.33). In Ruth 4.19 and 1 Chronicles 2.9-10 Ram is the father of Amminadab; in Luke 3.33 Arni must correspond to Ram (Aram in Matthew 1.4), since both are said to be the son of Hezron, but his son is Admin, whose son is then Amminadab. No matter how the extra name Arni got onto the list, it serves a vital purpose to the christology of the genealogy, pushing David into the climactic seventh slot of the fifth septad. Without Arni, the genealogy would come out one name short of making David the seventh in his septad; possibly of related interest, in 1 Chronicles 2.15 David is named as the seventh son of Jesse.

I think Bauckham is most likely correct that the Lucan genealogy is basically an Enochic exercise.

ETA: In descending order (the reverse of how Luke actually presents it):
  • (God)
  1. Adam
  2. Seth
  3. Enos
  4. Cainan
  5. Mahalaleel
  6. Jared
  7. Enoch
  8. Methuselah
  9. Lamech
  10. Noah
  11. Shem
  12. Arphaxad
  13. Cainan
  14. Shelah
  15. Eber
  16. Peleg
  17. Reu
  18. Serug
  19. Nahor
  20. Terah
  21. Abraham
  22. Isaac
  23. Jacob
  24. Judah
  25. Perez
  26. Hezron
  27. Arni
  28. Admin
  29. Amminadab
  30. Nahshon
  31. Sala
  32. Boaz
  33. Obed
  34. Jesse
  35. David
  36. Nathan
  37. Mattatha
  38. Menna
  39. Melea
  40. Eliakim
  41. Jonam
  42. Joseph
  43. Judah
  44. Simeon
  45. Levi
  46. Matthat
  47. Jorim
  48. Eliezar
  49. Er
  50. Joshua
  51. Elmadam
  52. Cosam
  53. Addi
  54. Melchi
  55. Neri
  56. Shealtiel
  57. Zerubbabel
  58. Rhesa
  59. Joanan
  60. Joda
  61. Josech
  62. Semein
  63. Mattathias
  64. Maath
  65. Naggai
  66. Esli
  67. Nahum
  68. Amos
  69. Mattathias
  70. Joseph
  71. Jannai
  72. Melchi
  73. Levi
  74. Matthat
  75. Heli
  76. Joseph
  77. Jesus
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Sun Jul 26, 2020 7:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Charles Wilson
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Re: How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

Post by Charles Wilson »

Thank you very much, Ben!
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Difflugia
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Re: How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

Post by Difflugia »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 24, 2020 7:11 pmIt also helps explain the presence of Admin in the Lucan genealogy (Luke 3.33).
This is neither here nor there as far as your explanation is concerned, but I was confused for a minute because "Admin" isn't in the ASV that I'm reading from (it's footnoted, but I didn't notice at first). I checked Westcott-Hort and Admin is there, but Amminadab isn't. I guess that'll teach me to stick with modern texts.
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Re: How did Matthew and Luke get the name of Joseph of Nazareth?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Difflugia wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 12:11 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 24, 2020 7:11 pmIt also helps explain the presence of Admin in the Lucan genealogy (Luke 3.33).
This is neither here nor there as far as your explanation is concerned, but I was confused for a minute because "Admin" isn't in the ASV that I'm reading from (it's footnoted, but I didn't notice at first). I checked Westcott-Hort and Admin is there, but Amminadab isn't. I guess that'll teach me to stick with modern texts.
The verse, as you have correctly surmised, has textual issues:

Luke 3.33, LaParola: τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ τοῦ Ἑσρὼμ τοῦ Φαρὲς τοῦ Ἰούδα (link):

τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ] (‭א2 Ἀρνει) L (N* Ἀρὰμ for Ἀδμὶν) X (Γ) (f13 Ἀρηῒ) 157 pc copbo NR CEI Riv TILC Nv (NM omit τοῦ Ἀδμὶν)
τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ] (p4vid Ἀδμειν and Ἀρνει) (‭א* Ἀρνει) 1241 pc copsa
τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ] (B Ἀρνει) WH
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρὰμ] 0102 (1216 Ἀμιναδὰμ) (1243 1646 2174 Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἰωρὰμ)
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἰωρὰμ] K Δ Ψ (180 1010 Ἰωαρὰμ) 597 700 (892 Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ) 1006 1010 1195 1243 1505 2148 2452 Byzpt Lectpt itb (ite) Paschal Chronicle
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰμ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἰωρὰμ] (28* Ἰαρὰμ) 28c 205 1242 (1292 Ἰωαρὰμ) 1344 Lectpt syrh slav
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἀδμὶ τοῦ Ἀρνὶ] (N* omit τοῦ Ἀδμὶ) Θ (0102) (1 Ἀμιναδὰμ and Ἀλμεὶ for Ἀδμὶ) pc (syrpal) arm geo
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰμ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἀλμεὶ τοῦ Ἀρνὶ] 1 (1365 add τοῦ Ἰωρὰμ) (l1127 Ἀμιναδὰβ and Ἰωρὰμ τοῦ Δονεῖ for Ἀρνὶ)
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰμ τοῦ Ἰωρὰμ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ] 1009
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἰωρὰμ τοῦ Ἀνμεὶ τοῦ Δονεῖ] l70 (l185) (l950)
τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ] (see Matthew 1:3; Matthew 1:4) A D E G H Nc Π 33 565 (1071 1242 Ἀμιναδὰμ) 1079 1230 1253 (1424) Byzpt l184 l292 l2211 lAD ita itaur itc itd itf itff2 itl itq itr1 vg syrp goth ς ND Dio
τοῦ Νηρὶ τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰμ τοῦ Μελχι τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἀδδὶ] 1546
omit verses 24-38] W (579 omit verses 23-38)

Metzger's comment on this verse:

Metzger on Luke 3.33.png
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JoeWallack
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Luukeey! Ya Got Sum Splainin Ta Do

Post by JoeWallack »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Jul 24, 2020 7:11 pm The Lucan genealogy lists 77 human generations from Adam to Jesus, counting inclusively; that is, Adam is the first generation and Jesus is the seventy-seventh. Certain important people in Jewish history appear as the last generation within their own group of seven. For example, Enoch rounds out the first seven, Abraham the third, David the fifth, and Jesus the eleventh. Furthermore, another man named Jesus rounds out the seventh seven, in position 49, a jubilee figure. Thus Enoch is the seventh human generation ("seventh from Adam," according to Jude [1.]14), his son Methuselah the eighth. The genealogy, therefore, lists 70 human generations from Methuselah to Jesus, counting inclusively; that is, if we count Methuselah as the first generation after Enoch, Jesus is the seventieth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNZIpmtD13U

JW:
ST. AUGUSTIN: HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS
Luke carries the genealogy upwards to the same David through Nathan,702 by which prophet God took away703 his sin.704 The number, also, which Luke follows does most certainly best indicate the taking away of sins. For inasmuch as in Christ, who Himself had no sin, there is assuredly no iniquity allied to the iniquities of men which He bore in His flesh, the number adopted by Matthew makes forty when Christ is excepted. On the contrary, inasmuch as, by clearing us of all sin and purging us, He places us in a right relation to His own and His Father’s righteousness (so that the apostle’s word is made good: “But he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit”705), in the number used by Luke we find included both Christ Himself, with whom the enumeration begins, and God, with whom it closes; and the sum becomes thus seventy-seven, which denotes the thorough remission and abolition of all sins. This perfect removal of sins the Lord Himself also clearly represented under the mystery of this number, when He said that the person sinning ought to be forgiven not only seven times, but even unto seventy times seven. 706
JW:
The ad hoc explanation by Augustine is ridiculous, even by Augustinian standards. It looks like GLuke was originally Marcion and a significant edit was a genealogy to convert to orthodox Luke. Note that the primary motive was to show that Jesus had a genealogy and not to have an agreed genealogy. Hence the early lack of concern with the different genealogies.

"Luke" appears to have considered Enoch authoritative which was a second century Christian position:

Book of Enoch
Reception
Main article: Reception of Enoch in antiquity
The Book of Enoch was considered as scripture in the Epistle of Barnabas (16:4)[26] and by many of the early Church Fathers, such as Athenagoras,[27] Clement of Alexandria,[28] Irenaeus[29] and Tertullian,[30] who wrote c. 200 that the Book of Enoch had been rejected by the Jews because it contained prophecies pertaining to Christ.[31] However, later Fathers denied the canonicity of the book, and some even considered the Epistle of Jude uncanonical because it refers to an "apocryphal" work.[3][32]
By Augustine's time it was no longer considered authoritative. So the best authority Augustine can make up is "Matthew's" Jesus saying forgive seventy/times seven times. Meanwhile the Book of Enoch is saying "I'm standing right here."


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Difflugia
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Re: Luukeey! Ya Got Sum Splainin Ta Do

Post by Difflugia »

JoeWallack wrote: Sun Jul 26, 2020 6:26 pm"Luke" appears to have considered Enoch authoritative which was a second century Christian position:
I read through the pages of Bauckham's Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church available in the Google Books preview and this grabbed my attention (p. 325):
Before doing so, however, it is worth stressing one conclusion which the Enochic structure of the genealogy entails. The genealogy must have been composed in this form during the generation of Jesus' contemporaries, for it conveys the apocalyptic message: Jesus belongs to the last generation of all, the seventy-seventh generation in which the last judgment will take place. Perhaps it cannot exactly have been intended to prove that point, since the number of generations has been artificially constructed, but on the other hand the number of generations is not at all implausible. To conclude that Jesus was the seventy-seventh generation from Adam was not difficult in relation to the chronological knowledge available in first-century Judaism. In any case, the genealogy is certainly constructed to express this belief—not simply the imminent eschatalogical expectation of early Christianity (which certainly survived into the second and subsequent generations), but the specific expectation of the parousia within the generation of Jesus' contemporaries.
If Bauckham's observation has merit, then the genealogy was probably composed in the first century. It's interesting to speculate, though, if Luke would have made that connection (i.e. that the generation of Jesus' contemporaries was the final generation) if there was already an Enochian tradition that Jesus was the seventy-seventh generation.

Another interesting bit I ran into while flipping through commentaries is this from Fitzmyer's AYB volume on Luke 1-9 (p. 496):
Moreover, Luke compounds the problem in this part of the genealogy by listing four ancestors of Jesus who bear patriarchal names: Levi, Simeon, Judah, and Joseph (3:29-30). As far as can be ascertained, such names were not used by Jews in pre-exilic times and represent an anachronism that reveals why this part of the ancestry cannot be otherwise controlled. See J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969) 296.
The referenced page in Jeremias can be read in the Google books preview.

Bauckham dismisses this a bit later in the chapter (p. 344):
Thus the four patriarchal names by no means discredit the whole of the monarchical period of the genealogy. On the contrary, they stand out as the sort of names which would be added. By contrast, the rest of the names are quite credible for the period, and the presence of several which are unparalleled and may well be corrupt is exactly what we should expect in a genalogy preserved over a long period in nothing more secure than family memory or unofficial family records.
Since the pattern he describes would also be the same one we would expect if someone were just making up Jewish-sounding names, Bauckham's explanation reads too much to me like the apologetic argument that mistakes and inconsistencies are somehow evidence of genuineness.
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