How do we know Eli (Heli) was Mary's father? ... Do we have any kind of corroberation on that? ... This may be absolutely historical ... but the fact that it comes from an apocryphal gospel written at least a century and a half after the fact tends to make me think that someone was buffing the myth to pave over an obvious inconsistency. What do you think of this Thomas?
If one understands the point and purpose of the Gospel testimonies, then the inconsistencies are explained.
Matthew's geneaology follows a Near Eastern literary practice, there are parallels with the Book of Numbers, Chronicles and Joshua. In more recent times, King Abdullah of Jordan presented his own bloodline, back to the Prophet Mohammed. So again, we must look at this text as a literary device, and ask why is this device being employed?
Matthew's genealogy is a schematic of the Old Testament, and the Salvation History of Israel. In short he's saying, if you want to understand Jesus, read the OT. This does two things: it demonstrates a continuity of Revelation – the God of Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and it demonstrates the belief that Jesus is its fulfillment.
Luke's genealogy faces an entirely different problem. Luke is writing in the 90s. Jerusalem has been destroyed, and now Rome is turning its attentions to the Christians, as Nero's orgiastic excesses amply demonstrate.
The question Luke faces is this: It seems obvious to his audience that God has
not been faithful to the promises made to His elect, by abandoning Israel and allowed its Holy City and Temple to be destroyed. What basis then, has the Gentile for faith in such a God, if there is no guarantee that God will, in return, remain faithful to them?
Luke's response was to show, exactly as Matthew, the continuity of the Plan of Salvation in history, by Jesus being He of whom the prophets spoke. But recourse to history in a Matthaen sense will not serve the Gentile, for Jewish history is not their history. Instead he focusses on the more immediate situation, and rather than pronouncing a long list of meaningless names, he focusses on a few, and shows how they exemplify the Old Testament experience – hence the centrality of the temple in the Lucan narrative ... Zechariah, Simeon, Anna ...
... so what I am saying is that although there might be
material inconsistency in the account, there is a
formal agreement about the origin and nature, the proimise and mission, of the Incarnate Son.
Thomas
