Part 2 of Denis Lamoureux's six part series on Biblical genealogies can be found
here. This time, he focusses on the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke and argues that they are primarily theological in nature. Lamoureux also has a PDF handout to accompany his lecture which can be found
here.
Is it wise to follow this writer? His reading of Matthew 1 is peculiar. He ignores basic details in the genealogy, and his table of "14"s only works by counting "Jesus" and "Christ" as two separate people!
ReplyDeleteI suspect Lamoureux as a professional theologian is in a better position to provide an informed opinion than yourself, particularly as you appear to be arguing from a naive, fundamentalist viewpoint, as seen by your claim that "he ignores basic details in the genealogy." He doesn't, for the simple reason that you have made the elementary mistake of reading this genealogy as a 21st century person would. It is highly stylised, with three groups of 14. That alone suggests we are not dealing with a genealogy that lists every single ancestor of Jesus from Abraham, and it is foolish to read it as such.
ReplyDeleteThe third group of 14 actually only has 13 names; this is a well-known problem in Matthean scholarship. As Donald Hagner, writing in the Word Bible Commentary notes:
Since the first two groups contain fourteen names each (if we discount the repetition of David at the beginning of the second group), the problem centers in the third group. Because Jechoniah is repeated at the beginning of the third group (following the pattern established) and is therefore not to be counted again, we are left with only twelve names. Adding Jesus, we get thirteen, one short of the needed fourteen.
There are a number of possible solutions, of which two are:
1. Counting Mary as the 14th name
2. The risen Christ is to be counted as the 14th name. Lamoureux clearly follows this line of thinking which has some support from the fact that the definite article is lacking in ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός, may well show that Christ is being used as a name.
Hagner prefers a different solution:
"When, at the end of the second group, Matthew says, “Josiah was the father of Jechoniah and his brothers,” he departs from the OT (cf. 1 Chr 3:15–16), which indicates that Jeconiah (the spelling with a simple c reflects the Heb.כ) was the grandson of Josiah, but the son of Jehoiakim. While Matthew is under no obligation to include every name contained in his source, in this case the second group may well have originally ended with Jehoiakim. This conjecture is supported by the fact that in 1 Chr 3:15 the brothers of Jehoiakim are mentioned (Zedekiah and Shallum), whereas in 1 Chr 3:16 there is reference to only a single brother of Jeconiah. A further cause of confusion is that according to the same verse Jeconiah had a son also named Zedekiah. Moreover, Jeconiah’s regnal name was Jehoiachin (cf. 2 Kgs 24:8), which in the LXX is spelled the same as Jehoiakim (i.e., Ἰωακίμ; see, e.g., the LXX of 2 Kgs 23:36; 24:8). If we accept Jehoiakim as the last name of the second group, then the Jechoniah of the beginning of the third group in Matthew’s genealogy is not a repeated name, as with the case of David at the beginning of the second group, but a new name which, when counted, gives us thirteen, with Jesus then as the fourteenth. By this explanation, Matthew has fourteen names in each of the three groups."
However, as Ulrich Luz notes in his commentary on Matthew:
"Yet the suggestion that we should do this only with Jechoniah at the beginning of the third group of fourteen but not with David at the beginning of the second is awkward. If we count David and Jechoniah twice, we would have fifteen generations in the middle section. Thus the arrangement given in v. 17* does not add up.
None of the three solutions is without its problem, but the problem really is one of our making by failing to read Matthew as a person thoroughly inculcated in Second Temple exegetical methods.