Luke 3:23-28

Third Narrative: The Genealogy of Jesus, Luke 3:23-38.

In the first Gospel the genealogy of Jesus is placed at the very beginning of the narrative. This is easily explained. From the point of view indicated by theocratic forms, scriptural antecedents, and, if we may so express it, Jewish etiquette, the Messiah was to be a descendant of David and Abraham (Matthew 1:1). This relationship was the sine quâ non of His civil status. It is not so easy to understand why Luke thought he must give the genealogy of Jesus, and why he places it just here, between the baptism and the temptation. Perhaps, if we bear in mind the obscurity in which, to the Greeks, the origin of mankind was hidden, and the absurd fables current among them about autochthonic nations, we shall see how interesting any document would be to them, which, following the track of actual names, went back to the first father of the race. Luke's intention would thus be very nearly the same as Paul's when he said at Athens (Acts 17:26), “ God hath made of one blood the whole human race. ” But from a strictly religious point of view, this genealogy possessed still greater importance. In carrying it back not only, as Matthew does, as far as Abraham, but even to Adam, Luke lays the foundation of that universality of redemption which is to be one of the characteristic features of the picture he is about to draw. In this way he places in close and indissoluble connection the imperfect image of God created in Adam, which reappears in every man, and His perfect image realized in Christ, which is to be reproduced in all men.

But why does Luke place this document here? Holtzmann replies (p. 112), “because hitherto there had been no suitable place for it.” This answer harmonizes very well with the process of fabrication, by means of which this scholar thinks the composition of the Syn. may be accounted for. But why did this particular place appear more suitable to the evangelist than another? This is what has to be explained. Luke himself puts us on the right track by the first words of Luke 3:23. By giving prominence to the person of Jesus in the use of the pronoun αὐτός, He, which opens the sentence, by the addition of the name Jesus, and above all, by the verb ἦν which separates this pronoun and this substantive, and sets them both in relief (“ and Himself was, He, Jesus...”), Luke indicates this as the moment when Jesus enters personally on the scene to commence His proper work. With the baptism, the obscurity in which He has lived until now passes away; He now appears detached from the circle of persons who have hitherto surrounded Him and acted as His patrons; namely, His parents and the forerunner. He henceforth becomes the He, the principal personage of the narrative. This is the moment which very properly appears to the author most suitable for giving His genealogy. The genealogy of Moses, in the Exodus, is placed in the same way, not at the opening of his biography, but at the moment when he appears on the stage of history, when he presents himself before Pharaoh (Luke 6:14 et seq.).

In crossing the threshold of this new era, the sacred historian casts a general glance over the period which thus reaches its close, and sums it up in this document, which might be called the mortuary register of the earlier humanity.

There is further a difference of form between the two genealogies. Matthew comes down, whilst Luke ascends the stream of generations. Perhaps this difference of method depends on the difference of religious position between the Jews and the Greeks. The Jew, finding the basis of his thought in a revelation, proceeds synthetically from cause to effect; the Greek, possessing nothing beyond the fact, analyzes it, that he may proceed from effect to cause. But this difference depends more probably still on another circumstance. Every official genealogical register must present the descending form; for individuals are only inscribed in it as they are born. The ascending form of genealogy can only be that of a private instrument, drawn up from the public document with a view to the particular individual whose name serves as the starting-point of the whole list. It follows that in Matthew we have the exact copy of the official register; while Luke gives us a document extracted from the public records, and compiled with a view to the person with whom the genealogy commences.

Ver. 23 is at once the transition and preamble; Luke 3:24-38 contain the genealogy itself. 1 st. Luke 3:23.

The exact translation of this important and difficult verse is this: “ And Himself, Jesus, was [aged] about thirty years when He began [or, if the term may be employed here, made His début], being a son, as was believed, of Joseph. ”

The expression to begin can only refer in this passage to the entrance of Jesus upon His Messianic work. This idea is in direct connection with the context (baptism, temptation), and particularly with the first words of the verse. Having fully become He, Jesus begins. We must take care not to connect ἀρχόμενος and ἦν as parts of a single verb (was beginning for began). For ἦν has a complement of its own, of thirty years; it therefore signifies here, was of the age of. Some have tried to make τριάκοντα ἔτων depend on ἀρχόμενος, He began His thirtieth year; and it is perhaps owing to this interpretation that we find this participle placed first in the Alex. But for this sense, τριακοστοῦ ἔτους would have been necessary; and the limitation about cannot have reference to the commencement of the year. (On the agreement of this chronological fact with the date, Luke 3:1, see p. 166.)

We have already observed that the age of thirty is that of the greatest physical and psychical strength, the ἀκμη of natural life. It was the age at which, among the Jews, the Levites entered upon their duties (Numbers 4:3; Num 4:23), and when, among the Greeks, a young man began to take part in public affairs.

The participle ὤν, being, makes a strange impression, not only because it is purely and simply in juxtaposition with ἀρχόμενος (beginning, being), and depends on ἦν, the very verb of which it is a part, but still more because its connection with the latter verb cannot be explained by any of the three logical relations by which a participle is connected with a completed verb, when, because, or although. What relation of simultaneousness, causality, or opposition, could there be between the filiation of Jesus and the age at which He had arrived? This incoherence is a clear indication that the evangelist has with some difficulty effected a soldering of two documents, that which he has hitherto followed, and which for the moment he abandons, and the genealogical register which he wishes to insert in this place.

With the participle ὤν, being, there begins then a transition which we owe to the pen of Luke. How far does it extend, and where does the genealogical register properly begin? This is a nice and important question. We have only a hint for its solution. This is the absence of the article τοῦ, the, before the name Joseph. This word is found before all the names belonging to the genealogical series. In the genealogy of Matthew, the article τόν is put in the same way before each proper name, which clearly proves that it was the ordinary form in vogue in this kind of document. The two MSS. H. and I. read, it is true, τοῦ before ᾿Ιωσήφ. But since these unimportant MSS. are unsupported by their ally the Vatican, to which formerly the same reading was erroneously attributed (see Tischend. 8th ed.), this various reading has no longer any weight. On the one hand, it is easily explained as an imitation of the following terms of the genealogy; on the other, we could not conceive of the suppression of the article in all the most ancient documents, if it had originally belonged to the text. This want of the article puts the name Joseph outside the genealogical series properly so called, and assigns to it a peculiar position. We must conclude from it 1 st. That this name belongs rather to the sentence introduced by Luke 2 d. That the genealogical document which he consulted began with the name of Heli; 3 d. And consequently, that this piece was not originally the genealogy of Jesus or of Joseph, but of Heli.

There is a second question to determine: whether we should prefer the Alexandrine reading, “ being a son, as it was believed, of Joseph; ” or the Byzantine text, “ being, us it was believed, a son of Joseph. ” There is internal probability that the copyists would rather have been drawn to connect the words son and Joseph, in order to restore the phrase frequently employed in the Gospels, son of Joseph, than to separate them. This observation appears to decide for the Alexandrine text.

It is of importance next to determine the exact meaning of the τοῦ which precedes each of the genealogical names. Thus far we have supposed this word to be the article, and this is the natural interpretation. But we might give it the force of a pronoun, he, the one, and translate: “Joseph, he [the son] of Heli; Heli, he [the son] of Matthat,” etc. Thus understood, the τοῦ would each time be in apposition with the preceding name, and would have the following name for its complement. But this explanation cannot be maintained; for 1 st. It cannot be applied to the last term τοῦ Θεοῦ, in which τοῦ is evidently an article; 2 d. The recurrence of τόν in the genealogy of Matthew proves that the article belonged to the terminology of these documents; 3 d. The τοῦ thus understood would imply an intention to distinguish the individual to which it refers from some other person bearing the same name, but not having the same father, “Heli, the one of Matthat, [and not one of another father];” which could not be the design of the genealogist. The τοῦ is therefore undoubtedly an article. But, admitting this, we may still hesitate between two interpretations, we may subordinate each genitive to the preceding name, as is ordinarily done: “Heli, son of Matthat, [which Matthat was a son] of Levi, [which Levi was a son] of...;” or, as Wieseler proposed, we may co-ordinate all the genitives, so as to make each of them depend directly on the word son placed at the head of the entire series: “Jesus, son of Heli; [Jesus, son] of Matthat...” So that, according to the Jewish usage, which permitted a grandson to be called the son of his grandfather, Jesus would be called the son of each of His ancestors in succession. This interpretation would not be, in itself, so forced as Bleek maintains. But nevertheless the former is preferable, for it alone really expresses the notion of a succession of generations, which is the ruling idea of every genealogy. The genitives in Luke merely supply the place of ἐγέννησε, as repeated in the original document, of which Matthew gives us the text.

Besides, we do not think that it would be necessary to supply, between each link in the genealogical chain, the term υἱοῦ, son of, as an apposition of the preceding name. Each genitive is also the complement of the name which precedes it. The idea of filiation resides in the grammatical case. We have the genitive here in its essence.

There remains, lastly, the still more important question: On what does the genitive τοῦ ῾Ηλί (of Heli) precisely depend? On the name ᾿Ιωσήφ which immediately precedes it? This would be in conformity with the analogy of all the other genitives, which, as we have just proved, depend each on the preceding name. Thus Heli would have been the father of Joseph, and the genealogy of Luke, as well as that of Matthew, would be the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph. In that case we should have to explain how the two documents could be so totally different. But this view is incompatible with the absence of the article before Joseph. If the name ᾿Ιωσήφ had been intended by Luke to be the basis of the entire genealogical series, it would have been fixed and determined by the article with much greater reason certainly than the names that follow. The genitive τοῦ ῾Ηλί, of Heli, depends therefore not on Joseph, but on the word son. This construction is not possible, it is true, with the received reading, in which the words son and Joseph form a single phrase, son of Joseph. The word son cannot be separated from the word it immediately governs: Joseph, to receive a second and more distant complement. With this reading, the only thing left to us is to make τοῦ ῾Ηλί depend on the participle ὤν : “Jesus... being...[born] of Heli. ” An antithesis might be found between the real fact (ὤν, being) and the apparent (ἐνομίζετο, as was thought): “being, as was thought, a son of Joseph, [in reality] born of Heli.” But can the word ὤν signify both to be (in the sense of the verb substantive) and to be born of? Everything becomes much more simple if we assume the Alex. reading, which on other grounds has already appeared to us the more probable. The word son, separated as it is from its first complement, of Joseph, by the words as was thought, may very well have a second, of Heli. The first is only noticed in passing, and in order to be denied in the very mention of it: “Son, as was thought, of Joseph.” The official information being thus disavowed, Luke, by means of the second complement, substitutes for it the truth, of Heli; and this name he distinguishes, by means of the article, as the first link of the genealogical chain properly so called. The text, therefore, to express the author's meaning clearly, should be written thus: “being a son as was thought, of Joseph of Heli, of Matthat...” Bleek has put the words ὡς ἐνομίζετο into a parenthesis, and rightly; only he should have added to them the word ᾿Ιωσήφ.

This study of the text in detail leads us in this way to admit 1. That the genealogical register of Luke is that of Heli, the grandfather of Jesus; 2. That, this affiliation of Jesus by Heli being expressly opposed to His affiliation by Joseph, the document which he has preserved for us can be nothing else in his view than the genealogy of Jesus through Mary. But why does not Luke name Mary, and why pass immediately from Jesus to His grandfather? Ancient sentiment did not comport with the mention of the mother as the genealogical link. Among the Greeks a man was the son of his father, not of his mother; and among the Jews the adage was: “ Genus matris non vocatur genus ” (Baba bathra, 110, a). In lieu of this, it is not uncommon to find in the O. T. the grandson called the son of his grandfather.

If there were any circumstances in which this usage was applicable, would not the wholly exceptional case with which Luke was dealing be such? There was only one way of filling up the hiatus, resulting from the absence of the father, between the grandfather and his grandson; namely, to introduce the name of the presumed father, noting at the same time the falseness of this opinion. It is remarkable that, in the Talmud, Mary the mother of Jesus is called the daughter of Heli (Chagig. 77. 4). From whence have Jewish scholars derived this information? If from the text of Luke, this proves that they understood it as we do; if they received it from tradition, it confirms the truth of the genealogical document Luke made use of.

If this explanation be rejected, it must be admitted that Luke as well as Matthew gives us the genealogy of Joseph. The difficulties to be encountered in this direction are these: 1. The absence of τοῦ before the name ᾿Ιωσήφ, and before this name alone, is not accounted for. 2. We are met by an all but insoluble contradiction between the two evangelists, the one indicating Heli as the father of Joseph, the other Jacob, which leads to two series of names wholly different. We might, it is true, have recourse to the following hypothesis proposed by Julius Africanus (third century): Heli and Jacob were brothers; one of them died without children; the survivor, in conformity with the law, married his widow, and the first-born of this union, Joseph, was registered as a son of the deceased. In this way Joseph would have had two fathers, one real, the other legal. But this hypothesis is not sufficient; a second is needed. For if Heli and Jacob were brothers, they must have had the same father; and the two genealogies should coincide on reaching the name of the grandfather of Joseph, which is not the case. It is supposed, therefore, that they were brothers on the mother's side only, which explains both the difference of the fathers and that of the entire genealogies. This superstructure of coincidences is not absolutely inadmissible, but no one can think it natural. We should be reduced, then, to admit an absolute contradiction between the two evangelists. But can it be supposed that both or either of them could have been capable of fabricating such a register, heaping name upon name quite arbitrarily, and at the mere pleasure of their caprice? Who could credit a proceeding so absurd, and that in two genealogies, one of which sets out from Abraham, the venerated ancestor of the people, the other terminating in God Himself! All these names must have been taken from documents. But is it possible in this case to admit, in one or both of these writers, an entire mistake? 3. It is not only with Matthew that Luke would be in contradiction, but with himself. He admits the miraculous birth (chap. 1 and 2). It is conceivable that, from the theocratic point of view which Matthew takes, a certain interest might, even on this supposition, be assigned to the genealogy of Joseph, as the adoptive, legal father of the Messiah. But that Luke, to whom this official point of view was altogether foreign, should have handed down with so much care this series of seventy-three names, after having severed the chain at the first link, as he does by the remark, as it was thought; that, further, he should give himself the trouble, after this, to develope the entire series, and finish at last with God Himself; this is a moral impossibility. What sensible man, Gfrörer has very properly asked (with a different design, it is true), could take pleasure in drawing up such a list of ancestors, after having declared that the relationship is destitute of all reality? Modern criticism has, last of all, been driven to the following hypothesis:

Matthew and Luke each found a genealogy of Jesus written from the Jewish-Christian standpoint: they were both different genealogies of Joseph; for amongst this party (which was no other than the primitive Church) he was without hesitation regarded as the father of Jesus. But at the time when these documents were published by the evangelists another theory already prevailed, that of the miraculous birth, which these two authors embraced. They published, therefore, their documents, adapting them as best they could to the new belief, just as Luke does by his as it was thought, and Matthew by the periphrasis Luke 1:16.

But, 1. We have pointed out that the opinion which attributes to the primitive apostolic Church the idea of the natural birth of Jesus rests upon no solid foundation. 2. A writer who speaks of apostolic tradition as Luke speaks of it, Luke 1:2, could not have knowingly put himself in opposition to it on a point of this importance. 3. If we advance no claim on behalf of the sacred writers to inspiration, we protest against whatever impeaches their good sense. The first evangelist, M. Reville maintains, did not even perceive the incompatibility between the theory of the miraculous birth and his genealogical document. As to Luke, this same author says: “The third perceives very clearly the contradiction; nevertheless he writes his history as if it did not exist. ” In other words, Matthew is more foolish than false, Luke more false than foolish. Criticism which is obliged to support itself by attributing to the sacred writers absurd methods, such as are found in no sensible writer, is self-condemned. There is not the smallest proof that the documents used by Matthew and Luke were of Jewish- Christian origin. On the contrary, it is very probable, since the facts all go to establish it, that they were simply copies of the official registers of the public tables (see below), referring, one to Joseph, the other to Heli, both consequently of Jewish origin. So far from there being any ground to regard them as monuments of a Christian conception differing from that of the evangelists, it is these authors, or those who transmitted them to them, who set upon them for the first time the Christian seal, by adding to them the part which refers to Jesus. 4. Lastly, after all, these two series of completely different names have in any case to be explained. Are they fictitious? Who can maintain this, when writers so evidently in earnest are concerned? Are they founded upon documents? How then could they differ so completely? This difficulty becomes greater still if it is maintained that these two different genealogies of Joseph proceed from the same ecclesiastical quarter from the Jewish-Christian party.

But have we sufficient proofs of the existence of genealogical registers among the Jews at this epoch? We have already referred to the public tables (δέλτοι δημόσιαι) from which Josephus had extracted his own genealogy: “I relate my genealogy as I find it recorded in the public tables.” The same Josephus, in his work, Contra Apion (Luke 1:7), says: “From all the countries in which our priests are scattered abroad, they send to Jerusalem (in order to have their children entered) documents containing the names of their parents and ancestors, and countersigned by witnesses.” What was done for the priestly families could not fail to have been done with regard to the royal family, from which it was known that the Messiah was to spring. The same conclusion results also from the following facts. The famous Rabbi Hillel, who lived in the time of Jesus, succeeded in proving, by means of a genealogical table in existence at Jerusalem, that, although a poor man, he was a descendant of David. The line of descent in the different branches of the royal family was so well known, that even at the end of the first century of the Church, the grandsons of Jude, the brother of the Lord, had to appear at Rome as descendants of David, and undergo examination in the presence of Domitian. According to these facts, the existence of two genealogical documents relating, one to Joseph, the other to Heli, and preserved in their respective families, offers absolutely nothing at all improbable.

In comparing the two narratives of the infancy, we have been led to assign them to two different sources: that of Matthew appeared to us to emanate from the relations of Joseph; that of Luke from the circle of which Mary was the centre (p. 163). Something similar occurs again in regard to the two genealogies. That of Matthew, which has Joseph in view, must have proceeded from his family; that which Luke has transmitted to us, being that of Mary's father, must have come from this latter quarter. But it is manifest that this difference of production is connected with a moral cause. The meaning of one of the genealogies is certainly hereditary, Messianic; the meaning of the other is universal redemption. Hence, in the one, the relationship is through Joseph, the representative of the civil, national, theocratic side; in the other, the descent is through Mary, the organ of the real human relationship.

Was not Jesus at once to appear and to be the son of David? to appear such, through him whom the people regarded as His father; to be such, through her from whom He really derived His human existence? The two affiliations answered to these two requirements.