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Genealogy Research Paper

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Matthew and Luke both feature a genealogy of Jesus but although those genealogies should match up they differ quite severely. In many ways that is due to the fact that Luke and Matthew had very different ideas on whom exactly the messiah was. Luke’s take on the genealogies of Jesus starts at joseph and works all the way back to Adam and subsequently god (Luke 3:23). Matthew works backwards from Abraham back down to joseph and then his stepson Jesus (Matthew 1:1). Both genealogy’s merge from Abraham to David but interestingly they split when Luke defers to David’s son Nathan and Matthew turns to his other son Solomon. Luke seems to trace Jesus genealogy as the son of god while Matthew is directly tracing that of his stepfather joseph back to …show more content…

It is clear that Matthew is striving to portray Jesus as a very Jewish messiah one who follows Jewish law and whose followers do also. Matthew makes sure to trace show that Jesus truly is the “son of David” which is one of the criteria for being the true messiah. Enforcing his idea of a Jewish messiah Matthew has Jesus’ genealogy in three sets of fourteen which mark important historical events such as the deportation to Babylon. This is probably done on purpose because there are some clear inaccuracies in his genealogy that if corrected would no longer have fourteen generations between each historically momentous occasion which would be detrimental to his point. Noticeably it is stated in verse 8 that Joram is the father of Uzziah which is incorrect because Joram is actually the great-great grandfather to Uzziah (1 chronicles 3:10-12). Matthew works hard to show that Jesus is rooted in Jewish history even though that compromises his historical accuracy (Ehrman 117-18). Women were not mentioned in genealogy but Matthew mentions multiple promiscuous women in Jesus’ lineage potentially to draw a link to the real purity of the virgin birth. Overall Matthew’s history is lacking but his genealogy makes it clear that Jesus really is the king of the

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