The Geneology of Esa (Jesus): A topic for Jews, Christians, and Muslims

**AntiKarateKid** · 12-24-2007

Hey all. We know that our Jewish brothers and sisters do not acknowlege Esa on a few accounts. One being that they do not beieve that he wass descended from David. Christians and Muslims on the otherhand, believe he ws. I am confused about the disagreement. It seems to me that this should be a straightforward matter if he was or was not. Can anyone provide their interpretation of this discrepancy. I as Muslim would like to hear our side of the discussion also.

Thanks for the answers guys. I can always count on you!

**Isambard** · 12-26-2007

Originally Posted by AntiKarateKid

Hey all. We know that our Jewish brothers and sisters do not acknowlege Esa on a few accounts. One being that they do not beieve that he wass descended from David. Christians and Muslims on the otherhand, believe he ws. I am confused about the disagreement. It seems to me that this should be a straightforward matter if he was or was not. Can anyone provide their interpretation of this discrepancy. I as Muslim would like to hear our side of the discussion also.

Thanks for the answers guys. I can always count on you!

Easy. God snapped his fingers and Mary got pregnant. Joseph was the one who is suppose to be the decendant of David. If he played no part in "making" Jesus then how can you clean Jesus is decendant from David?

**The_Prince** · 12-26-2007

well the bible, gospels, the book of christians shows contradictions with the geneology of the messiah the jews are waiting for.

for instance the messiah should be from the line of david through solomon, the gospels family lineage shows no proof that Jesus descends from this line. hence in reality Muslims arent in the same boat as christians, christians so forcefully tried to prove Jesus was the messiah (which he was) that they started attributing all these lineages to him when it wasnt really needed hence they pretty much made their own problems, and rightfully so, the jews have exposed the errors.

**Imam** · 12-26-2007

Originally Posted by AntiKarateKid

Hey all. We know that our Jewish brothers and sisters do not acknowlege Esa on a few accounts. One being that they do not beieve that he was descended from David. Christians and Muslims on the otherhand, believe he was.

Thanks for the answers guys. I can always count on you!

simple correction:

Jews and Muslims do not believe that he was descended from David. Christians on the other hand, believe he was.

as Jewish descent is traced through their fathers,then no way for the virgin-born Jesus(pbuh) to be the seed of David.....

**YusufNoor** · 12-26-2007

Originally Posted by Imam

simple correction:

Jews and Muslims do not believe that he was descended from David. Christians on the other hand, believe he was.

as Jewish descent is traced through their fathers,then no way for the virgin-born Jesus(pbuh) to be the seed of David.....

Actually, for Jesus/Isa,Alaihe Salaam, to be the Messiah, he HAD to descended from King David/Dawuud/Alaihe Salaam; hence MARY/Mariam, Alaihe Salaam's family tree is also in the NT.

actually Jewish descent is traced through their mothers for purposes of determining whether or not one is a Jew.

the geneology in Luke is Mary's lineage, NOT Joseph's, it's a little complicated:

Saint Luke has quite a different account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. He wrote his Gospel to address the Gentiles who were not under the Mosaic Law, and for the most part were unfamiliar with it. He was also a physician, (Col 4:14). His interest, no doubt, was not in the legal aspect of the Genealogy of Jesus Christ, but of the human or natural bloodline, by depicting Jesus as the "Son of Man". Luke's Genealogy begins with Jesus Christ and goes backward in time, just the opposite of Matthew who started back and came forward. Luke's genealogy follows the custom of Private Records as explained above. Notice in Luke 3:23-38, that Luke's genealogy does go from Jesus Christ, through David, and back to Judah, continuing all the way to Adam, and then to GOD. By doing this he shows a tie between the "New Adam" (1Cor 15:45) and the first Adam. However, Luke shows the descendant of David to be Nathan (31), and not Solomon, as does Matthew. This alludes to the possibility that Luke's genealogy is for a different person other than Joseph. Let us have a closer look at verse 23 with three different Bibles.

"And Jesus Himself, when He began His work, was about thirty years of age, -being as was supposed- the Son of Joseph, the Son of Heli, the Son of Matthat."
Challoner-Rheims-Confraternity

"When Jesus began His ministry he was about thirty years of age. He was the Son, as was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat..."
New American Bible

"And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the Son of Joseph, which was the Son of Heli, which was the son of Matthat..."
King James

This verse at first reading might seem to say that we have something amiss:

1. This verse appears to say that the father of Joseph is Heli, yet in Matthew we just saw that it was Jacob. How can Joseph have two fathers?
In many places in Holy Scripture we must revert to the underlying Greek text in order to fully understand the verse. The Greek word used for "as was supposed, or, as was thought" is "Nomizo", which means:
1. To hold by custom or usage.
2. To follow by custom or usage.
3. It is the custom.
4. It is the received usage.
5. To deem, to think, to suppose.

This matter can be made clearer by interpreting the verse as:
"When Jesus began His ministry he was about thirty years of age. He was the Son (so it was thought, of Joseph) of Heli."

The underlying Greek text supports this interpretation as, "...Joseph son of Heli", in the English translation, simply reads, "...Joseph of Eli". The word 'son' before Heli, is not in the Greek text.

So in order to trace the bloodline of Jesus through Heli, we would first have to go through Mary, His mother. This shows that Heli would be the blood father of Mary, and the father in law of Joseph. Even though the name of Mary is not listed, in order to comply with Jewish custom, it is certainly implied.

Matthew 1:15, shows that Matthan is the father of Jacob, and Luke 3:23-24, show that Matthat was the father of Heli. It is not known if Matthan and Matthat are the same person. If they are the same person, that would indicate that Jacob and Heli could be brothers if they had the same mother, or half brothers if they had different mothers, or one of them could have even been adopted from the tribe of Judah. Julius Africanus (160-240) wrote in his Epistle to Aristides that Jacob and Heli were half brothers. The Bible makes no distinction between genetic birth and adoption. See 2Sam 6:23, where Michol the daughter of Saul and the wife of David (1Sam 18:27) had no children. Yet in 2Sam 21:8, it says Michol had five sons. In reality, they were adopted sons of Merob. Jacob was the genetic father of Joseph. Heli, the father of Mary, was Joseph's father in law, his legal father.

source:

http://home.inreach.com/bstanley/geneal.htm

**Imam** · 12-27-2007

Originally Posted by YusufNoor

[COLOR="Blue"]Actually, for Jesus/Isa,Alaihe Salaam, to be the Messiah, he HAD to descended from King David/Dawuud/Alaihe Salaam; hence MARY/Mariam, Alaihe Salaam's family tree is also in the NT.

actually Jewish descent is traced through their mothers for purposes of determining whether or not one is a Jew.

The Jews trace religous lineage through matrilineal descent (i.e. the question of who is a Jew) only in the case of mixed marriages, which were considered void, thus rendering the child illegitimate; however, they probably did not begin doing that until the Second Temple period, which was around 515 BCE-70 CE. So, Jesus would have been some somewhere in the middle of this period. The Talmud, which is the written source for this practice, was compiled in 2nd century CE. In Jew-Jew marriages, the lineage is paternal. Also, the tribe of a child passes through the father; only the Jewish identity in mixed unions passes through the mother.

"Women did not count in reckoning descent for the simple reason that it was then believed that the complete human was present in the man's sperm (the woman's egg wasn't discovered until 1827). The woman's womb was just the soil in which the seed was planted. Just as there was barren soil that could not produce crops, so also the Bible speaks of barren wombs that could not produce children."

There is no evidence that Mary was a descendant of David, but Dennis McKinsey, the editor of Biblical Errancy [2], points out there is some evidence that she was a member of a completely separate line, a descendant of Levi, the great-grandfather of Aaron and Moses. That evidence comes from the pen of Luke, who wrote that Elisabeth, who was a daughter of Aaron, was the cousin of Mary. Here is the story:

After telling Mary that the Holy Ghost would cause the virgin Mary to conceive Jesus, he also tells her that he had already done something similar for her cousin:

"There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. (Luke 1:5)....And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren."(Luke 1:36)

Rabbi Tovia Singer,affirmed that :

Nowhere in the third Gospel, or in the entire New Testament for that matter, does it state that Mary was from the House of David. On the contrary, Luke 1:27 insists that it is Joseph who was from the House of David, not Mary. In fact, Luke claims that Mary was the cousin of Elizabeth, who he says was a descendant of Aaron the high priest [Luke 1:5], placing her in the tribe of Levi, not David’s tribe of Judah. Moreover, in Luke 2:4, the author writes that the reason it was necessary for Joseph and Mary to return to Bethlehem was because Joseph was from the House of David.

There are a number of reasons why the church has a vital interest in claiming that Luke’s genealogy is through Mary’s line. To begin with, Paul claims in Romans 1:3 that Jesus was from the seed of David after the flesh. This has always been understood to mean that Paul was claiming that King David was the biological ancestor of Jesus. Although at the time Paul penned the Book of Romans, he was completely unaware that Christendom would eventually claim that Jesus was born of a virgin birth. The church desperately needed to have Paul’s statement correlate with the virgin-birth story. This was solved by insisting that whereas Matthew’s genealogy was through Joseph’s line, Luke’s genealogy was through Mary’s line. In this way, Jesus could now be from the seed of David after the flesh through Luke’s genealogy. Claiming Luke’s genealogy is through Mary’s line, not only solved the problem of what to do with Romans 1:3, but established a physical link between Jesus and King David.
Finally, it resolves an awkward discrepancy between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies. Whereas in Matthew’s genealogy, Joseph’s father is Jacob[Matthew 1:16], in Luke’s genealogy it is Heli[Luke 3:23]. By claiming that Luke’s genealogy is of Mary, Heli becomes Mary’s father and Joseph’s father-in-law. Problems solved.