JESUS H CHRIST ON A CRUTCH! I went looking for this thread to bump it up with another contradiction and find that I missed an entire conversation. That's what I get for taking a day off, I guess.
Anyway, first things first. In another thread we have the xtians whining about Jesus' genealogy and on page 35 Ehrman gets around to dealing with this holy fuck-up.
Ehrman then wanders around for a bit before returning to the theme on page 37.
[Again, emphasis added to make sure the fundies stay annoyed.]
Now I have to go back and see what I missed.
Anyway, first things first. In another thread we have the xtians whining about Jesus' genealogy and on page 35 Ehrman gets around to dealing with this holy fuck-up.
Quote:Once again, Matthew and Luke are our only Gospels that give Jesus’ family line. Both of them trace his lineage through Joseph to the Jewish ancestors. This in itself creates a puzzling situation. As we have seen, both Matthew and Luke want to insist that Jesus’ mother was a virgin: she conceived not by having sex with Joseph but by the Holy Spirit. Joseph is not Jesus’ father. But that creates an obvious problem. If Jesus is not a blood-relation to Joseph, why is it that Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ bloodline precisely through Joseph? This is a question that neither author answers: both accounts give a genealogy that can’t be the genealogy of Jesus, since his only bloodline goes through Mary, yet neither author provides her genealogy.[Emphasis added to annoy the fundies.]
Ehrman then wanders around for a bit before returning to the theme on page 37.
Quote:These then are simply some of the differences between the two accounts. The real problem they pose, however, is that the two genealogies are actually different. The easiest way to see the difference is to ask the simple question, Who, in each genealogy, is Joseph’s father, patrilineal grandfather, and great-grandfather? In Matthew the family line goes from Joseph to Jacob to Matthan to Eleazar to Eliud and on into the past. In Luke it goes from Joseph to Heli to Mathat to Levi to Melchi. The lines become similar once we get all the way back to King David (although there are other problems, as we’ll see), but from David to Joseph, the lines are at odds.
How does one solve this problem? One typical suggestion is to say that Matthew’s genealogy is of Joseph, since Matthew focuses on Joseph more in the birth narrative, and that Luke’s is of Mary, since she is the focus of his birth narrative. It is an attractive solution, but it has a fatal flaw. Luke explicitly indicates that the family line is that of Joseph, not Mary (Luke 1:23
[Again, emphasis added to make sure the fundies stay annoyed.]
Now I have to go back and see what I missed.
