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Religion

2010-07-01 12:04:00

The genealogy of Jesus

Answer: The lists of Jesus genealogy in St. Matthew and in St. Luke (3:23-38) are quite different, each including only a few of the same-named persons. Since the time when those Gospels were written, various commentators have attempted to explain the differences. Some have suggested that the list in Matthew is the genealogy of Joseph, while that in Luke is the genealogy of Mary. After all, only Mary could have told Luke about the events related in the first and second chapters of his Gospel. "Jesus’ mother kept all these things in her heart" (Luke 2:51). But, really there is much that we don’t know. Abraham lived two-thousand years before Jesus. All the names mentioned by Matthew and Luke, even if they had long lives, could not make-up the totality of Abraham’s descendants during two-thousand years. Thus the three series of "fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and fourteen from David to the exile in Babylon, and fourteen from then to the birth of the Messiah (Matthew 1:17) must omit many persons in direct line from Abraham to Jesus. 14 times 3 = 42. Usually a generation is reckoned as thirty to forty years. 42 times 40 = 1678. Granting that some of those persons named lived 50 or 60 or even 90 or 120 years, many of those named were short-lived, as we read about them in the books of Kings and Chronicles.

All the persons named by St. Matthew are descendants of Abraham, whether by blood or by adoption. The Mosaic Law required the Jews to marry within their own tribe. By the time of Jesus, each of the twelve tribes numbered several hundred-thousand persons, if not millions of persons. Therefore a Jew could marry within his/her tribe without crossing blood-lines. Both Joseph and Mary were faithful Jews and therefore eligible to marry each other, and each was a descendant of Abraham. Mary was born of faithful Jewish parents, themselves descendants of Abraham. Joseph, her husband, was likewise a direct descendant of Abraham, as was his father Jacob. The answer to your question is simple: Our Lord Jesus descended from Abraham through the physical blood line of Mary, and through adoption by Joseph, the husband of Mary, in their virginal marriage. -- Fr. Richard James Cleary Father Richard James Cleary was born and reared in Wichita. After graduation from Cathedral High School in 1947, he attended the seminary operated by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey in northwestern Missouri. There he came to appreciate the life of the monks and, having obtained the permission of Bishop Mark Carroll of Wichita, he became a monk of that monastery. After being ordained a priest in 1955, his superiors sent him to get his master’s degree at the University of Ottawa, Canada, then to study in Athens, Greece, and then in Rome, Italy, where he obtained his doctor’s degree in Theology. Finally, he spent a year of study at Harvard University. Later, Fr. Cleary was assigned to teach for many years in Rome. In 1998, he returned to Wichita, where he served in parish ministry at St. Mary’s Cathedral and at Blessed Sacrament parishes. In 2001, his abbot (superior) transferred him to Arkansas, where he served as chaplain of the Benedictine Sisters of Holy Angels Convent in Jonesboro, and helped in the parishes of northeast Arkansas. In March 2010 he was re-assigned to his monastery, Conception Abbey, Conception, Missouri 64433. He can be contacted there at (660) 660-2877 or by email: rjcleary@juno.com