Appendix to “The Nativity”, Page 4

Eusebius opens his account as follows (1 Nicene-3 p. 91):

Matthew and Luke in their gospels have given us the genealogy of Christ differently, and many suppose that they are at variance with one another. Since as a consequence every believer, in ignorance of the truth, has been zealous to invent some explanation which shall harmonize the two passages, permit us to subjoin the account of the matter which has come down to us, and which is given by Africanus . . . in his epistle to Aristides, where he discusses the harmony of the gospel genealogies.

In the light of anthroposophy, one can wonder if perhaps the darkening that progressively occurred after the first century might not indicate that some of the earlier “explanations,” which Eusebius alleges to have been “in ignorance of the truth,” actually knew and expressed the truth which had become completely veiled by the third century. The light of Steiner’s teachings might be taken as hinting strongly thus. It is notable, however, that the seeming discrepancy bothered Christians early on, as knowledge of the truth of the “Mystery” of Golgotha would take further human evolution (e.g., Jn 16,12; Heb 5,11; 9,5) and then the revelation of truth by another prophet to appear in the early twentieth century.

Modern Christians seem inclined to ignore the genealogies as hopeless muddles. No Bible commentary has yet quoted Steiner on anything to my knowledge, presumably either out of unawareness of, or disdain for, his prophecy, more likely the former since no mention is made of him. That apparently leaves only the Africanus letter as a possible reconciliation, and no great affinity for that has developed, even where it has been noted.

Edersheim’s late nineteenth century work, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, while commencing with the Jewish world in the days of Christ, omits any reference whatsoever to the genealogies. The twentieth-century commentaries listed in the bibliography contain the following comments upon Africanus’ letter as follows:

1. 8 Interp 81 (Luke)—”Early in the third century (see the letter of Julius Africanus to Aristides as quoted by Eusebius Church History I. 7) the theory was current that Matthew’s genealogy symbolized Christ’s royalty, and Luke’s his priesthood.”

2. Barc (Luke) 41—“(iii) The most ingenious explanation is as follows. In Matthew l:16 Joseph’s father is Jacob; in Luke 3:23 it is Heli. According to the Jewish law of levirate marriage (Deut 25:5f) if a man died childless his brother must, if free to do so, marry the widow and ensure the continuance of the line. When that happened a son of such a marriage could be called the son either of the first or of the second husband. It is suggested that Joseph’s mother married twice. Joseph was in actual fact the son of Heli, the second husband, but he was in the eyes of the law the son of Jacob, the first husband who had died. It is then suggested that while Heli and Jacob had the same mother they had different fathers and that Jacob’s father was descended from David through Solomon and Heli’s father was descended from David through Nathan. This ingenious theory would mean that both genealogies are correct. In fact, all we can say is that we do not know.”

3. 28 AB 497 (Luke)—“Even more crucial is the listing of Jesus’ grandfather as Jacob in Matt 1:16 and as Heli in Luke 3:23. Various solutions have been suggested to solve this part of the problem. Julius Africanus (cited in Eusebius Historia ecclesiastica 1.7,2-15) explained the Lucan text by invoking levirate marriage, as in Deut 25:5-10, whereby on the death of a husband who was childless the next of kin would have intercourse with the widow to beget children in his brother’s name and continue his lineage. Thus Luke 3:23 would be understood: ‘Being the son, as it was supposed of Joseph, (but really) of Heli,’ so that Joseph could still be the son of Jacob (according to Matthew). But the solution has many problems (on which see Brown, The Birth, App. I, 503-504), and in reality solves nothing.”

4. 8 NIB 131 (Matthew)—“Beginning with Julius Africanus in the early third century attempts have been made to harmonize some points in the two genealogies by postulating levirite [sic] marriages or adoptions in cases where Matthew and Luke present different names (cf. Deut 25:5-10). But even if this theory (for which no evidence is offered) were to be accepted as resolving some problems, many others remain.”

While not one of the listed commentaries as such, Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, Doubleday, NY, 1977, 1993, is a part of “The Anchor Bible Reference Library, and is that to which reference is made in #3 above. After a general discussion in which Brown points to Julius Africanus (ca. A.D. 225) as “our oldest attested witness to this [i.e., levirate] solution,” he states, “Ingenious as it is, this solution faces [the following] serious difficulties:

a) Jacob and Eli would have been full or blood brothers if ‘Matthan’ (Matthew’s name for the grandfather of Joseph and father of Jacob) and ‘Matthat’ (Luke’s name for the same ancestor) are variants of a name borne by one man. But the father of Matthan/Matthat was Eleazar according to Matthew, while he was Levi according to Luke. Are we to assume a second levirate marriage to explain this? To avoid this difficulty, some have argued that Jacob and Eli were half brothers, with the same mother but different fathers (Matthan and Matthat respectively). Then, however, one has the dubious coincidence that their mother married two men who had almost the same names.

b) We are not certain how widely levirate marriage was practiced in Jesus’ time [here his lengthy fn 2, showing gradual waning of an ancient custom, is omitted], although Mark 12:18-27 . . . would suggest that it was still a known custom.

c) The whole point of the levirate marriage was that a child be born to the deceased father. Therefore, it would be very strange, if Joseph were the son of a levirate marriage, to have a genealogical list tracing his ancestry through his natural father.

d) The levirate marriage hypothesis could explain, at most, only the discrepancies at the very end of the genealogies; it offers little help with the other divergencies between the lists. If we accept the levirate hypothesis that both genealogies of Jesus are family lists traced respectively through the legal and natural fathers of Joseph, how do we explain the fact that earlier in the lists Matthew traces the descent through Zerubbabel’s son Abiud, while Luke traces it through Zarubbabel’s son Rhesa? Why does Matthew trace descent through David’s son Solomon, while Luke traces it through David’s son Nathan?

The theory of a levirate marriage solves so little and has so many difficulties that it should be abandoned as a solution in the problem of the two genealogies, and even in the more restricted problem of Jesus’ overabundance of grandfathers.”

Thus, we see that traditional theology has no acceptable answer and that, one exception aside, the Biblical genealogies of Jesus must remain a muddle. Rudolf Steiner’s entirely plausible and coherent account offers us the only known opportunity to embrace the genealogies of the nativity accounts as powerful and accurate statements of the descent of “Jesus according to the flesh” (Rom 1,3).