How fruitful are the seeming barren places of Scripture. Wheresoever the surface of God's Word doth not laugh and sing with corn, there the heart thereof within is merry with mines, affording, where not plain matter, hidden mysteries.
Lord, I find the genealogy of my Saviour strangely chequered with four remarkable changes (Matt. 1:7,8) in four immediate generations.
1. Roboam begat Abia;
that is, a bad father begat a bad son.2. Abia begat Asa;
that is, a bad father, a good son.3. Asa begat Josophat;
that is, a good father, a good son.4. Josaphat begat Joram;
that is, a good father, a bad son.
I see, Lord, from hence, that my father's piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.
(Thomas Fuller, quaintest of English divines, in his Scripture Observations)
ON MY DESK I have a little snuff box. When we were children we used to use snuff and I still recall how remarkably refreshing it was. It was somewhat like opening a window and getting a sudden, exhilarating breath of completely fresh air blowing away all the mental cobwebs. I don't know quite why it went out of fashion: perhaps it came under some Drug Act. This little snuffbox is made of whale bone, and on the lid it has a small silver plaque with my initial and name on it: "A. Custance." But it is not really my name, because underneath that is the date: 1766.
I often used to wonder who this forebear was and, not unnaturally, assumed that his first name was, like mine, Arthur. But then a few years ago, as a result of an odd circumstance, some of us Custances began to try to reestablish the lines of relationship between different members of the family in England and Canada and the United States. In due time the genealogy was completed without any breaks backward some five hundred years. In this genealogy there appeared the original owner of my little snuff box. But unfortunately his name was not Arthur! His name was Adam (1713 -1782).
Anyway, it was a bit of fun. And even when they are not our own, genealogies can greatly stimulate the imagination and provide a framework for historical events for which there is really no substitute. For anyone who has roamed widely and deeply in history, they serve somewhat the same purpose that maps do for those who have roamed widely and deeply over a country. The historian pores over the genealogy as the traveler pores over his map. Both provide insights into relationships and a kind of skeleton about which to hang much else that has stirred the imagination. Unlike the very ancient maps, however, which have a tendency to be grossly distorted, many of the most ancient genealogies are quite precise. Kalisch has observed, "The earliest historiography consists almost entirely of genealogies: they are most frequently the medium explaining the connection and descent of tribes and nations." (Ref. 1) And they quite often insert, where appropriate, brief historical notes, such as those relating to Nimrod and Peleg in Genesis 10. The little notes have their counterpart in maps which often contain little inset pictures of local events such as where battles took place, and so forth.
The "value" of these biblical genealogies depends to some extent on one's specific interests, but each one of them can be shown to contribute its own particular kind of light. In this paper we explore them, not merely as a guide to lines of relationship, but also for the light they shed in some cases on the world's spiritual history, its social customs, its contemporary value systems, on mythology, the bearing they have on chronology, and from several other points of view.
While it is perfectly true that they may not serve as appropriate passages to be read for the edification of the public as most of the rest of Scriptures may do, they can form the basis of a very profitable private study. And of course, they provide fundamental links in the thread of historical narrative as well as valuable clues for the establishment of an overall chronology. This paper contains one or two "interpretations" which will not appeal perhaps to many readers because they are based on certain assumptions which may not be justified. Yet these one or two sections have been included because they may stimulate thought which in due course will lead to a more precise understanding of why the genealogy in question contains the peculiarities which gave rise to my surmisings. For the most part my conclusions will not be seriously challenged except in the matter of chronology, in which it will be observed that I still hold to the very old-fashioned position that it is possible on the basis of these genealogies to establish a time interval from the First Adam to the Last Adam which is quite unacceptable to the anthropologists in general, not excepting some of the Lord's people among them.
In earlier times and among primitive people today, genealogical information was one of the most valuable parts of the inheritance which a man received from his forebears. Until quite recently, an Arab youth was required to know his own genealogy in the main line for seventy generations; it was his passport in society. Only a few years ago, a New Zealand Maori chief, explaining his claims to certain lands, engaged the government Land Commission three whole days with a recitation of descent from an ancestor twenty-four generations back, comprising very many collaterals and marriages and over fourteen hundred names in all (Chambers Encyclopedia, 1956 edition under "Genealogy")
References:
1. Kaliseb, M.M., A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament, Longmans, Brown and Green, London, 1858, p.235.
THE BIBLE contains a number of genealogies, some of which cover periods of time measured in centuries, and some only a few generations. On the whole, if they are merely read without any particular attention - as though it were a duty to read them since they are a part of the Bible - they are apt to be dull indeed. But my experience has been that all kinds of hidden treasures are to be found in them for the searching. They are, in short, much more than merely family trees. Not all of them have yielded such rewards yet, but what has been found leads me to believe that all these genealogies or fragments of genealogies will in time be found to contain exciting truths. This, I suspect, will prove to be the case particularly where, on the surface, there seems least likelihood of finding very much.
The kind of information that careful study can bring to light can be summed up under several headings. For example, according to many notable scholars, genealogies can supply us with a chronology from the First Adam to the Last Adam which cannot be obtained in any other way. This statement will be disputed in some quarters, but the question will be studied subsequently. A genealogy will sometimes reveal a relationship between two people which sheds a new light upon their behavior toward each other. By a study of the meanings of the names given in a genealogy - that is to say, by substituting the meaning in English of the names of people who are said to be related in a certain way - it is sometimes possible to discover certain great spiritual truths. In some genealogies there are gaps which are revealed only by reference to the narrative portions of the Old Testament which deal with that particular period, and these omissions will be found to reveal how God deals with man in certain circumstances. In one or two cases fragments of a genealogy, when illuminated by other parts of Scripture, shed a wonderful light on cultural background. The earlier genealogies provide us not merely with information about the relationships between individuals, but the time frame within which succeeding generations followed one another. A statistical analysis of this time frame reveals a notable fact which finds its best explanation in the light of modern genetics. One of the earliest genealogies probably sheds a most interesting light on certain figures in the mythologies of classical antiquity. Finally, the genealogies of the New Testament which set forth the Lord's relationship to the Jews and to the Gentiles have so many wonderful things just below the surface of the text that it is amazing how few studies are made of them in modern Christian literature.
Such, then, are some of the things we intend to explore. In one case, which we shall note when we come to it, we may possibly be reading too much into the genealogy. But it seemed worthwhile to draw attention to its peculiarity because it may shed light on a very ancient problem, namely, the interpretation of Genesis 6 and the question of the meaning of demon possession in the New Testament.
Consider, then, the matter of the relationship between the First and the Last Adam. It is clear from Luke's Gospel that a continuous succession of fathers and sons (or daughters) was believed to have been preserved in the archives of the Jewish people from the creation of Adam through several thousands of years until the time of Christ. We shall have occasion in the final chapter of this paper to study briefly what is known at the present time about such continuous records and how they were kept. At the present moment the point at issue is not whether the people whose names are listed in Luke really existed, but whether they were related as successive generations or were merely selected as significant links in a chain composed of an untold number of other unidentified links. One hears people say sometimes, "My ancestors came over on the Mayflower and were descended through such-and-such a branch of the family from people who came into England with William the Conqueror." In other words, it is felt sufficient to pick out widely spaced individuals and assume that the rest of the links are there if one simply took the time to identify them. Thus a number of modern scholars who accept an antiquity for man reaching into hundreds of thousands of years are willing to agree that somewhere in the line there was an Adam and a Seth, and so on, but that they were not related as father and son in the sense that we attach to the terms.
On the other hand, there are many of us who feel that to establish a relationship between the Lord as the Last Adam and the First Adam, from whom we are all assumed to have been derived, by such a nonspecific and generalized kind of family tree in which there are perhaps several hundred times as many names missing as are listed, is something less than satisfying. One feels that one is on solid ground when you read that Adam had a son whose name is Seth, and Seth had a son whose name was Enos, and Enos had a son whose name was Cainan, and so on through an unbroken chain of real people, many of whom are introduced to us in Scripture in a way which makes them live even when we only have a single sentence about them. For such is the descriptive power of the Word of God.
So I think it makes good sense to take the Old Testament genealogies which supply the basis for the two genealogies to be found in Matthew and Luke with complete seriousness and assume that they mean what they seem to mean. It was the conviction of many of the older biblical chronologists that sufficient information was given in the Bible, not merely to establish this unbroken chain, but to set it within a quite precise time frame. It was the basis, of course, of Ussher's chronology, which so many people today consider more the naive endeavor of a misinformed man than a serious contribution to understanding the Bible. But while Ussher's chronology may be in error in small details, it appears to me to encompass an overall view of the time span of man which is the right order of magnitude - though it is hopelessly in conflict with some modern Christian views. These modern views disagree with Ussher, and all those who have more or less followed his approach to the problem, by arguing that the genealogies in Genesis are not intended to provide us with an unbroken chain. We are told again and again that some of these genealogies contain gaps: but what is never pointed out by those who lay the emphasis on these gaps is that they only know of the existence of these gaps because the Bible elsewhere fills them in. How otherwise could one know of them? But if they are filled in, they are not gaps at all! Thus, in the final analysis the argument is completely without foundation. It is simply wishful thinking.
This is not a paper on chronology, so we shall not pursue this matter further at this juncture, but return to it briefly when we come to deal with Matthew's genealogy. Meanwhile we share the conviction of people like Anstey, Mauro, Urquhart, (Ref. 2) and a host of others, that one of the most important functions of the genealogies of the Bible is to provide a connected thread from Adam to Christ with a sufficiently precise chronology to satisfy our time sense and assure us by giving lifespans, up to a significant point which we shall consider subsequently, that allow us to discover for ourselves that these names are the names of real people, not merely of tribes or families or nations. God always deals with the individual as an individual, not merely impersonally as one of a group.
The first genealogy (Gen. 4:1,16-24) takes us from Adam to Lamech and provides us with some very exciting insights into early human history. These insights stem as much from the names of individuals who are listed as they do from the things they are said to have done - a circumstance which allows us, I think, to have considerable confidence that these are the names of real people.
It will be found, as a rule, that chronology per se was evidently not considered of importance except where the line from Adam to Christ was directly in view. Thus Cain bore Enoch, and Enoch Irad, and so on, but no information is given as to the age of the father at the time of his son's birth or at the time of his death. By contrast, in Genesis 5:6ff., which traces the line through Seth, complete chronological data is given. I think it is likely that this simple distinguishing mark in the Old Testament between the two types of genealogical trees - those which are accompanied by a chronology and those which are not - is a sufficient guide as to whether these individuals are in the line from the First to the Second Adam.
It is easy to be wise after the event and, in the light of the genealogies given in the New Testament, to look back through the record and identify the families which shared in this signal honor. But living in the Old Testament, even as late as the time of Malachi, one could still really have no assurance as to which line was to terminate with the Messiah. It seems necessary to qualify this statement and say rather that one could not identify the royal line with certainty unless one perceived that this line was provided also with a chronology. Thus genealogies in the Old Testament which appear to be much the same are actually separated into two very different classes.
This point is a very important one, but it may easily be overlooked. Only God could know precisely in which line (of many parallel lines available) the Messiah would arise. How then, humanly speaking, would a writer, making his contribution to Scripture as the years rolled by, know whether he should or should not include a chronology? He could not know, of course, except by inspiration. And, if by inspiration, one might have expected that he would discern a distinction between the different parts of the record that he was being led to set down. He might therefore be inclined to append a note wherever he added a chronology, explaining why he did so on this occasion but not elsewhere. Yet none of the writers did. Such is the reticence of Scripture which often reveals as much by what it does not say as by what it does: which makes the study of Scripture so different from that of other books.
That this chronological feature is not accidental is clearly borne out by the fact that it is a recurrent circumstance. In Genesis 10, which is the great Table of Nations, there is not a single chronological note in the entire list; but after the confusion of tongues at Babel and the dispersion of the nations, a new selection is made and the line of Shem is singled out. This time, however, while the successive generations are repeated, only one name in each generation is given, instead of several as in Genesis 10. And in this line the chronology reappears. The withholding of any time reckoning from those lines of descent which do not lead directly to the Promised Seed and the most precise enumeration of years in the line which does lead to the Promised Savior cannot be accidental.
We find the same thing recurring in Genesis 36, which gives a very complete list indeed of the descendants of Esau but without any time scale, whereas as soon as we enter chapter 37 we immediately find ages being recounted once more.
Reverting, therefore, to this first genealogy, we may note that the line of Cain is traced before the line of Seth, and this again will be found on a number of occasions where the two lines are being brought up to date: the earthly or carnal is dealt with first, and afterward that which is spiritual.
Now, in the line of Cain there are some interesting clues to the history
of antiquity. To begin with, in Genesis 4:17, we are told that Cain produced
a son named Enoch and that he then built a city and called the name of the
city after the name of his son. The naming of cities and other such landmarks
in honor of individuals is very ancient, obviously. Consequently a single
name might stand for a city, a river, a mountain, or a country: and in cuneiform
literature it was customary to associate with any name some identifying
mark or determinative in order to let the reader know whether it was the
individual himself or the city or some other feature of the landscape that
was intended. In the case where the name stands for a man, the name was
preceded by the sign for man. In the case of a city, the name was followed
by little mark which has the phonetic value -ki (and appeared thus:
To my knowledge, all place names in cuneiform are followed by this
determinative sign. But there is one exception, and this is the city known
as "Unuk" (equated with Enoch), which later appears as "Uruk,"
(Ref. 3) "Warka," and finally, "Perg-", or "Purg-."
For those unfamiliar with such changes, the conversion of "wark"
into "purg-" follows well-established rules in the development
of language and in the transfer of words between languages of a different
family.
Why is this singular exception made? I think the answer is to be found in Genesis 4:17. According to the Bible, this was the first city ever to be built, and it did not therefore form one of a class requiring an identifying determinative. It is rather analogous to calling London (England) "the City." When people in England say they are going up to the City, they do not need to identify it; and I suspect that in Palestine the word "city" is often substituted for the word "Jerusalem" with no less certainty as to its identity. As other cities began to be built in the time of Cain, it seems likely that they, too, were named in honor of individuals then alive. But it would soon become apparent that the means of identification needed refining, and the determinatives would begin to be developed and applied appropriately. Yet this one city never required a determinative, being the very first one.
It is a curious thing that the word Unuk persisted for so long in history, reappearing finally in the Greek word Pergos which, significantly enough in the light of Genesis 11:4, means "tower." The word tower is the basis of the English word town. And as has been demonstrated with cogency, (Ref. 4) the basic form purg- has come down into modern Indo-European languages in the form of burgh or the more extended form, borough. Thus, almost every day of our lives we are likely to come across a word meaning "city" which can be traced right back to within one generation of Adam to the City which Cain built and named in honor of his son.
Moving forward to verse 19, we are told that Lamech took unto him two wives, the name of one of which is given as "Zillah." In verse 22, Zillah is said to have borne Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. Tubal-Cain was thus the world's first metallurgist. This compound name, "Tubal-Cain," is worth examining. According to R. J. Forbes, (Ref. 5) one of the outstanding authorities on metallurgy in antiquity, there was a tribe of people long associated in the ancient world with metal working who were known as the Tibareni. Many scholars identify this as a modified form of the name Tubal, the l and the r being interchangeable between dialects and often not even distinguished within a dialect. In his commentary on Genesis, Marcus Dods points out that things have been so faithfully perpetuated in the East that the blacksmith of the village Bubbata-ez-Zetua referred to the iron sparks struck off while working at his forge as "tubal." (Ref. 6) We may go a step further than this by observing that, in ancient Rome, the name of the individual who came to be constituted as the god of the Tiber (a river whose name seems again to recall Tubal) was the well-known Vulcan, whose forges were the volcanoes.
Now, the traditions regarding Vulcan are very interesting. He is, of course, associated with fire and the working of metals, later appearing as the divine Smith of the Roman Tubilustrum. (Ref. 7) He is said to have been a cripple, having been thrown out of heaven by his father Jupiter as a punishment for having taken his mother's side in a quarrel.
In Genesis 4:23, there is the always-puzzling story of how Lamech took vengeance on a young man who had injured him in some way "wounding him." Lamech's son was Tubal-Cain, and it would not be at all difficult to imagine how, by simply dropping the initial consonant tu--, the name "Vulcan" might easily have arisen. This son was subsequently deified. In this first of all biblical genealogies, it is stated that Lamech had two wives, one of whom was named Zillah. By making a further quite reasonable assumption namely, that it was with Zillah that Lamech had quarreled and that it was Zillah's part which Vulcan (as we may now call him) had taken we find a possible reason why, in the struggle with his father, the son had ended up as a cripple and had been turned out of the house, leaving behind him an enraged and wounded father. If this is allowed, one further interesting discovery emerges. In many societies, polygamy is common, and where this occurs it is customary to call the children, as a means of more precise identity, after the name of the mother rather than the father. Thus, while Tubal-Cain was undoubtedly the son's given name, he may very well have been more readily identified by his contemporaries simply as Zillah's son. In a Semitic form of speech, this would appear as "Bar Zillah," i.e., "son of Zillah." The curious thing is that the Sumerian word for "iron" is found to be Parzillu or Barzillu, which would appear to be nothing less than a further link between subsequent tradition and this early genealogy, bearing a remarkable testimony to its historicity. Sumerologists have often expressed curiosity about the origin of this word for "iron."
Putting all these things together, one has a remarkable series of fragments of information set in the form of a genealogy shedding a wonderful light on tradition, in which there is a continuity of name forms - all related in meaning or association to a form of metalworking that is very ancient, and attached to a deity who had the strange experience of being ejected from his home and being made lame for taking his mother's part in a quarrel with his father. This genealogy is certainly worth studying very carefully, and I suspect that Lamech's other wife, Adah, will also prove in time to shed unexpected light on early events, along with Tubal-Cain's sister, Nahma. I cannot believe that such detailed records from within a generation or two of Adam have been so perfectly preserved by accident. God had some purpose in mind: we have yet to discover what it was.
Of Giants and Demons
There is one further observation I should like to make about the genealogy of the line of Cain as opposed to the line of Seth. In this one section of the paper I must confess that I am not certain that the text warrants what I am reading into it. Of the descendants of Cain, we are never told of their death. This might be simply the result of the fact that we are not given their age. But there were many subsequent historical figures in the Old Testament who were either enemies of the Lord's children or, though actually Israelites, were without faith, yet these people have their deaths recorded even though we are not told how old they were when they died.
There are those who believe that Cain was supernaturally born of Eve through the agency of Satan, who thereby hoped to present the Antichrist, supposing that Abel was actually the Promised Seed. The Hebrew of Genesis 4:1,2 has always presented problems to the translator; it almost seems as though Adam knew his wife only once in spite of the birth of two children who are not presented to us in usual terms reserved for the birth of twins. There is a very and belief--and one still preserved by many primitive people that when twins are born, one of them is actually a child of the devil. (Ref. 8) Having no means of identifying which child is the evil one, such societies customarily insisted that all twins must be destroyed at birth.
Now, however fanciful such an idea may be, we are not together without some warrant for holding it in this instance, in light of other passages of Scripture that bear upon the subject. For example, we are told that Cain was "of that wicked one" (I John 3:12), a curious Greek phrase which in other contexts implies something more than merely being a servant of Satan; the phrase is a employed when speaking of the Lord's supernatural conception "of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 1:20). If we attach any importance to ancient traditions, we may observe that the legendary giants antiquity were believed to have had supernatural birth and to have enjoyed a kind of super-natural life. They lived and continued to grow in size as long as they lived, and because they lived for such lengths of time they became giants in size and vastly superior knowledge. If these beings were descendants of one supernatural born, they may have formed a race of giants and given rise to the tradition which seems to be reflected in Genesis 6:4. These men we not merely giants in size, but were also men of reknown. And certainly one gets this feeling of those who are listed as Cain's descendants. While they did not die naturally, they were surely capable of being slain - as Goliath was. In Matthew 24:39, which speaks of the circumstances of the Flood destroying the old world, we are told, not that they died in the Flood, but merely that they were "taken away."
There are many people who believe that demons are disembodied spirits of humanlike creatures, who seek embodiment again because for some reason they have not been "laid to rest" like the spirits of ordinary men. It is a curious fact that demons were notable for their physical strength, and it is also a curious fact that they had for some reason a fear of water. The instance of the Gadarene swine could conceivably be a case where the Lord permitted the evil spirit to enter animal bodies only because He knew that the animals would react to rid themselves of those who possessed them. It is a curious fact, too, that the Lord should have said that when the evil spirit has gone out of a man, he goeth through waterless places [so the Greek seeking rest (Matt. 12:43)]. And it is another curious fact that in the day of judgment death and hell will deliver up its dead, but the sea will also deliver up its dead (Rev. 20:13). Perhaps these things are not really related in the way I have implied. On the other hand, such connected clues often lead a reader into new and fruitful lines of fresh inquiry.
Following this, we once more pick up the threads, in Genesis 5:6-32, of the line in which Messiah is to appear. Expectedly we observe that the details of the chronology are again introduced. Of the great ages achieved by these antediluvians we have written at some length elsewhere, (Ref. 9) but we shall refer briefly to the subject subsequently.
The Table of Nations and the History of the Three Branches of the Human Race
We come now to the tenth chapter of Genesis which, because it does not concern itself specifically with the line of the coming Savior, does not provide us with a chronology. However, it does provide us with a great deal more than merely an uninteresting list of names. To what extent the whole genealogical tree in this chapter could be so treated, I do not know: but at least in one instance the names given provide us, when the English meanings are extracted, with an unexpected truth. I have in mind verse 15 which reads, "And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn and Heth," the only verse in which the first born is identified as such, and therefore to this extent, a verse which is apt to catch the eye. At any rate, the children of Canaan were to Israel what sin is to the Christian: a constant source of defeat. It is therefore not surprising to find that the name of the firstborn (of sin) is Sidon which means "snare," and the next born Heth which means "terror."
The really exciting thing about this Table of Nations, to my mind, is the clear light it throws upon the relationships between the various nations of the world who can be shown with reasonable assurance to have originated here. I am fully persuaded that this table does provide us with a comprehensive view of the origins of all nations and not merely those which - to use a popular phrase of commentators - were within the purview of the writer. There are many who feel that the history is not intended to include the population of the Far East or the New World or even many of the present peoples of Africa. This is a subject dealt with at some length in Volume I of the Doorway Papers and will not be argued further here. (Ref. 10) But what I should like to draw the reader's attention to is one aspect of the genealogy which has also been elaborated at some length in two other papers, (Ref. 11) but which, to my mind, is so fascinating that it is worth thinking about for a few minutes, even if the extended supporting evidence has to be merely referred to as being elsewhere.
Essentially, the genealogy traces the descendants of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. In a previous passage of Scripture we have been given a cryptic statement about them which in point of fact summarizes to a remarkable degree the subsequent history of these three branches of the human race. This particular statement is found in Genesis 9:25-27 and reads:
And Noah said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
There will not be much argument if it is said that Shem and his descendants are here singled out as being appointed to perform a special role among the nations which is religious in character. Of Japheth we are told two things: the first is that he will be enlarged, and the second is that he will take over a position originally appointed to Shem. The enlargement will, I think, be admitted to have occurred in two directions, geographically and intellectually. By this I mean that the children of Japheth, who can be shown to be represented by the Indo-Europeans, have spread over the whole world largely at the expense of those people who were not Indo-European. And even if history should show in the future that some of this expansiveness is to be curtailed, there are still very large areas of the world in which such curtailment is never likely to occur: for example, in Europe, Russia, Australia, India, and of course, the New World. At the same time, there is no doubt that intellectually the children of Japheth have tremendously extended the bounds of man's understanding and mastery of the earth. This is not to say for one moment that the Negro people and the Mongol races have not made an equally tremendous contribution to modern technology:
This is a subject of a very careful study in another Doorway Paper. (Ref. 12) But this technology, everywhere marked by great ingenuity and creative power as it was, remained at a certain fixed level which it seemed it could not improve until Japheth's descendants became the inheritors of it and made it their own in a unique way by converting technology into science. So much, then, for Shem and Japheth.
We come, therefore, to the third branch of Noah's family, who is here represented by Canaan. It is curious that Canaan, rather than Ham, should be chosen to stand representatively for the third branch of the family. It is curious because the pattern has been broken at this point: Shem is singled out properly as standing for the Semitic people who became the religious leaders of the world, whether in true or false religion. I have in mind, not merely Judaism as representative of the true, but of Islam as a departure from, and the Babylonian cults which provided the groundwork of most other religions of antiquity as a defilement of the truth. All these were contributed out of the family of Shem. And of course, Japheth stood very properly as head of the Indo-European people. The question is, Why is Canaan mentioned rather than Ham?
I think there are two ways of accounting for this. One way is to suppose that something has been dropped from the text, either in error or deliberately, by some Jewish scribe and that this omission comprised the words, "Cursed be Ham, the father of Canaan."
There is some manuscript evidence for this. (Ref. 13) It would seem logical, since Ham was really the offending individual and since, by the inclusion of his name rather than Canaan's, there would have been a greater consistency in the literary form of the passage in question to read some such emendation of the text. However, there is an interesting reason why Canaan rather than Ham might have been used by Noah in making this pronouncement. It sheds an intriguing light on certain cultural patterns of thought which probably existed in Noah's time, are repeated in the time of David, and appear to have persisted right through into New Testament times.
It is customary in many parts of the world today to attribute to a father the credit or blame of anything which has rendered his son notable. Thus, the Japanese, for example, will not congratulate a son for some commendable act, but will commend the father for having produced a notable son. In our own culture we sometimes accept this principle, but in a rather more negative way, blaming the parents for the misdeeds of the son without feeling it proper at the same time to credit them with his successes.
The circumstance is interestingly reflected in the story of David and Saul, which is to be found in I Samuel 17:50-58. In this instance David had performed a deed of great national importance by destroying Goliath. David himself was certainly no stranger to Saul, for he had on many occasions played his harp to quieten the king's distracted spirit. Yet, when Saul saw David go forth against Goliath (v. 55), he said to Abner, the captain of his hosts, "Abner, whose son is this youth?" Although Abner must certainly have known David by name, he replied, "As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell."
This has always seemed a strange circumstance. But the explanation lies in a proper understanding of the social significance of verse 58, where Saul said to David, "Whose son art thou, young man?" And David had answered, "I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite." The key to this is the realization that while Saul recognized David well enough, he wished to honor his father according to the proper custom - but he did not know who his father was. It was Jesse whom the king wished to honor on behalf of David.
In the New Testament there is another interesting illustration of this principle. While it is quite proper that a man may publicly give credit to the father of a worthy son, a woman could not discreetly compliment the father in the same straightforward way for fear of being misunderstood. In such a case, then, she could refer to the mother as sharing in the worthiness of her children rather than the father. This fact is clearly reflected in Luke 11:27, where we read of a woman who, suddenly perceiving the true greatness of the Lord Jesus, cried out in spontaneous admiration, "blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou hast sucked."
It is apparent from this, therefore, that Noah could not really curse Ham without discrediting himself, and he was thus forced to go one further generation and so by this means to attach the blame according to social custom where it really was - i.e., on Canaan's father, Ham.
One further point needs consideration, and this is the meaning of the phrase, "servant of servants," a phrase which is taken almost universally by commentators to mean "the most servile" of nations. But it requires only a comparatively small knowledge of Hebrew to discover that this reduplicated form - which is found so frequently throughout Scripture and is to be observed again in such phrases as "Lord of Lords," "God of Gods," "King of Kings," "Heaven of Heaven," "Beauty of Beauties," "Song of Songs," "Holy of Holies," and so forth - is always a term of excellence, not debasement. The and so forth is always a term of excellence, not debasement. The expression of debasement in Hebrew is provided for in quite another way - as for example in Daniel 4:17, where the text speaks of the basest of men and where the Hebrew is of a very different construction. The main objection generally raised against the above interpretation is that such a title, "servant par excellence," would hardly constitute a curse. However, I think that there ought to be some degree of relationship between the seriousness of the offense and the severity of the judgment: and it has never seemed to me altogether justice that the descendants of one man should be condemned to abject servility because of the action of an ancestor who possibly did no more than fail in respect for a father who was accidentally discovered in a situation for which the father was entirely culpable. The behavior of the father was in a way far worse than the behavior of the son. On the other hand, history shows that the descendants of the offending party have in fact ministered to the physical well-being of mankind by providing us until comparatively recent times with our basic technology, and they have done this in such a way that we have ultimately benefited from it far more exceptionally than they have themselves. It is not difficult to demonstrate this historically in virtually every area of technology, and this truth in itself lends strong support to the view that the judgment pronounced by Noah really fell upon the descendants of Ham as a whole and not merely upon that small segment of his family represented by the Canaanites.
In short, what we are saying is that this little cameo in Genesis 9 gives us a preview of the course of events throughout history as it unfolded in the three branches of the human race as defined in biblical terms - the Semites, Japhethites (Indo-Europeans), and the colored races (black, brown, "red," and "yellow") - even to the extent of showing that Japheth would one day and for a season assume the spiritual responsibility originally assigned to Shem, an event foretold in Genesis 9:27, reiterated in Matthew 21:43, and initiated in Acts 18:6.
Now, representatives of these three branches of the human race are constantly cropping up throughout Scripture in a significant way. We shall not elaborate this statement, since this has been done elsewhere, beyond pointing out that Abraham married three wives, one of whom was a Semite, one a Japhethite, and one a Hamite. Three Gospels (the Synoptic Gospels) were written and rather specifically directed to Shem, Ham, and Japheth in that order. In the story of the Nativity three men - at least men bringing three kinds of gifts - came in a body seeking "the young Child." Tradition, supported by some historic evidence, seems to indicate that one was a Semite, one a Hamite, and one a Japhethite. In the Crucifixion, we may discern the same pattern of events - a representative of each branch of the family of man directly involved in one way or another in the completion of that judgment, the part played by a representative of Ham being appropriately the actual carrying of the Cross to the scene of execution.
In none of these instances will this discovery be made, this recurrent pattern of events discerned, except one has the clue provided by Genesis 10 and the detailed genealogy it sets forth. Here, then, is another instance where an apparently barren and uninspiring portion of Scripture, rightly used, can be a very storehouse of treasure, for without it we could not know which descendants belong within which branch.
After what was said in introducing this particular section of the paper, it seems appropriate to quote the words of J.J. Blunt: (Ref. 14)
All that I wish to impress is that in the book of Genesis a hint is not to be wasted but improved: and that he who expects every probable deduction from Scripture to be made out complete in all its parts before he will admit it, expects more than he will in many cases meet with, and will learn much less than he might otherwise learn.
Genesis 11:10-29: The Probable Cause of the Sudden Reduction in Human Longevity
In contrast with Genesis 10, which receives no time structure in Scripture, the next genealogy in Genesis 11:10-29 is once more provided with a precise chronology, because it is concerned with the line of the Promised Seed.
We shall examine two aspects of this genealogy. The first has to do with the light it throws upon the gradual decline in life span following the Flood, and the second has to do with the immediate relatives of Abraham as set forth from verses 26 to 29.
Consider, then, the decline in life span. Before the Flood, men normally were living to be almost a thousand years old. With the rise of that spirit of skepticism regarding Scripture which began during the last century, it became increasingly difficult for anyone who accepted these great ages to reconcile his faith with current scientific opinion about the potential of human life. While it was true, as we have shown in another paper, (Ref. 15) that records of longevity amounting to 150 to 200 years were acknowledged to have some basis in fact, the idea of a man living to be a thousand years of age was considered quite absurd. But the climate of opinion has changed in this respect: while we do not find too many biologists willing to admit the possibility of any individual having reached any such age in the past, they are willing to admit the possibility of man surviving to such an age sometime in the future.
It appears that after the Flood, the life span of man was drastically reduced until, within a dozen generations, the mean had fallen to about 120 years. This decline in expected life span, when examined carefully, proves to be very revealing and to have a certain character about it which greatly strengthens one's confidence in the figures that are provided. While the population of the world was very small immediately after the appearance of Adam and Eve, and while, therefore, inbreeding was necessary, this apparently had no deleterious effect upon the population as a whole, if we are to judge by the ages to which people survived. When the Flood had once again reduced the world's population to only eight souls, close inbreeding naturally recurred: but this time manifestly the effect was deleterious in terms of life expectancy. Why should this be so?
I think it safe to say that the reason for avoiding inbreeding lies in the fact that human beings, individually, are the carriers in their germ cells of genes which are mutant, i.e., have deteriorated. Many of these deteriorated genes are harmless enough when they are crossed in the mating partner with other genes which are not mutant. But if a mother and father produce several children, these children are likely to share between them a large number of the same mutant genes, so that the chances of them becoming united should they marry one another is very considerable. In small towns or villages in some parts of the Old World where much inbreeding has taken place, there is a high incidence of deaf-mutism and other such evidences of reduced viability. (Ref. 16)
Willard Hollander made the following observation in an article on this aspect of the problem: (Ref. 17)
The quickest way to expose lethal traits is by intensive and continued in-breeding. In man such matings are generally illegal or taboo; the experience of the race indicates bad results. But brother-sister matings in animals, and self-pollination in plants are a standard laboratory practice. The outcome is generally detrimental unless it has become customary in the species. When in-breeding begins, the heredity seems to be breaking down, all sorts of defects and weaknesses appear. The average life span decreases. . . . But if the family can weather the first few generations (five with plants, and ten with animals) a leveling off sets in. Members of the family may show defects and weaknesses but not new ones, and there is a striking uniformity. The type has become fixed.
It will be noted here that in the case of animals, ten generations of inbreeding are required to maximize the effect, after which the process slows up significantly and finally levels off. In other words, closely related parents normally tend to produce less viable children. The most important single factor in the question of longevity is believed by some authorities [Maynard Smith, (Ref. 18) for example] to be the degree of relatedness of the parents.
An analysis of the data given in this genealogy reveals some interesting facts. Chronological information is provided whereby one may establish the temporal ordering of some fifteen generations in the line of Shem for whom the ages at time of death are given. Curiously enough, beyond this it is not possible to determine except by inference the total life span of an individual, not even of such great figures as Solomon or David. It seems as though the actual life spans of representative individuals in this initial period are given for a specific reason, after which no purpose would have been served by their inclusion - except to satisfy idle curiosity, of course.
It is important to note that what is not given thereafter is the total life span. What is provided in the line of the Promised Seed is the age of the father at the birth of his son. It is this information which makes a chronology possible. But the omission of a total life span once we leave this genealogy is, I think, significant for the following reasons. There is no reason to suppose that Shem's wife was closely related to him by blood, for the population at the beginning of the Flood may have been quite extensive. And therefore their son, Arphaxad, was not a child of inbreeding in any significant sense. But from then on, inbreeding would become necessary, for Arphaxad must have married either a sister or a first cousin. If we then plot the successive life spans of Arphaxad's descendants (representing the first generation of inbreeding) down to Jacob (the tenth generation) - and if we impose on these plots a smooth curve as is shown in Figure 18 above (the solid line) - we see that the life span has fallen drastically from the pre-Flood average of over 900 years (excluding Enoch) to 147 years. From this time on, taking all those individuals whose total life span is recorded in Scripture - namely, Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses, Aaron, and Joshua - we have an average of life of only 123 years.
There has always been some question about the precise meaning of Genesis 6:3, which some people take to mean that hereafter the Lord would plead with men to repent before the judgment of the Flood was imposed for a period of only 120 years, while others take it to mean that God would only leave man's spirit within him (i.e., leave him alive) for 120 years before He would call it home to Himself. If the second interpretation is the correct one - and evidence in favor of this will be found in another Doorway Paper (Ref. 19)--it implies that God saw that it would no longer be safe for man to live to the great age that he did formerly, since his cumulative experience had led him into a degree of wickedness which could in part be avoided by shortening his life. At any rate, it seems highly significant to me that the ages of the post-Flood patriarchs are recorded just long enough to show that man had by this time reached the appropriate life span for the new age. And perhaps it is not without significance that Moses and Aaron almost perfectly fulfilled their time, living to be 120 and 119 years respectively. After this, only Joshua's age at death is given, as 110 years. In the meantime, we see that the modern discovery mentioned earlier - that in animals the effect of inbreeding is observed progressively for about ten generations - lends strong support for the veracity of the numbers given in this genealogy and the circumstances which accompanied their decline. For, if inbreeding is the most likely cause of this decline, then a real Flood reducing the world's population to eight people is the most likely cause for this inbreeding.
The curve is a normal one and appears undoubtedly to represent an historical sequence. This is all the more remarkable, considering the antiquity of the data from which it has been derived, and it supports the genuineness of the record and tends to establish three facts:
1. The Flood did reduce the population of the world to a single family of small size, leaving no other people for intermarriage;
2. The original life span was at first six-hundred years or more;
3. The record of names and ages is not a literary invention, but factual, with no extensive gaps - in fact, with no gaps at all in all probability, if the figure of ten generations has any genetic significance for an inbreeding population of mammals.
Furthermore, several doubles of names and ages are given. They appear at significant points. At the end of the ten generations, Jacob is preceded by Isaac and Ishmael, both of the same generation, who nicely straddle the curve to even it out: and immediately after Jacob two more are given whose average confirms the line.
What is even more surprising, as we have already noted, is that once the life span had fallen to the appointed level, the recording of ages at death ceases. Job, who must surely be placed back somewhere in Abraham's time, is only said to have exceeded 140 years. (Job 42:16) His age, therefore, being of the proper order for Abraham's time was not being recorded precisely, because he did not fall in the line to the Promised Seed.
From Adam to Noah this steady deterioration in the viability of man is absent. The reason is not difficult to find. Adam and Eve were perfect as created, and therefore without defective or mutant genes. They would perhaps pass on to their children some defective genes when children were born later in their lives by which time such genes might have appeared. With each succeeding generation, more and more defective genes would arise in the population, but at the same time the population itself would be growing. This growth in population made it less and less likely that close blood relations (who shared more of the same defective genes) would marry. Thus the chance of defective genes at the same locus on the chromosome (i.e., of the same kind), being "married" together and appearing in the children with pronounced effect would be smaller and smaller as time went on. Only when the Flood reduced the population, and only because this reduction took place when the eight survivors had already accumulated within themselves a fair percentage of defective genes, did close inbreeding have the effect of greatly reducing viability. It is also quite possible that the atmosphere itself prior to the Flood may have been such that the mere process of living did not at that time lead to the steady accumulation of defective genes to anything like the same extent--if at all.
Genesis 11:25-29: Abraham Marries His Sister
The second feature of this genealogy that we want to touch upon briefly has to do with Abram and Sarai (Gen. 11:25-29). In another Doorway Paper, (Ref. 20) we have dealt at some length with certain important events in Abram's life. These show why Abram felt that, if he claimed Sarai as his sister, he might expect not only to be quite safe at Pharaoh's court where he knew Sarai's beauty would arouse envy, but even that he would be specially favored. His surmise proved to be quite correct. His statement regarding his relationship to Sarai was ultimately challenged, of course. When Abraham was accused of lying, he excused himself with a reply which can best be described as a "white lie." "Indeed, she is my sister," he said. "She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother." What did he mean by this?
The background of this undoubted truth is a little complicated, but worth taking time to examine because it only goes to show that there is no part of this early record, including the genealogies, which cannot be taken literally and studied with profit. In view of what we now know about family relationships both in Abraham's time and even quite recently among non-Indo-European people, his reply states exactly the position in which Abraham stood with respect to Sarai. We need only to study carefully two sets of genealogical information provided in Scripture, the present passage and a passage in Genesis 24. In Genesis 11:25-29 we have: "And Nahor lived after he begat Terah a hundred and nineteen years and begat sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. These are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran: and Haran begat Lot." This can be set forth schematically as follows:
Up to this point, the sons and daughters of Nahor (Terah's brothers and sisters) are not named, but information given in the following verses provides very good grounds for believing that one of these was named Haran. We shall examine this shortly, but for clarity we now modify the above genealogy as follows:
It will be noted that Terah's brother Haran had two daughters, Iscah and Milcah. The former of these, Iscah, was Sarah by another name. This identification is very widely agreed upon, was accepted in Jewish commentaries, and is assumed by Josephus in his Antiquities (Book 1, vi, 5).
It may appear to the reader that large liberties are being taken with the text, but this is not really the case. Like many others, the Jewish people commonly accepted the principle that if a man's brother married a woman and subsequently died before the children were married, he took his brother's place and became in effect both her husband and the father of her children. This is the basis of the Pharisees' hypothetical question in Luke 20:27,28. If, therefore, Terah's brother Haran had died, the duty of becoming in effect the father of Iscah and Milcah would automatically devolve upon Terah. Terah's new children would then become sisters to his own sons; and when Abraham and Nahor subsequently married Iscah and Milcah, they would, socially, be marrying their own "sisters," though in fact they were not - the girls being cousins. However, they were a special kind of cousin, namely, "parallel cousins." The term has been invented by anthropologists to signify the following relationship: my father's brother's children are parallel cousins; by contrast, my mother's brother's children are cross cousins. In a Semitic society, the ideal wife for a man was one of his parallel cousins. Furthermore, where several sons existed and several female parallel cousins, it was assumed that the oldest son would marry the oldest girl and so on down the line. The expected wife for Abraham would, therefore, be his uncle Haran's daughter of comparable age.
Now this seems a little complex, but it is particularly striking in this instance, because even today among many Arab tribes, in their love stories, the man looks upon his paternal uncle's daughter as his princess. This is the term by which he refers to her in his poetic moments. In Hebrew, the word for "prince" is Sar, the feminine form of which is Sara, meaning "princess." The terminal possessive pronoun "my" is a long i so that Sara becomes Sarai, meaning '"my princess." This is how Abraham referred to his beautiful wife. Her name was Iscah, but he called her "My Princess," or "Sarai."
Thus Terah's brother Haran, who predeceased him, is identified in verse 29 as the father of Milcah and Iscah, whereas Terah's son Haran, who also predeceased him, is referred to as the father of Lot (v. 31). Because his son Haran (no doubt named after his uncle) died prematurely, Lot became in a special sense the charge of Terah and subsequently of Abraham.
It is interesting to find that the American Indians adopted virtually the same forms of social responsibility. According to Lowie (Ref. 21) the Seneca reckons the father's brothers as "fathers," exactly as Abraham and Nahor, by reckoning Haran as a father, would look upon Iscah and Milcah as sisters. The same is true in Hawaii, where a single word exists for "father" and "father's brother," the two individuals being considered as standing in the same relationship simply because if the one dies, the other assumes his position.
So when Terah's brother died, Terah took his brother's wife and became the father of his brother's children. Because he was also the father of Abraham, this allowed Abraham to say with perfect truth (though with ulterior motives) that Sarai, his princess, was indeed his sister, being the daughter of his own father - but not the daughter of his own mother. There is, therefore, not the slightest element of invention here insofar as the record of Genesis goes. Genesis 11 gives us sufficient information, if carefully read, to see that there is nothing fanciful about the circumstance which so compounded Abraham's relationship with his own wife.
Only one further observation seems appropriate here. And this is that every brother in a society of this nature is given a particular responsibility for the sister who is next to him in age. He bears a special protective relationship toward her and must approve her husband. He will, moreover, be called upon to chastise her children if necessary - while the husband will not be allowed to do so. It was thus important to curry the favor of any brother who was manifestly the protector of the sister whose hand might be sought in marriage, in which position Abraham must have appeared in the eyes of Pharaoh. This is why Abraham felt sure of his own safety, and indeed of being favored by Pharaoh or anyone else who might be in a position to desire Sarai. And it worked!
This last observation is important on account of a peculiarity of the brief genealogy which is given subsequently for Rebekah in Genesis 24:15-24. The circumstances surrounding the search for a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac, are particularly beautiful; the literary form in which the story is cast in Scripture is surely the equal of any such love story in the English language. The old and faithful, though nameless servant is sent by his master Abraham to find a wife for Isaac from the land from which Abraham himself had come to this present place. So the servant sets forth with camels and gifts, and he comes to the city of Nahor, that Nahor whose relationship to Abraham was established in Genesis 11. In due time, he comes to a well outside the city and there he decides to wait, asking the Lord to send out to him the maid of His choice and will reassure him by this sign, namely, that she will offer, not merely to allow him something to drink, but to draw water also for his camels.
It would be a pity to tell the story in any other words than those of the original, but we may note that before the faithful old servant has finished praying (v. 15), a girl comes to the well, very fair to look at. Her name is Rebekah, "born of Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother."
The genealogy which we have already reported twice is now repeated a third time in order to bring out a striking fact about the relationship in time between Isaac and Rebekah. The fact is that Isaac was born so late in the lifetime of Abraham and Sarah that he could not appropriately have found a wife in what would strictly have been his own generation, namely, the generation in which Bethuel was born. Had he married a sister, let us say, of Bethuel's, he would have been marrying a woman perhaps twenty or twenty-five years older than himself. Now, the interesting thing about Bethuel is that, although he was the father of the girl whose hand was sought in marriage, it is very evident from the record - as Blunt (Ref. 22) was perhaps the first to underscore - that he is virtually ignored in all the transactions which surrounded the betrothal of Rebekah. It is Rebekah's mother and Rebekah's brother, Laban, who are the chief actors in the story. When the servant first speaks with Rebekah, he asks her, "Whose daughter art thou? Tell me, I pray thee, is there room in thy father's house to lodge in?" She answers that she is the daughter of Bethuel and that there is room. But when the servant thereupon declares who he is and whence he has come, we are told that "the damsel ran and told them of her mother's house these things also." This is not the normal thing for her to do, as is evident by Rachel's behavior when, later, Jacob introduces himself (Gen. 29:12) under somewhat similar circumstances.
This might all be accidental, except for the fact that we are then told that Rebekah has a brother whose name is Laban and that "Laban ran out unto the man and invited him in."
This strange circumstance in which Laban acts as host instead of the father of the household has led some people to propose that perhaps Bethuel is dead at this time. But this is clearly ruled out by the subsequent statement (Gen. 24:50) to the effect that Laban and Bethuel together answer the servant's inquiries once he is in the house. So everything is agreed upon, and Rebekah is to go with the servant, who then makes the presentation of gifts. But these gifts are now presented, not to the father but to Rebekah's brother, Laban, and to her mother (Gen. 24:53). At the same time, it is suggested she should stay a few days before leaving: and once more the suggestion comes, not from Bethuel, but from her brother and her mother.
Some encyclopedias propose that Bethuel may have been sickly or even imbecile, able to assent to what is proposed but not to make decisions nor to be a sensible recipient of valuable gifts. Personally I think there is another possible reason for his taking such an insignificant part in all these proceedings which in no way casts doubt upon his character but results from the fact, already noted before, that in oriental society, as among many native people today, there normally exists a special relationship between each brother in a family and the sister nearest to him in age. There are several reasons accounting for this, the chief of which is probably that, as a guarantee of good faith in marriage, it was always customary for the groom to provide a substantial gift for his bride. This gift is known variously as the "bride price," or lobolo; among Europeans, to whom the idea seems strange, it has been somewhat misunderstood as though the husband-to-be was "purchasing" his wife, thereby making her virtually a chattel. It is a purchase in one sense - in that the more of outstanding the status of the groom, the more necessary he feels it to demonstrate how worthy he feels the girl is to share his life. The actual gift itself has a special importance to the "particular" brother, because it in turn provides him with the means of performing the same office toward the maid of his choice. It all becomes a kind of status symbol which bounces back and forth between relatives, no one in the end being any richer, but each family feeling that they have honored the bride.
In the present context, because Isaac was born at least one generation late, Bethuel himself could not have had a sister of the appropriate age to be Isaac's wife and therefore he did not receive the gifts. Because the two families were closely related, it is virtually certain that Bethuel would know very well that Isaac was a special child of his parent's old age. Even if he didn't know this already, the faithful old servant would surely explain it all while he was in the house: and since he was not looking for one of Bethuel's sisters and did not wish to cause embarrassment to them, he would almost in certainty avoid Bethuel's household. Thus the two people chiefly interested in the proposal being made would be Rebekah's mother (who would be very anxious to see her daughter so well married) and this Laban (who would be very happy to see the valuable gifts exchanging hands).
Now, part of this cultural pattern of behavior led to an accepted practice which extended the interests of the brother beyond his sister to his sister's children. This is commonly found among non-Indo-European people. It is the maternal uncle who rewards the children when they are to be rewarded and punishes them when they are to be punished. Thus Laban, in due time, bore a special relationship to Rebekah's children, a fact beautifully reflected in the subsequent history of Jacob. When Jacob fled from the wrath of Esau, he found refuge by going to Haran and searching out his maternal uncle, Laban. It is true that he asked, "Know ye Laban the son of Nahor?" (Gen. 29:5), rather than "Laban the son of Bethuel"; but this may not mean very much in the light of the fact that Nahor, as the older man, would almost certainly be widely known, and the term "son" is quite often used merely to mean "descendant of."
These observations illuminating the story unexpectedly reinforce its veracity in little circumstantial details. The fact that Isaac was born one generation late and that therefore Bethuel plays an insignificant role in his daughter's marriage, and the fact that Jacob subsequently takes refuge with Laban, who promptly takes advantage of him - all this is of a piece. It ultimately bears witness to the reality of the remarkable circumstances surrounding Isaac's birth. Only some such exceptional circumstance could begin to explain why the father of the bride played such an insignificant role. And only because sufficient detail is given to allow us to reconstruct the genealogy do we have this insight into this wonderful story.
References:
2. See Martin Anstey, The Romance of Biblical Chronology, Marshall Bros., London, 1913, p. 302; Philip Mauro, The Chronology of the Bible, Hamilton Bros., Scripture Truth Depot, Boston, 1922, p.120; John Urquhart, How Old Is Man?, Gospel Publishing House, New York, 1904, p.
3. Uruk: on this point, see John Urquhart, "The Bearing of Recent Oriental Discoveries on Old Testament History," Trans. Vict. Instit. 38 (1906):48; and W. St. Chad Boscawen, The Bible and the Monuments, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1896, p.94.
4. City: R. Eiseler, "Loan Words in Semitic Languages Meaning 'Town,'" Antiquity, December 1939, p. 449.
5. Forbes, R.J., Metallurgy in Antiquity, Brill, Leiden, 1950, p. 88.
6. Dods, Marcus, Genesis, Clark, Edinburgh, n.d., p. 26.
7. Vulcan: H. J. Rose, "The Cult of Vulcanus at Rome," Jour. Royal Soc. 23 (1933)40.
8. Twino. Loomis Havermeyer, Ethnology, Grinn, London, 1929, p. 81.
9. "Longevity in Antiquity and Its Bearing on Chronology," Part I in the Doorway Papers, volume V.
10. "A Study of the Names in Genesis 10," Part II in the Doorway Papers Volume I.
11. "The Part Played by Shem, Ham, and Japheth in Subsequent World History" and "The Technology of Hamitic People," both in the Doorway Papers Volume I.
12. "The Technology of Hamitic People," Part IV in the Doorway Papers Volume I.
13. "Why Noah Cursed Canaan Instead of Ham," Part III in the Doorway Papers Volume I.
14. Blunt, J. J., Undesigned Coincidences in the Old and New Testament, Murray, London, 1869, p. 8.
15. "Longevity in Antiquity and Its Bearing on Chronology," Part I in the Doorway Papers Volume V.
16. Deaf-mutism: Ballinger, "Diseases of the Nose, Throat and Ear," p. 1025, and E. B. Dench, "Diseases in the Ear," in the chapter entitled "Deaf Mutism," in Salous, Analytical Cycloedia of Practical Medicine, p. 450
17. Holander, Willard, "Lethal Heredity," Sci. Amer., July 1952, p. 60.
18. Smith, Maynard, "Biology of Aging," Nature 178 (November 24,1956): 1154.
19. "Longevity in Antiquity and Its Bearing on Chronology," Part I in the Doorway Papers Volume V.
20. "Some Remarkable Biblical Confirmations From Archaeology" (Doorway Papers)
21. Lowie, Robert, Social Organization, Rhinehart, New York, 1948, p. 62.
22. BIunt, J.J., ref. 14, p. 31.
WE COME TO the genealogies of the New Testament. Most wonderful and most illuminating are these genealogies which establish the relationship of the Lord Jesus to the rest of the human family. It is no new discovery that each of the four Gospels appears to have been written and directed by the Holy Spirit with a particular type of audience in view. Matthew wrote for the Jewish people, presenting Jesus Christ as the Hope of Israel. Mark wrote for the common man, and in those days the common man meant virtually the slave, for the Roman Empire was a world in which a comparatively few were served by the vast majority, and that vast majority had little if any personal dignity. Mark presented the Lord as the Servant of Man par excellence. Luke wrote for the better-educated Gentile, for whom the great goal was to be "the cultured man" - or in Greek terms, one whose disposition was characterized by the dual hallmark of a gentleman: "sweet reasonableness and appropriate seriousness." Luke therefore presented the Lord as the ideal man, the very Son of Man. These three, the so-called Synoptic Gospels, set their sights at the same level, playing between them a beautiful harmony of chords by taking care to note, with inspired wisdom, those things which Jesus said and did in His character as man - though never failing to acknowledge His divinity. And finally, John built upon this concordant testimony to the perfection of the manhood of Jesus to show that part of the mystery of this perfection lay in the fact that He was not merely the Son of Man but also the Son of God.
Each of these authors, if one may allow some liberty in the use of language, accompanied his record with an appropriate genealogy. In Matthew the line of Jesus Christ is traced forward from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation. In Luke the line is traced back to Adam, as the father of the human race. In John the line is traced back into eternity with God. And what of Mark? How fitting that there should be no genealogy here: who cared whence his servant came? Slaves are not recorded, for records of this kind are kept only to establish rights. And so it is only in a manner of speaking that each of the Gospels has its appropriate form of genealogy, but the absence of a genealogy in Mark is a beautiful tribute to the underlying unity of Scripture and the perfect agreement between its parts.
Sometimes this perfect agreement appears to be marred by contradiction, but I think it is an invariable rule that the apparent contradictions challenge us to resolve them and, in so doing, allow us to discover great truths which would not otherwise be discovered, but which are like a feast of fat things to the soul. This is never more true than in the case of the seeming inconsistencies between the genealogies given by Matthew and by Luke.
The easiest thing here is to assume either that one of them is wrong, or that both of them are. Needless to say, a great many writers who have casual respect for the Word of God have concluded just this.
To quote one such writer: (Ref. 23)
There can be no doubt that the anticipation that Christ would be descended from David was very general in our Lord's time (John 7:42, etc.). It is also clear that it was believed - at least by the disciples - that Jesus was indeed descended from him (Matt. 1:1; Acts 2:30; 12:23; Rom. 1:3; Rev. 22:16, etc.). The genealogies in Matthew and Luke are apparently inserted to prove that this is a fact. But at first sight it would appear that the two genealogies are mutually destructive and that one or both are entirely untrustworthy. They both appear to be genealogies of Joseph, but they start from two different sons of David, and they end with the discrepancy, which cannot be ascribed to a copyist's error, in the name of Joseph's father.
These genealogies are provided as an insert, since it is important to have the text; human nature being what it is, there may be a tendency for the reader not to take time (even if he does get out a Bible) to check back and forth from the one to the other as we study the two family trees.
With this text before us, let us consider certain segments of these two genealogies under four headings:
1. Anomalies that appear within a genealogy itself;
2. Apparent conflicts with background information in the Old Testament;
3. Contradictions between the two genealogies;
4. Departures from the normal method of setting forth this kind of information in public records of this kind.
Section 1: Anomalies That Appear With a Genealogy Itself
The number of names listed in Matthew's genealogy presents a problem, for we are informed that they total three times fourteen, or 42 in all (Matt. 1:17); but if we count them, there appear to be only 41. It is clear enough that there are 14 names from Abraham to David, and 14 names from Solomon to Jechonias, but unless we repeat Jechonias we have only 13 names for the balance. The only justification for repeating Jechonias is to make the assumption that this one name stands for two separate individuals whose original names may in their Hebrew form have been slightly different, but whose Hellenized transliteration has assumed the same form. Genealogical records provided elsewhere in Scripture supply us in a rather remarkable way with information demonstrating that this assumption is probably correct.
To begin with, it will be noted in Matthew 1:11 that the first-mentioned Jechonias is said to have been accompanied by "his brethren." If this Jechonias is identified with Jehoiakim, he is in fact the immediate son of Josias, as Matthew tells us, and did indeed have brothers, as I Chronicles 3:15 informs us - namely, Johanan, Zedekiah, and Shallum.
This man Jehoiakim, in turn, had a son Jeconiah (I Chron. 3:16), but this son did not have "brethren": he had only a single brother - whose name happens also to have been Zedekiah (I Chron. 3:16). Undoubtedly Jeconiah is to be identified with the Jechonias of Matthew 1:12, who became, as I Chronicles 3:17 assures us, the father of Salathiel (of Matthew 1:12).
In other words, the first Jechonias of Matthew's genealogy is to be identified with the Jehoiakim who had three brothers. The second Jechonias of Matthew is to be identified with the Jeconiah who had only one brother and who went into captivity into Babylon and who there raised a son, Salathiel.
All this makes perfectly good sense and restores the proper number of names to complete the tally of three times fourteen, provided that one understands that the two entries of the name "Jechonias" in Matthew do not represent one individual but two. The first is distinguished by having several brothers; the second bore Salathiel in captivity.
Not a few commentators who have little confidence in the Word of God have, in the past, taken the apparent discrepancy in the total count of generations - along with the fact that Matthew omits a certain number of names (as we shall see in the following section) - as a proof that Scripture is far from being historically accurate or consistent. The mathematical inconsistency here in Matthew's genealogy is apparent only and results from paying insufficient attention to the precise wording. This inattention is inevitable if one has only a low regard for the Word of God. But if we observe that the first Jechonias is said to have had brothers and the second Jechonias had only one brother, then the difference between the two is clear to the attentive eye. Indeed, what better assurance could God have supplied us as a means of identification and distinction, especially if He foresaw that the names which are so distinct in their Hebrew form should in due time become confused in the Greek?
Section 2: Apparent Conflicts With Old Testament Background Information
By contrast with a fair proportion of Luke's genealogy, Matthew's genealogy is clearly derived from records which are still accessible to us from the Old Testament. Many of the names in Luke are not to be found there. This enables us to go back to the originals, as it were, and when we do this, we may be surprised to find that Matthew has omitted quite a number of names which by normal standards of keeping such records ought to have been included. The circumstance demonstrates rather clearly that Matthew's genealogy has a special character to it.
Here we meet with a beautiful illustration of what is God's view of history as opposed to man's. While Matthew 1:8 counts Ozias (Uzziah in the Old Testament) as the son of Joram (Jehoram in the Old Testament), I Chronicles 3:11,12 shows that in actual fact he was not his son but his great-great grandson.
When Jehoram came to the throne of Judah, Israel to the north was being led more and more deeply into wickedness by their worst king, Ahab, and his notorious queen, Jezebel. Jehoram shows the set of his sail by marrying their daughter, Athaliah. The history of the royal house of Judah then passes into one of its saddest phases: the immediate descendants of Athaliah and Jehoram became involved in a series of disastrous events which dreadfully fulfilled the judgment of God pronounced through Elijah (I Kings 21) against the line of Ahab and Jezebel, a judgment which persisted "unto the third and fourth generation."
When Jehoram died of some atrocious disease, as Elijah had warned him he would, his son (Ahaziah) came to the throne. Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from the judgment which had befallen his father, Ahaziah proved himself an equally wicked monarch and was murdered in a popular uprising. His mother, Athaliah (Ahab's daughter, it will be remembered), perhaps in a fit of fury and remembering Elijah's judgment against her house, executed judgment herself upon it and set out to murder every remaining male of her father Ahab's line. But it happened that Ahaziah's youngest son, Joash, had a sister who was endeared to him; this sister managed to spirit him away and hide him, so that in due time he was unexpectedly brought out of hiding and, at the age of seven, presented to the people as their rightful king.
Joash appears to have been a better man than his father or his grandfather. But whether by his very nature, or because the priesthood which should have aided and guided him was itself equally corrupt, he too failed to improve the spiritual life of the people he ruled. In due time Joash also became a prey to treachery, being murdered by his own servants while he was in bed.
Joash was succeeded by his son Amaziah who, unlike his father, seems to have tried to do the right thing but, as Scripture says, "not with a perfect heart." After various intrigues and a fatal engagement with Israel, Amaziah departed entirely from the vision he once had and ended up a defeated man and a fugitive. Escaping from Jerusalem when he learned of a conspiracy against his life, he fled to Lachish. But they pursued him there, and there he too was murdered.
Amaziah was succeeded by his son Uzziah, the "Ozias" whom Matthew in his genealogy sets forth as the son of Joram. In other words, three generations are missing, three generations of kings of Judah who, while they preserved intact the line of the Promised Seed, did not in themselves prove worthy to be remembered in it. Thus the curse pronounced upon the house of Ahab by Elijah, God's mouthpiece, persisted unto the fourth generation: Athaliah was the first generation of Ahab's line, Ahaziah was the second generation, Joash the third, and Amaziah the fourth. In the official temple records, it may be that the names of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah were removed or marked in some way as having no official status in the royal line - just as in Europe a Bar-Sinister may be marked across the arms of a dishonored branch of a family.
Evidently, at that period in history and for many centuries after, there was observed the practice of removing from all official records the names of individuals who had brought shame upon themselves. The Athenians, according to Livy, pronounced a similar doom on the memory of Alcibiades, and of Philip V of Macedon in the year 200 B.C. (Ref. 24) In Egypt during the time of the eighteenth dynasty, the Egyptian priests similarly cursed the memory of Amenhotep IV and sought to remove his name from all monuments. The same thing was done with the name of Hatshepsut by her successors.
It is a curious thing how potent is the threat to the individual of having his very remembrance blotted out. It was called, in the days of Imperial Rome, the Damnatio Memoraie, and it was carried out in a striking manner against the emperor Commodus. (Ref. 25) His "memory was condemned" in a single night's sitting of the Senate within twenty-four hours of his death, the same night in which Pertinax was nominated as emperor. It was decreed that every statue of Commodus was to be destroyed and his name erased from every private document and public monument. One wonders what they did with his name on the document which ordered its removal.
It seems a reflection of something we find not infrequently in the Old Testament and even in the New. God had warned Israel "whoso sinneth against Me, him will I blot out of My book" (Exod. 32:33). The same thought is reflected in Deuteronomy 9:14; 25:19; 29:20; and in II Kings 14:27. In Psalm 9:5 we read, "Thou hast rebuked the nations, Thou hast destroyed the wicked, Thou hast blotted out their name forever and ever." This is repeated in Psalm 69:28: "Let them be blotted out of the Book of Life." By contrast is the promise to the redeemed in Revelation 3:5, "I will in no wise blot out his name from the Book of Life." So in effect, when God assures David that He will blot out his sins and remember them no more, He is saying that they shall be as though they had never been. And in the genealogy which leads from Abraham to Christ, these three men - Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah - are blotted out as though they had never been and it seems therefore that if this erasure of their names took place in the original official documents which had been preserved in the temple from time immemorial, Matthew may have merely copied down precisely what he found in the record.
Some authorities wonder where either Matthew or Luke obtained his genealogy, since they believe that all such records were lost in the destruction of the first temple. However, it is generally agreed that a knowledge of one's genealogy was of very great importance in every Jewish family even when they went into exile, because it was only on the basis of this information that the Promised Land could be divided justly. With the ready means that we today have available for keeping written records, our faculty for remembering may have suffered in some respects. But where written record is more difficult to secure, prodigious feats of memory are not infrequently observed. Native people have been reported by missionaries to have memorized whole books of the New Testament, apparently without too much difficulty. And it is well-known that the Arab youth was formerly - and perhaps still is - expected to be able to recite his own genealogy for seventy generations. When an Australian aborigine comes unexpectedly upon another family's camp, he sits down some distance away from it until an elder from the camp comes out to him. Thereupon the two will recite their genealogies until they strike a common ancestor, and when this has been done, the stranger will be invited in and introduced with the proper identification as to his relationship, so that everybody else in the camp will know how to address him correctly, and he them. Josephus speaks of the great care which the Jewish people in his day took to preserve certain lines, in particular the royal line from David and the royal priesthood. Julius African (Ref. 26) says that Herod the Great caused as many official registers as he could get hold of to be burned, because he himself was of a plebeian family and he wanted to conceal from the Roman emperor the fact that he had no blood relationship with either the royal line of David or the priestly line of existence of private family registers is proved by the discovery of Aramaic documents concerning the Jewish colony which existed between 471 and 411 B.C. at Elephantine near Assoun. This is, of course, much earlier than Herod, but it shows that some genealogical information survived outside of Palestine even if Herod was fairly successful locally. According to a fairly recent Jewish Encyclopedia, (Ref. 27) we are told that in the Talmudic Age - i.e., subsequent to Herod's time - interest in preservation of genealogies was lessened, but the patriarchs in Palestine and the exiled patriarchs in Babylon down to the thirteenth century kept these records alive wherever possible, and the former were believed to possess, interestingly enough, unbroken descent from David in the male line only. This is a point of some interest in view of the fact that Luke's genealogy is widely considered to be that of Mary.
By the omission of these three names, we have an illustration of a point made much of by those who wish to extend the chronology of the Bible sufficiently to accommodate current views of the antiquity of man which demand anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 years. The claim is that these genealogies do not supply us with an unbroken series of generations because there are known gaps, such as that in Matthew 1:8, which makes a great-great-grandson a son, thus skipping three generations.
What is never admitted by those who attempt thus to extend the biblical chronology is that the possibility of arguing for such gaps exists only because elsewhere in Scripture the gaps are filled in. Had we only a single genealogy for example (for some particular period), we would have no evidence that gaps existed in it. It is only when the same period is supplied elsewhere with genealogical material (which neither provides us with more generations for the same period, or with fewer generations for the same period) that we can say with any certainty that a genealogy may be presented which is not actually complete though it has the appearance in itself of being so. It is perfectly true that when we are told that such-and-such a man is the "son" of some other individual, we are not always to assume that it means sonship in our more limited sense, since Ozias was the son of Jehoram only in the sense of being a descendant.
But this surely does not allow us to assume that, wherever we decide it would be convenient, we are free to insert an unlimited number of generations merely because the word son has this wider meaning. The fact is that in the historical portions of Scripture - that is, in those parts of the Bible which detail the lives and doings of individuals - we can find no break anywhere in the record in the historical account itself. People's doings are set forth relatedly so that one gets the feeling - which undoubtedly results from the fact that this is a continuous record - that each succeeding generation picked up the historical threads of those who immediately preceded them and united the past and the future by their own doings. This is manifestly true even in the very earliest parts of Scripture which record the growth of civilization before the Flood as well as its recovery immediately after it. Moreover, as we have seen, there are chronological cross-ties in the record wherever the line from the first Adam to the Last Adam is being traced. The omission of these three names from Matthew's genealogy does not give us permission to take liberties with the genealogies, but only teaches us that God discounts entirely and blots out of history whatever has come under His judgment. This is an unhappy thing for those who have not experienced redemption, but it is wonderfully reassuring to those who have, since by His gracious action in so doing, the redeemed can have nothing to fear in the judgment, for there will be no record against them.
Another example of apparent conflict appears in Matthew 1:7, which tells us that Solomon begat Rehoboam who begat Abia who begat Asa. In I Kings 14:31 we are told that when Rehoboam died, his son Abijam (to be identified with the Greek form Abia of Matthew) reigned in his stead. In I Kings 15:2 we are told that Abijam's mother's name was Maachah, and that she was the daughter of Abishalom. In II Chronicles 11:20,21 this individual, Abishalom, is named alternatively as Absalom. Jewish tradition identifies this Absalom as David's son - which is quite possible, since David bore Absalom by a woman named Maachah - and this would account for Absalom's naming his daughter after the mother. Now, in Matthew, Asa is said to have been Abia's son with which I Kings 15:8 agrees - for it says that when Abijam died, his son Asa reigned in his stead. But the curious thing is that the record in Kings goes on to say that he reigned for forty-one years in Jerusalem after succeeding to the throne, and "His mother's name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom." Thus Asa who was the son of Abia nevertheless appears from the text to have had the same mother. It is conceivable, of course, in a case of incest, but this is certainly not true here, otherwise Matthew's genealogy would surely have omitted one of the names at least, if not both - for such a thing as incest was an abomination in the sight of the Lord. The explanation is undoubtedly that Maachah was indeed the mother of Abia and the grandmother of Asa. Thus, while - as we have already seen - a son or a grandson may look back to a common father, similarly a son or a grandson may evidently look back to a common mother. Indeed, in I Kings 15:8,11 Asa is said to have been the son of both Abijab his father and the son of David, the latter being more precisely his great-great-grandfather
This is the simplest way to reconcile II Chronicles 13:2 with I Kings 15:2. In II Chronicles 13:2 Abijah's mother's name is also spelled "Michaiah," where she is given as the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. Therefore Absalom must have married a girl from Gibeah named Uriel (even though the name Uriel is otherwise used of men only), for in I Kings 15:2 Abijah is said to have been the son of Maachah the daughter of Absalom.
Working out these little problems not merely enlarges one's understanding of the relationship of these peoples, but somehow makes the individuals live, as a map makes places live that we have once visited. And if it is not irreverent to say so, finding solutions is like finding a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle or a missing word in a crossword puzzle - it provides genuine intellectual satisfaction.
Section 3: Contradictions Between The Two Genealogies
Luke provides us with a line from Adam to David, a section of the genealogy which is not found in Matthew, for reasons already noted, and which therefore in no way conflicts with it. But from David forward to Jesus there are disagreements almost all the way along.
Needless to say, these disagreements were once made much of by those who held a low opinion of the integrity of Scripture. But in due time these very disagreements led to a search for some means of reconciliation, and this search proved fruitful because it brought to light a further truth which might otherwise have escaped notice entirely. Now that the truth is recognized, there seem to be many incidental confirmations of it from other parts of Scripture; but these confirmations were not recognized as such until the truth they confirmed had itself been rediscovered.
This discovery is that Luke's genealogy traces the line of Mary, not of Joseph. Thus, at the very beginning of Luke's record - a record which sets the names in the reverse order from that given in Matthew - we meet with the first "contradiction": namely, that Joseph was the son of Heli, whereas Matthew says that Joseph was the son of Jacob. Although some of the early church fathers perceived that this was Mary's pedigree, they did not apparently make the discovery that in the Talmud, Jewish tradition held that Mary was the daughter of Heli (Beth-Heli). (Ref. 28) Early Christian writers held that Mary was the daughter of Joiakim and Anna. But the name Joiakim is interchangeable with Eliakim, as II Chronicles 36:4 shows, and Eli or Heli is an abridgment of Eliakim. It is thus quite possible that the early Christian tradition is in perfect harmony with that of the Jewish people themselves whose knowledge would be based on temple records. This is undoubtedly the basis of the early assurance that Jesus was, in the flesh, of the seed of David. In the annunciation (Luke 1:32), the promised Savior is called at once "Son of God" and "Son of David": Son of God by virtue of His conception by the Holy Spirit, and Son of David by virtue of His birth through Mary. This should therefore be compared with Romans 1:3,4, in which we are told that He who was God's Son was "born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with Power.. . " Later on, in His confrontation with the Jewish authorities, Jesus answered a question which had probably arisen from the fact that, while they recognized the validity of His lineal claim to being David's son through Mary, they would not recognize His further claim to being the Son of God. He pointed to them from Psalm 110:1 that while the Messiah was indeed to be David's son, David nevertheless called Him "Lord." They had no answer to this. The Lord's argument could only have real force if the people to whom it was addressed recognized His claim as the son of Mary who was a daughter of David.
Why, then, is Mary's name not included in Luke's genealogy? Undoubtedly, to establish a legal pedigree it is necessary to set down the name of the head of the household - in this case, of course, Joseph. At the same time, according to the Jewish way of thinking -and indeed, according to the common practice of many other societies - the man who married could claim his wife's father as his own. We ourselves recognize this right, only we make the distinction of saying "father-in-law"--rather than "father." There are a number of examples in Scripture where this principle is followed.
In I Chronicles 2:31 we have an illustration of this practice of naming another as the father. In this instance it will be observed that son succeeded "son" until we come to Ahlai, whom we know had a daughter but not a son. Meanwhile Ahlai had an Egyptian servant named Jarha and, as was not altogether unusual at that time, he gave his daughter to him as a wife. But from then on the children are still credited to him as his descendants - that is, members of his own line through his daughter - and therefore listed as his sons and grandsons. Thus the children of his daughter are listed as his children rather than the children of his daughter's husband, and they in their turn would look back to him as their ultimate father. Of necessity, Jarha would therefore be accounted as Sheshan's son. The following genealogy sets this forth:
The manner in which Joseph's name is introduced in Luke's genealogy is also exceptional. Whereas each man in the line is said to have been, simply, "of" his father, Jesus is said to have been the son "nominally" of Joseph - such is the Greek which the Authorized Version renders "as was supposed." The verbal root of this qualifying term is nomidzo, which has the sense of legal standing or standing established by custom: it is cognate with the root which gave rise to the English form "nominal." Thus it was clearly recognized that Jesus was the son of Joseph legally, but not necessarily by natural generation. This claim is accepted without question in John 6:42, "whose mother and father we know."
When a man wished to identify as his son one who was not his son by natural generation, he could do so by a process of legal adoption which involved two acts. In the first place, he must name the child. Evidently the name "Jesus" was registered as the child's name by Joseph in obedience to the angel's instructions in Matthew 1:21. These instructions, it will be noted, were given by the angel directly to Joseph himself rather than to Mary. The significance of this from the legal point of view is great. Although Joseph appears to have predeceased Mary, it does not appear that anyone ever seriously challenged his familial rights.
The second requirement has an interesting history to it. It is well-known that the Code of Hammurabi played an important part in structuring much of the social custom of the Jewish people, since it was the legal code in force at the time of Abraham. In section 188 of this code it is written: "If an artisan takes a son to sonship and teaches him his handicraft, no one may bring a claim for him." Evidently Joseph taught Jesus to be a carpenter in fulfillment of this recognized requirement, a guarantee which would stand even if the records in the temple were destroyed. It was a kind of double insurance of legal status. A comparison of Matthew 13:55 with Mark 6:3 shows that both father and son were carpenters. Matthew 11:30 tells us something of his skill!
Thus, although Mary in her own right could claim descent from David through Heli her father, the temple record could not enter her name in the line but must enter the name of her husband, the adopting father of her child. So when Luke copied out this record, he quite properly omitted Mary's name and substituted that of Joseph.
We have, therefore, a genealogy from David to Mary preserved, presumably, in the family of Heli and perhaps actually in their possession - for as we have already noted previously; long after the temple was destroyed with all its records, there still existed families who claimed descent from David and claimed it, significantly, in the female line. On this account the names in Luke's Gospel from David forward do not coincide (except at one point) with the names in Matthew's Gospel. David had three sons of note - namely, Solomon, Absolon, and Nathan - and it is in the line of Nathan that Mary's claim is established.
In Luke 3:28 we have "Melchi"; in Luke 3:27 his son is given as "Neri"; and his son, in turn, is given as Salathiel followed by Zorobabel and then Rhesa. At this point we have some apparent connections with the genealogy in Matthew's Gospel, for in Matthew 1:12 we have Jechonias whose son was Salathiel followed by Zorobabel. When we turn to the Old Testament to find out what this uniting of the two families signifies, we find ourselves with insufficient information to provide an unequivocal answer - but just enough to allow a reconstruction which, in the light of what we have already observed of the way in which relationships are acknowledged, has a fair degree of probability about it. The Jechonias of Matthew 1:12 was, as we have seen, the king who terminated the Judean royal line when these unfortunate people went into captivity. Although he is stated to have been still a child, he survived long enough in captivity to reach a marriageable age; he evidently was later accorded kingly status - a not unusual circumstance in those days - for the girl he married is called (in Jeremiah 29:2) "his queen." Scripture has taken care to provide us with very concrete information to this effect (II Kings 25:27-30) as though God foresaw that one day this information would be important.
Now, to bring the two genealogies at this point into harmony, it is only necessary to assume that Neri of Luke 3:27 also went into captivity and there raised both sons and daughters, and that one of these daughters became the wife and queen of Jechonias. This is a most reasonable assumption really, because, if Neri was known to be of the royal line through Nathan (and Nehemiah 7:5 shows that at least some genealogies had been saved in spite of the conquest of Judah), then who would be more proper as the wife of the still-acknowledged king than a daughter of the royal line? Of this marriage, Jechonias had a son (among others) whose name was Salathiel (I Chron. 3:17) and besides Salathiel he had also a second son named Pedaiah. In I Chronicles 3:19 Pedaiah had a son named Zerubbabel (the "Zorobabel" of the New Testament). Thus Salathiel was, in fact, properly called the son of Jechonias but also the son of Neri through the latter's daughter. The two lines from David through Solomon and through Nathan meet in Salathiel by this device. Salathiel's brother, Pedaiah, though not mentioned in either of the New Testament genealogies, appears to have exercised the right of the Levirate upon the early death of his brother Salathiel, and to have taken his wife, by whom he raised up to Salathiel's line a son named Zorobabel.
In Zorobabel we again meet with an example of a man's children being traced through their mother's father. Zorobabel had both sons and daughters, but the male seed for some unknown reason came to an end, thus fulfilling the prophecy made in Jeremiah 22:30 that no man of Jechonias' seed "should sit on the throne of David." We are, however, given his daughter's name in I Chronicles 3:19 as "Shelomith." We have only to make one further assumption, namely, that this girl married the Rhesa of Luke 3:17 and had of this union two sons - Abiud of Matthew 1:13 and Joanna of Luke 3:17 - and the rest makes perfectly good sense and the two genealogies are reconciled, the one with the other.
By this means - always bearing in mind the manner of stating relationships which was allowable - we can see how, according to Matthew, Jechonias had a son Salathiel and Salathiel had a son (via his brother Pedaiah) Zorobabel, and Zorobabel a son (actually a grandchild through his daughter Shelomith) named Abiud, and thence down to Joseph: and at the same time, according to Luke, how Neri could have a son Salathiel (actually his grandson), who had a son Zorobabel (again, in fact a grandson), who had a son Rhesa (actually his son-in-law, as Joseph was Heli's son-in-law), and Rhesa a son, Joanna by his wife Shelomith who was a daughter of Zorobabel, and thence down to Heli.
This sounds terribly complicated, but the included full genealogical table gives both lines, will show that all the requirements of all that we know, both from the Old and the New Testament, seem to be satisfied.
There are no conflicts either between the Old and the New Testament records or between Matthew and Luke. The validity of the claim that Jesus was the promised Messiah as the Son of David, the Seed of the Woman as virgin-born through Mary, the Savior of mankind as the Son of Man (from Adam) and the Son of God (as conceived supernaturally by the Holy Spirit) is assured on every ground.
Undoubtedly a study of the genealogies requires considerable effort, perhaps more effort (or at least a different kind of effort) from that which normally proves most fruitful when expended elsewhere in Bible study. But it is well worth it and brings with it a peculiar intellectual satisfaction.
Section 4: Departures From the Usual Way of Setting Forth a Genealogy
The fundamental departure found in Luke's Gospel, is that in this genealogy we are not presented at the top of the page with the oldest antecedent followed by father, sons, grandsons, and so on, but rather with the latest in the line, who is then by a simple device traced backwards - whereas all other genealogies trace forward. Why was this order adopted?
There is a second departure, namely, that whereas Matthew and John both commence their history by establishing the pedigree, Luke covers briefly but effectively a period of some thirty years in the life of the Lord before saying who He is in terms of His antecedents.
It is not until this time - when Jesus, being now about thirty years of age, has been identified by John as the "Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" and singularly considered by God in heaven as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased - that Luke sets forth His lineage, showing in effect that though the circumstances of Jesus' birth were such as to set Him apart from all other men, yet He was nevertheless truly representative of man in Adam.
The genealogy of Matthew reads forward from Abraham to Jesus, identifying Him as the Child of Promise. Promises are always of the future, and Matthew wished above all to establish from the very first that Jesus was the Christ, the fulfillment of this promise. He wanted to show the grounds upon which Jesus established His title as the Messiah, and his Gospel thereafter presents His credentials as the Son of David.
Luke, on the other hand, wished to show the potential of man, the model which God had in mind from which all other men derive whatever of manhood they happen to have. Hence he begins with Jesus and appropriately gives Him alone, above all others, the title "Son of Man," and then he traces Him back to Adam, in whose place He stood.
Thus Matthew begins with Abraham and leads us forward to the Lord, whom he identifies by His title, "the Christ" (Matt. 1:17); whereas Luke begins with the Lord, whom he identifies by His name, "Jesus" (Luke 3:23), and leads us back to Adam and so to God.
Viewed as vehicles for conveying information, the genealogies of the Bible are supportive of one another. Were it not for the genealogical material in the Old Testament, the genealogies in the New Testament would be without historical foundation; and were it not for the genealogies in the New Testament, the genealogical material of the Old, preserved with such precision, would be without point. One set of data looks forward, and one looks backward. Each is required to complete the other. Just as we are learning, contrary to earlier expectations, that there are no useless or vestigial organs in the body, so we shall learn, perhaps contrary to present expectation, that there are no useless entries in the Word of God. All Scripture is given by inspiration and is profitable... (II Tim. 3:16). The brief treatment of the genealogies in this paper barely scratches the surface of only a few of them. There is yet much to be discovered, enough undoubtedly to keep a man occupied for a lifetime.
References:
23. Crewdson, G., communication in Trans, Vict. Instit. 44 (1912):26.
24. Livy, Book XXXI, Chap. 44: as quoted by A. S. Lewis, "The Genealogies of Our Lord," Trans Vict. Instit. 44 (19I2):12.
25. Lucius Aurelius Commodus was surely the most degraded and utterly corrupt of all Roman emperors. His short history is disgusting, and it is some credit to the Romans that after his murder in A.D. 192, the Senate attempted to blot out his very memory.
26. Africanus: quoted by Eusebius, History of the Church, 1,7.
27. "Genealogy," in Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, Doubleday, New York, 1962.
28. Jerusalem Talmud, Haggigah, Book 77,4.
Above material is taken directly from, The Hidden Things of God's Revelation, 1977, by Arthur C. Custance, Ph.D.
Online edition created November 29, 1996. Corrections, May 5, 1997
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