NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER ONE

Part III (con’t)

With that said, many scholars point out a discrepancy between the list provided in 1 Chronicles and what the author lists here. They point to missing individuals in the genealogy, which they consider either an effort on the part of Matthew to hide something, or it was a case of changing the rules in an attempt to get the three sets of fourteen generations he needed in order to fulfill some prophecy. However, many scholars believe it was simply a case of doing so to help readers memorize three sets of fourteen each much easier. The names are spelled according to the Hebrew.¹ The reason I did so was to highlight how many Hebrew names in the English Bible substitute the “b” for the “v”; the “i” for the “y”; and the “J” for the “Y”. This is important, because when a name ends with “iah” instead of “yah” it’s hard to see the influence of Yahweh in naming that person.

Genealogy of Jesus: From David to the Babylonian Captivity

Comparison of lists with some Hebrew names spelled differently in Greek

As we can see, Matthew gives us 14 generations and 1 Chronicles lists 18. Not only that, but Luke’s list is also at odds with that of the one here in Matthew. Some scholars have been pressed to explain this apparent discrepancy. But since we cannot interview those who composed these genealogies, it is impossible to know for certain. But the one thing we know for sure is that Jesus had nothing to say about providing His family tree as proof of His lineage back to David or Abraham. As we say today, one chronologist takes the direct route and the other the scenic route but both end up at the same place. And there is a clear reason why this should not be a serious factor. Joseph had nothing to do with it. Also, even Mary’s lineage was not important enough to produce. Our Lord said it over and over, I and the heavenly Father are one. Mary was certainly the most blessed among women for being chosen as the one who would cooperate in allowing the Son of God to come to earth in human form. But Jesus never made an issue out of it. He kept pointing to heaven. And when He rose from the grave, it was not to prove that He was the son of Mary, but the Son of God, because it was His Father who raised Him to life again. That’s why Jesus continued to say, I was with Him all along, and I was with Him when He decided to send me here to earth. As we have seen, the counting of generations to define a period in history was not new to Jewish thinking. Rabbis tell us about recording the ten generations from Adam to Noah “to show how great was God’s patience, because all the generations provoked Him continually until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood. Then there were ten generations from Noah to Abraham, to show how great was His patience, because all the generations provoked him continually until Abraham our father came and received the reward of them all.”² Other cultures used this same method. For instance, in Greek literature we read: “From Tharypas to Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, there are fifteen generations.”³ Likewise, in other non-Jewish writings we read: “Of this Babylon, besides many other rulers, of whom I shall make mention in the Assyrian history, and who added improvement to the walls and temples, there were also two who were women. Of these, the one who ruled first, named Semiramis, who lived five generations before the other, and had levees built on the plains which are a sight worth seeing; because before this the river used to flood like a sea over the whole plain.”⁴ This is even more proof that using generations was a normal part of charting history.

Verse 18: “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah happened. His mother Mary was engaged to marry Joseph. But before they consummated their marriage, he learned that she was expecting a baby. (She was pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit.)” Jewish rabbis say: “A virgin is allowed twelve months from the time her intended husband asked her to get married, in which to prepare her marriage outfit, as was requested by Eliezer the servant of Abraham of Rebekah, ‘So her brother, along with her mother, said: “Let the girl stay with us for a year,’⁵, and just as such a period is allowed for the woman, so, too, it is allowed for the man to prepare for the wedding from the time his bride requested that they marry.”⁶ When we take this traditional custom and apply it to Joseph and Mary, it gives us a better idea of what happened from the time he asked her to marry him. This time period of one year would certainly account for why Mary was able to go visit Elizabeth for three months after she and Joseph became engaged. In the same Jewish document we also read: “A virgin who is widowed, divorced, or victim of a broken engagement – the value of her dowry, if she remarries, is two hundred silver coins. Also, a claim of non-virginity can be filed against them if it is discovered that they were not virgins, and they can lose the entire dowry if the husband claims that the marriage was based on the mistaken premise that she was a virgin.”⁷ This makes it clear the action Joseph could have taken once he found out that Mary had gotten pregnant without his involvement. Also, Jewish literature, such as the Mishnah and Talmud, suggests that a girl was eligible for marriage after she began menstruating, approximately around the age of twelve.⁸ Thus we can see that if Joseph had already lost one wife and needed a new one, he could have easily been twice the age of Mary. Also, if it turns out that Mary had no brothers, Joseph’s proposal of marriage may have also been designed to give this girl a future just in case her father’s inheritance was not enough for her to live on. This may also foretell why we hear little about Joseph later on, since he too may have died by the time Jesus was grown. Christ’s virgin birth has been one of the most misinterpreted, misused and misunderstood aspects of His life. He had to be more perfect than normal mankind, otherwise He could not have saved us – hence the virgin birth. Christ received His divinity through the Holy Spirit and His humanity by way of Mary – hence the virgin birth. However, a common appellation among the Jews for Jesus was “Jesus son of Panthera”, an allusion to the widespread rumor during the earliest centuries of the Christian era that Jesus was the result of an illegitimate union between his mother and a Roman soldier named Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera.⁹ It was conjectured that since this Roman soldier, who was in fact a German mercenary stationed near Bethlehem at this time, was in fact the real father of Jesus. Therefore, Jesus was an illegitimate child. The word Panthera is similar to the Greek word “parthenos” which means “Virgin.” The fact is that the Pharisee’s used a play on words show that they really knew about his virgin birth but wanted to camouflage the truth and make it look like a lie, by suggesting the this Roman soldier whose name sounded like “virgin”, was the “virgin” in this case, not Mary. Such subterfuge gives even more credence to Christ’s immaculate conception since it was in writing before the Gospels appeared, and thereby eliminates the theory by critics of Christ’s virgin birth being a post-apostolic inception as church doctrine. It is interesting to speculate why life’s conceiving essence should come from the Holy Spirit exclusively. It is only natural to eliminate the Son Himself since He was the One being conceived. The Father is also unlikely since His relationship with fallen man has been by necessity at great distance since the Garden of Eden. Furthermore, it is said: “No man can see God and live,”¹⁰ let alone be touched by Him in this manner. But the creative activism of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament from creation and onward made Him the perfect choice to perform the miracle of the immaculate conception. There were also rules in the Jewish verbal law that regulated how a man and woman were engaged or betrothed. A venerable Jewish Rabbi said: “Before the Torah was given, when a man would meet a woman in the marketplace and he and she decided to marry, he would bring her home, have intimate relations in private and thus make her his wife. Once the Torah was given, the Jews were commanded that when a man desires to marry a woman, he must ask her to be his wife in the presence of witnesses. Only after this, does she become his wife. This is alluded to¹¹ in the phrase: ‘When a man takes a wife and has relations with her….’ This process of acquisition fulfills one of the Torah’s positive commandments. The process of acquiring a wife is formalized in three ways: through the transfer of money, through the transfer of a formal document and through intimacy. The effectiveness of intimate relations and the transfer of a formal document have their origin in the Torah itself, while the effectiveness of transfer of money is Rabbinic in origin. This process of acquisition is universally referred to as “betrothal” or “consecration”. And a woman who is acquired in any of these three ways is referred to as: “wife.” Once this process of acquisition has been formalized and a woman has become betrothed, she is considered to be married even though the marriage bond has not been consummated and she has not entered her husband’s home.”¹² So according to verbal law, Joseph must have either asked Mary to be his wife in the presence of witnesses, and the payment of a dowry to her father. Matthew makes it quite clear that she did not become his wife through intimate relations before Jesus was born.