B. Jesus’ genealogy (3:23–38)
B. Jesus’ genealogy (3:23–38)
Luke’s genealogy differs greatly from that in Matthew. He gives the line from Adam to Abraham as Matthew does not; they are practically the same from Abraham to David, and they diverge from that point on. There are three chief explanations of all this.
1. Some suggest that Matthew gives us the genealogy of Joseph, the legal father of Jesus, while Luke gives that of Mary, the actual line of Jesus. This understands Joseph, the son of Heli as ‘Joseph, the son of Heli by marriage’. Against this it is urged that it is not what Luke says, that he does not mention Mary, and that in any case genealogies were not traced through the female line. Luke, however, is speaking of a virgin birth, and we have no information as to how a genealogy would be reckoned when there was no human father. The case is unique.
2. Africanus (c. AD 220) suggested that there was a levirate marriage. He thought that when Heli died childless, Jacob, who had the same mother but a different father, married the widow and Joseph was born. On this view Matthew gives us Joseph’s genealogy through Jacob, his actual father, while Luke gives it through Heli, his legal father.3
3. J. Gresham Machen argued Lord Hervey’s view that Matthew gives us ‘the legal descendants of David – the men who would have been legally the heir to the Davidic throne if that throne had been continued – while Luke gives us the descendants of David in that particular line to which, finally, Joseph, the husband of Mary, belonged’.4 On this view Jacob, the father of Joseph in Matthew, and the heir to David’s throne, died without issue. The succession then passed to the line represented by Eli.
In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say which of these is to be preferred, or whether there is a better explanation.
Luke’s insertion of the genealogy at this point, after the baptism that marked Jesus out as Son of God and before the temptation which helped define the nature of his Messianic task, may be meant to help us see something of Jesus’ Messianic significance. That the genealogy is recorded at all shows him to be a real man, not a demigod like those in Greek and Roman mythology. That it goes back to David points to an essential element in his Messianic qualifications. That it goes back to Adam brings out his kinship not only with Israel but with the whole human race. That it goes back to God relates him to the Creator of all. He was the Son of God.
23. It is to Luke that we owe the information that Jesus was about thirty years of age at the beginning of his ministry. This was the age when the Levites began their service (Num. 4:47) and was evidently regarded as the age at which a man was fully mature. The Greek is a trifle difficult, for the verb began has no object. AV translated ‘Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age’, but this is most unlikely. We should accept RSV’s when he began his ministry. The parenthesis as was supposed shows that Luke is bearing in mind that Jesus was really the son of Mary, not of Joseph.
24–38. Luke simply lists the names, in each case preceded by the genitive without the article, rendered ‘son of ’. Where Matthew takes the list back to Abraham Luke goes right back to Adam, in accordance with his interest in mankind generally. Miller thinks there may also be a reference to Jesus as the ‘last Adam’ (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22, 45). Luke adds the son of God, for we must see Jesus ultimately in his relationship to the Father. In this the genealogy harmonizes with the preceding and the following narratives, both of which are concerned with Jesus as the Son of God.