Q. I’m always perplexed where the Bible talks about the lineage of Jesus. I expect it to end with Mary, his Mother. But it comes down to Joseph, who is not his biological father. That always seems odd to me. Can you help me understand?
A. The evangelists certainly weren’t implying Joseph was the biological father of Jesus, which they elsewhere clearly denied in the Gospels. As an example, Matthew carefully words the end of his genealogy: “of her was born Jesus, who is called the Christ” (cf. Mt 1:16 and note the feminine singular pronoun in the original Greek after a long list of such-a-father begot such-a-son).
But Matthew and Luke do trace their genealogies differently through Jesus’s family line. In fact, our own genealogies are not so much lines as networks of connections, meaning there are several different ways any one person could trace his or her ancestry (being complicated by adoptions, parallel ancestors, and all that).
But each evangelist seems to have had a reason behind tracing Jesus’s ancestry. Matthew, writing for a Jewish-Christian audience, seems to be more interested in the legal ancestry of Jesus, tracing it through Joseph, the legal father of Jesus who then becomes the legal heir to the throne of David. This would resonate more with the Jewish Messianic hopes in Israel.
Luke, writing for a more Gentile-Christian audience, is more interested in tracing Jesus back to Adam, the common ancestor of all men – Gentile and Jew alike. He cares more about the physical ancestry of Jesus. This would resonate more with Gentile hopes of being grafted into the family of God. Furthermore, Luke might very well be giving Jesus’s ancestry through Mary! One piece of evidence is Luke 3:23, where he calls Joseph the son of Heli (whereas Matthew calls him the son of Jacob).
Though mistakes are possible the further back we go in genealogies, it seems unlikely that we would have a case of a mistaken grandparent. Rather, Heli here is short for Eliakim, a variant of the name Joakim, the name traditionally associated with the father of Mary. There’s even an Eliakim from the Old Testament who seems to go by both versions in 2 Kings 23:34. For an English example, consider how Jim is short for James, which actually comes from the name Jacob, and you’ll get the idea. Joseph, by marriage to Mary, becomes “son of” Heli, his father-in-law and a descendant of David as well (recall many in Israel would marry within the same tribe), and the rest is genealogical history.
This question was answered by Fr. Joseph Wahlmeier, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Davey and instructor at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward.
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