This is a response to a video called ” Joseph’s Father Contradiction Destroyed by Krazie316. In his original video Krazie attempts to explain away the apparent contradiction between the lineages given for Jesus in Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3 (I reverse these in the video, my mistake!). He uses the tired old apologetic that claims that Matthew was tracing lineage based on Jewish inheritance law while Luke was actually tracing Mary’s ancestry, with the reference to Joseph really meaning Joseph’s wife.

There are so many flaws with this. First and foremost is that nowhere in the text does it say this or imply it. The only reason it is claimed is to explain away the contradiction. Furthermore, this convention of naming a woman’s lineage as her husband’s is not used anywhere else in the Bible, nor is there any extant or traditional Jewish convention for doing this (not counting the Apologist’s invention of such).

Another problem with these lists is that they directly contradict their source material in the OT, names are missing in some places and added in others. The purpose of this is that the Gospel writers were attempting to attach numerological significance to Jesus’ birth. Matthew 1:17 says: “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations”. That is, some major theological event is purported to occur every 14 generations. To make this fit he deleted a few names to make Uzziah the son of Joram although 2 Chronicles clearly states that there were two generations between these two!

But the big flaw with these genealogies comes from the fact that if indeed Luke is tracing Mary’s lineage then he has her from the wrong tribe! Mary is related to Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Elisabeth and her husband are explicitly stated to be from the tribe of Levi. Therefore Mary (usually considered Elisabeth’s cousin, although interpretations vary) would also be from the tribe of Levi, not Benjamin as the apologist interpretation of Luke would have us believe.

I know that this will not even phase Krazie and other apologists. The typical response is to just hand wave these things away, usually with an insult to the person making the claim. I have found that if you keep pressing the issue the final argument is that we simply cannot understand because we are not saved.

Krazie’s video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlcbyVcDSFs

Duration : 0:9:46


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