The Genealogies of Christ

St. Matthew records his genealogy in his Gospel 1:1-17, while St. Luke does this same in 3:23-33. At first glance the two accounts do seem to differ on three different accounts, namely, in structure, in number of generations, and in names.

Their structure is certainly different. Luke begins with the living witnesses, and traces their genealogy back to the creation of Adam. Matthew, on the other hand, does things in the reverse order. The generations also don’t seem to line up. Matthew breaks the generations neatly into three sets of fourteen: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations. And from David to the transmigration of Babylon are fourteen generations: and from the transmigration of Babylon to Christ are fourteen generations.” Luke, on the other hand—at least, according to how some commentators look at things—has eleven groups of seven in his genealogy. And while “Matthew traces Jesus’ ancestry only back to Abraham,” even within this timeframe Luke gives fifty-seven names and Matthew forty-two. Perhaps most strikingly, the names do not match up. Indeed, The Anchor Bible gives a cogent summary of these differences:

For the monarchic period, Matthew lists Jesus’ Davidic ancestors as Solomon to Jachoniah, whereas Luke lists them from Nathan to Neri before these two lists coincide again with Shealtiel and Zerubbabel. Matthew mentions fourteen names (one mentioned twice, Jeconiah) in this interval, wheras Luke has twenty. [ . . . ] But save for Nathan, David’s third son born in Jerusalem, the rest of the names used by Luke are unknown.

[ . . .]

In the postexilic part of the genealogy, if Jesus’ nine ancestors in the Matthean list are otherwise unknown, so are the eighteen in the corresponding part of the Lucan, where not one of them corresponds with any of the nine in the Matthean genealogy.

In short, when the two Evangelists are covering the same time period, there are seemingly large discrepancies in numbers, and almost no similarity in names. Taking these passages literally, at first, would seem to contradict the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church on scriptural inerrancy.

St. David, King of Israel 

Indeed, this is exactly the conclusion arrived at by modern biblical commentaries. The Anchor Bible concludes, “It is obvious that the New Testament has preserved for us two strikingly different genealogies of Jesus, which resist all harmonization.” Raymond Brown explicitly states that these genealogies are error-ridden and historically baseless: “its circulation in a popular rather than archival context is suggested by its errors and omissions, probably stemming from confusing similarities in the Greek forms of the royal names.” For example, he claims that Matthew’s inclusion of Asaph is historically impaired, that the genealogies were cobbled together from already existing (and very inaccurate) manuscripts, and that “the desire to spare Matthew an error may stem from a theory of inerrancy or from an overestimation of Matthew’s knowledge of scripture[.]” That a “theory of inerrancy” is actually a dogma of the faith according to Church teaching did not seem to faze Fr. Brown.

To summarize: modern scholars such as Fitzmyer and Brown claim that the genealogies are “not biological,” but were largely borrowed from historically inaccurate manuscripts of the ancient world. They argue this on three basic grounds:

First, because the stylistic representation of the genealogies is different.

Second, because the genealogies themselves seem to differ on points of structure and number.

Finally, because the names do not seem to match up at all.

St. Thomas Aquinas 

At first glance, all of this might seem to warrant a departure from the literal interpretation of scripture. As a Catholic, however, a position like this cannot be maintained. Not only is it directly contrary to the doctrinal points laid out in the first few pages of this essay, but it runs contrary to the interpretation of the Church Fathers. A simple glance through the Catena Aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas shows that none of the early Fathers even thought about giving this passage a figurative interpretation. They did, however, seek to harmonize these two passages, seeing it as a necessity for defending the Word of God. And what may be surprising is that they succeeded remarkably well.

Harmonization of the Gospel Genealogies through St. Anne and St. Joachim

First of all, the fact that the two accounts are stylistically diverse does not detract from their merit in any way. Modern biblical scholars make this seem like a great problem. However, choosing to list names either from Christ to Abraham or from Abraham to Christ presents no great difficulty, as there are obvious stylistic differences between the two authors. Nor does the fact that Matthew goes back to Abraham and Luke to Adam present any difficulty, as the Evangelists had different goals in the writing of their Epistles. Matthew was seeking to show Christ as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. As such, Abraham was an excellent starting point. Luke, on the other hand, wished to show God’s merciful love to the whole human race. This is evidenced in his choice of parables: the Good Shepherd, the Prodigal Son, and the Pharisee and the Tax collector. As such, beginning the story of Redemption at the very beginning of time fits with St. Luke’s overall goal.

It is, however, the final two points that make people shy away from the genealogies in the Gospel. Instead of addressing them separately, I will present what the Catholic commentaries through time have said about these passages and will show how they can, indeed, be harmonized.

St. Anne and St. Joachim 

Cornelius a Lapide, one of the great biblical scholars of the 16^th century, began his harmonization with a discussion of Christ’s grandfather. It is here that the two scriptures seem to differ. St. Matthew makes the following list: Mathon, Jacob, Joseph, the husband of Mary, who is the Mother of Christ. St. Luke, on the other hand, lists, Mathat, Heli, Joseph, the husband of Mary, the Mother of Christ. The first discrepancy is with whether Jesus’ grandfather is Heli or Jacob. It is, ironically, this passage that will shed light on the two seemingly different accounts. A Lapide writes:

I say that it was quite likely that in the time of Christ it was very well known that Mathan was the common grandfather of Joseph and the Blessed Virgin; and that Jacob, the father of Joseph, and Heli, or Joachim (the father of the Blessed Virgin), were full brothers—or rather, that Jacob was the brother of St. Anne, the wife of Heli, or Joachim, and mother of the Blessed Virgin; hence the genealogy of one is the genealogy of the other. For the Blessed Virgin was descended, through her mother, Anna, from Jacob, Mathan, and Solomon, and through her father, Joachim or Heli, from Mathat and Nathan. So Matthew traces the genealogy of the Blessed Virgin through her mother St. Anne, who was the sister of Jacob and the daughter of Mathan and who married Heli, or Joachim, and by him bore the blessed Virgin Mary; while Luke traces it through her father Heli, i.e., Joachim, so that Christ may be shown to be descended of the seed of David both through her father and through her mother.

In other words, St. Matthew records the genealogy of Our Lady through her mother St. Anne.   St. Anne’s brother was Jacob, who was also the father of St. Joseph. St. Matthew thus shows the Davidic and royal lineage of Jesus through St. Joseph and his father Jacob. St. Luke, on the other hand, records Our Lady’s line through St. Joachim, referred to by his shorter name of “Heli.” Cornelius a Lapide writes later on:

Heli is, therefore, called the father of Joseph—father in the sense of father-in-law; for Heli is a short form of the name Eliakim, or Joachim, the husband of St. Anne and the father of the Blessed Virgin, whose husband was Joseph, who is, therefore, the son-in-law of Joachim and Anne.

Thus, Joakim the king of Juda is called “Eliacim” in 4 Kings 23:24 and 2 Parlipomenon 36:4, and Eliachim the high priest is called Joachim (Judith 4:11). Just as Jehova or Jo in the name Joakim is the name for God, so, too, El is the name for God is the name Eliakim; thus the rabbis and Hilary. Thus, the reason that the names and numbers between King David and Joseph are different is because they are recording two different lines of descent. Lapide explains:

Matthew traces Christ’s descent through His father Joseph, Luke through His mother, the Blessed Virgin: both lines are united in David, but after him separate, through his two sons Solomon and Nathan, into two lines of descendants, continuing to Joseph and Mary, respectively. Matthew traces the lineage through Solomon; Luke—by Nathan.

To summarize, the Davidic line was separated between David’s two sons Solomon and Nathan. St. Matthew records the line from Solomon to Jacob, the father of St. Joseph and the brother of St. Anne. St. Luke, on the other hand, records the Davidic line through Nathan to Joachim, the husband of St. Anne. As Lapide concludes:

It is clear . . . that the Blessed Virgin was descended through her mother, St. Anne, from Solomon, as was Joseph; but by her father, Heli, or Joachim, She was descended from Nathan, who was Solomon’s brother and a son of David.

This reconciles the two passages back until David. And prior to David, the two genealogies provide the exact same sequence of names, only that St. Matthew adds the names of a few mothers and specifies that David is a king.

By now it should be quite clear that the genealogies are not the fictitious inaccuracies imagined by Raymond Brown. Rather, they record the historical generations of Jesus Christ, albeit from slightly different perspectives. They effectively agree in everything until King David, and they then differ only because they record two separate lines of Christ’s Davidic heritage, which explains differences in both number and name.

In conclusion, the genealogies of St. Matthew and St. Luke provide another example of why faith in the Church, Sacred Tradition, and Sacred Scripture is so important. Instead of cowering before the unscrupulous claims leveled against Christ and His Church, we should be supremely confident in the revelation given us by Almighty God. The claims of rationalists, which, at first glance, seem to be so strong, crumble like the Tower of Babel upon careful inquiry. Trusting in the inerrancy of Scripture is of paramount importance to restoring the Church—and inerrancy in all matters.