Luke 3, Genealogy of Mary. The Most DESPERATE Apologetic!

Robert Sheckley once wrote an amusing short story where a cynical, angry Earther decides to move to a planet that supposedly had no crime at all. Once there he is almost immediately robbed at gunpoint. "Oh that's okay, we allow that - it's a form of financial redisbursement." explains the Sheriff and scoots him out of the office. After being the victim of several other crimes the hapless Earther confronts the Sheriff. The Sheriff is bewildered explaining that the planet had no crime. "That's because you legalized it!" shouts the Earther before packing up and moving back home.

For hundreds of years Christians have been claiming that the Bible is infallible and inerrant stating that no one can find a contradiction. They're right, using Christian logic, gymnastic apologetics and wild assertions Christians can claim no contradiction in just the same way as Sheckley's planet can claim that there is no crime. Basically Christians have made the word "contradiction" meaningless!

Let's look at a huge contradiction in the New Testament: Matthew 1:15-16 states that the last five ancestors of Jesus were Joseph, Jacob, Mattan, Eleazar, Eliud but according to Luke 3:23-24 Jesus is the son of... "Joseph, son of Eli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph," It's seriously obvious to anyone who has ever read these scriptures without bias that these are completely different genealogies and we have a pretty major contradiction. Surely if two New Testament authors can't even agree over Jesus' paternal grandfather, why should we accept their accounts of miracles, resurrections and fortune telling? What do Christians say? What is the big, brilliant answer that corrects this obvious contradiction?

"Luke's genealogy is a genealogy of Mary.". That's right, drink that one in for a second. You just read Luke 3:24 state straight out that Joseph was the son of Eli. This is a whole genealogy with Joseph at the end and yet Christians with a straight face will look right at you and tell you that this is Mary's genealogy. This is why I call this "The most DESPERATE apologetic." There's nothing even remotely clever about this rationalization - it is simply a bold-faced, unsupported assertion defying all evidence to the contrary! No unbiased individual could possibly accept this explanation and in fact it is not meant for them. This ridiculous statement is only meant to calm true believers and offer them an answer. The answer need not make even a microgram of sense as long as it's an answer and can assuage the fears of the true believer.

Here's where things get amusing. In order to combat this irrational, random assertion; a skeptic will actually have to prove to a Christian that a genealogy directly attributed to Joseph is actually Joseph's genealogy. Yes, Christian mind control is so powerful that even a spectacularly silly and biblically unsupported assertion needs no evidence to boast truth and orthodoxy. Well, I'm up for it - let's prove the very, very, very obvious:

• 1) The list is specifically attributed to Joseph. If the list had been meant for Mary; it would've said "Mary" just before Jesus. If maternal lineage matters (it doesn't) then there would be every reason to include Mary in the list. Creating a genealogy for Mary and then calling it a genealogy of Joseph is unnecessarily complex and shows incompetence on the part of the Biblical author - Luke or The Holy Spirit. Why should we confuse readers of the Bible by having the Bible say the opposite of what it means? Can we use this logic throughout the Bible? Was Peter really John? Was Paul really a Roman Soldier? Can we simply rewrite the Bible however we want, whenever we want to whomever we want as long as it is justified by defending Biblical Inerrancy?

• 2) The word between Joseph and Heli is the same word as the one between Nathan and David and everyone else in the genealogy. The Greeks had a word for "Father-in-law" which was unused. Certainly if Heli had a different relationship to Joseph than David to Nathan, this difference would've been stated in no uncertain terms.

• 3) If it was "plain" that the original Greek shows Joseph to be the "Son-in-Law" of Heli than at least ONE professional Greek translator should've translated a version of the Bible in this way. None of the following versions translates the "of" between Joseph and Heli as Son-in-Law: NIV, NASB, ASV, ESV, KJV, NKJV, NLT, NRS, GNT, DOUAY. Somehow, even though this is "plain" to an apologist unschooled in Greek, the professional Greek translators somehow missed that.

• 4) Numbers 1:17-18 shows us that we arrive at lineage through the father:

  Num 1:17 So Moses and Aaron took these men who had been designated by name, 18 and they assembled all the congregation together on the first of the second month. Then they registered by ancestry in their families, by their fathers' households, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and upward, head by head,

  Maternal lineage does not matter. The only time that maternity matters is when the father is not a Jew - the child will still be a Jew because of the mother.

• 5) Luke writes TWICE about Joseph being a descendant of David. He NEVER writes about Mary's lineage.

  Luke 1:27 to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary.

  Luke 2:4 And Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David,

  Do we see "Mary, the daughter of David, gave birth to Jesus"? No, because the lineage is never through the mother so it doesn't matter

• 6) Mary's cousin, Elizabeth was a Levite so chances are... Mary was ALSO a Levite. If she was anything else we sure don't hear about it. Why? Because the lineage is never arrived at through the mother so it doesn't matter.

• 7) In the Infancy Gospel of James, Mary's father is identified as Joachim. Certainly the author of this apocryphal book had access to Luke but somehow didn't see the lineage as Mary's. So even people living at the time didn't see Luke 3 as Mary's lineage.

• 8) The Roman Catholic Church ALSO identifies Mary's father as Joachim. Apparently they ALSO did not see Luke 3 as Mary's lineage. Why would a Gospel chapter be written so poorly that even other gospel writers, early church fathers and professional Greek translators somehow don't understand it?

• 9) Jeremiah 33:17 tells us that there will be a continuous male lineage of David:

  (CJB) Jeremiah 33:17 For this is what ADONAI says: "There will never be cut off from David a man to occupy the throne of the house of Isra'el.

CHALLENGES:
Yes there are actually a couple slivers of evidence that Christians will try to raise to support this preposterous assertion. Let's try to look at them without laughing ourselves sick:

• 1) Heli is identified as Mary's father in the Talmud.

  Answer: There is an UNIDENTIFIED Mary who is the daughter of a man named Heli. Both names are common so this could mean anyone. Besides, you would think that if this woman was THE Mary; Jews would have specifically identified the woman as the mother of Yeshua. Even if this IS Jesus' mother (which it probably isn't) there's no proof that the Talmud was right.

• 2) Christians will claim that Numbers 27:8 provides a loophole where daughters can have lineage.

  Answer: The passage refers specifically to property, NOT lineage.

  Numbers 27:8 (NAS) 8 "Further, you shall speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'If a man dies and has no son, then you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter.

  All other modern translations say basically the same thing:

  Numbers 27:8 (RSV) 8 And you shall say to the people of Israel, 'If a man dies, and has no son, then you shall cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter

  Numbers 27:8 (NLT) 8 Moreover announce this to the people of Israel: 'If a man dies and has no sons, then give his inheritance to his daughters.

  Numbers 27:8 (CJB) 8 Moreover, say to the people of Isra'el, 'If a man dies and does not have a son, you are to have his inheritance pass to his daughter

  Basically if Aaron dies with no sons, his daughter gets the property. The daughter marries Jakob. Her children are of the line of Jakob. Really, really obvious.

• 3) There are two genealogies because there are two parents!

  Answer: Isn't it funny when atheists have to explain very basic Christian history to Christians? The books in the Bible are not chapters in a single book but instead a collection of seperate books that have been voted on and then compiled together. In the case of the Gospels this would be like finding four different biographies of Elvis and putting them all together. Each biographer would cover what he saw to be the important aspects of the man's life including his origin, message, important events and death. Each Gospel included what the author considered to be a complete biography of Jesus. It would be asinine to create a genealogy of Mary wholecloth in a patriarchal society, get confused, state that it's a genealogy of Joseph and then forget to include a genealogy of Joseph as well! If Luke wasn't interested in Joseph's Genealogy then why did he twice mention that Joseph was a descendent of David?

Summary
So what have we leaned here? No true believer will ever accept a thoroughly obvious and provable refutation of his claims. Any, and I mean ANY, explanation no matter how insane and far-fetched will cover the mistake and allow the true believer to continue on in cheerful self-delusion. There are contradictions in the Bible. There are many obvious and provable contradictions in the Bible but no Christian will ever accept this. After all, why lose eternal life and a loving ghost parent over something as stupid as... the truth.