Genealogy of Jesus

But it is very clear that not one of these sayings relates to Jesus; for he is not even from Judah. How could he be when according to you he was not born of Joseph but of the Holy Spirit? For though in your genealogies you trace Joseph back to Judah, you could not invent even this plausibly. For Matthew and Luke are refuted by the fact that they disagree concerning his genealogy.

The genealogy of Jesus differs between the Gospels according to Matthew and according to Luke. This is significant because it places a Biblical contradiction at the very heart of Christianity, Jesus Christ &mdash; especially because it was prophesied that Jesus would be a descendant of David.

There are two fundamental problems. First, the grandfather mismatch. Second, the genealogy length mismatch.

Grandfather
Who is the father of Joseph (or, who is Jesus' grandfather)? Even though this could only be one person, the Bible has two genealogies of Jesus each with a different answer:

Matthew's genealogy has Joseph descended from King David through King Solomon, and from thence to a man named Jacob. On the other hand Luke's has Joseph descended from David along a radically different line, through another son, Nathan, from thence to a man named Eli.

This isn't even to mention, of course, the contradiction with his supposedly being born of a virgin — in that case, surely he would not have a biological father, and listing a genealogy is pointless.

Apologists have responded in various ways.

Double hypothetical
The first response is the "Spaceballs" defense.

See also the "First Difficulty" (b) section of the Old Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on the "Genealogy of Christ", which argues that Joseph was the adopted son of either Jacob or Heli.

Luke used Mary's genealogy
The second response is to claim that Luke was actually writing about the ancestry of Mary, not Joseph.

See also the "First Difficulty" (a) section of the Old Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on the "Genealogy of Christ".

Matthew used Mary's genealogy
If Luke can't be using Mary's genealogy, could Matthew? Not if Matthew wanted to fulfill his prophecy that Jesus would be a descendant of David.

The prophet Jeremiah recorded God's statement that no ruler would come via a descendant of Jeconiah. (NASU) states:

Shortly after, Jeremiah reconfirms that the Messiah would still come from David. (NASU) states:

But mentions Jeconiah in Jesus' genealogy:

This means that Matthew says that Jesus can't fulfill the very prophecies which Matthew says that Jesus fulfilled. In fact, if we take Matthew's genealogy as solid, then Jesus cannot be the Messiah, because his ancestors included a non-Messianic bloodline.

Matthew didn't include everybody
R. P. Nettelhorst offers an explanation:

This theory, unlike the others, has textual support: Matthew was a fan of editing genealogies to fit semantic purposes, as shown by the removals of other names to fit the 14;14;14 pattern.

Unfortunately, this doesn't leave a Biblical literalist much room to work with, though. Again, it must be accepted that the Bible purposefully excluded information. This leads us to the question: What else did the Bible not include for purely semantic reasons? And, perhaps more importantly: was anything included for purely semantic reasons?

Length
Matthew and Luke have vastly different genealogies. This is made even more apparent when looking at the whole genealogy (discrepancies are emboldened):

This length mismatch can easily be resolved by accepting Nettelhorst's theory that Matthew didn't include everybody in his genealogy &mdash; but it has the same (if not worse) problems for biblical literalism.

For reference, if Luke's genealogy is correct, and the world is only about 6000 years old, then each of the 77 generations must have been about 51.95 years (4000/77) apart &mdash; meaning, that the average mother in Jesus's heritage got pregnant at about 51 years old. (Alternately, the early generations had lives that lasted hundreds of years, just because.)

Other interesting ancestors
Matthew includes among the list Rahab, who is generally identified with the woman who betrayed Jericho to the Israelites and is described using a word that may refer to an innkeeper or a prostitute, or possibly a brothel-keeper (see also and ).