The Oldest Genealogy

Why are there discrepancies with the Genealogies from Matthew & Luke? Matthew begins with Abraham and traces Jesus' lineage to Joseph, Mary's husband. But Luke, on the other hand, begins with Joseph and traces Jesus' lineage back to Adam. Why? Commentators have stressed that Matthew was a Jew; he was writing his gospel primarily for Jews. But Luke, a Greek, was primarily writing his gospel for the Gentiles. Therefore, he wanted to establish that Jesus' ancestry runs all the way back to Adam, the father of the human race. This qualified Christ to lawfully represent the human race that He came to redeem. Why are the names that Matthew lists for the period from David to Joseph different from the names Luke gives? One explanation is that Matthew and Luke are tracing Jesus' ancestry through two different lines. Matthew clearly follows the ruling line of the royal family from David to the Babylonian Captivity. Luke, on the other hand, seems to follow a non- ruling or blood line of the family back to Nathan; another son of David by Bathsheba. So Mary, who was born from the line of Nathan, and Joseph, through the line of Solomon, were engaged to be married. Joseph and Mary could intermarry because they had passed the fourteen generations which were required by the Jewish law. The Jews were very careful to maintain genealogical records which were preserved in the temple until its destruction in A.D. 70. When Jesus offered Himself to Israel as the Messiah, His claim to David's throne was never challenged. Even though the nation of Israel rejected Him, it was not because He was outside the line of David, and therefore, ineligible to claim David's throne. Even though Mary, through her lineage, was of the Davidic bloodline, she should be excluded from being able to pass those rights of the bloodline because of being a female (Deut 21:16). She should be disqualified to transfer the rights to her son Jesus, except for a little known exception to the rule. In Numbers 26; Zelophehad had no sons, only daughters. In Numbers 27, following his death, the daughters of Zelophehad came before Moses and argued their plight. Because their father had died with no sons, all of their rights of inheritance were to be lost and they felt this was unfair. So Moses prayed to God and God gave Moses an exception to the rule. The Lord told Moses that the inheritance CAN flow through a female, IF they fulfill two requirements. There must be no male offspring in the family (Num 27:8) and if the female offspring should marry, they must marry within their own tribe (Num 36:6). We find that Mary had no brothers, and Mary did indeed marry within her own tribe (JUDAH) to Joseph. What an awesome God that set the requirements to allow the virgin birth to take place 1,400 years in advance! Why is there no genealogy included in Mark and John? Through Mark, the Roman readers would not consider the genealogy of Jesus Christ as an important factor. All they were concerned with were the great works of Jesus that showed Him to be the Son of God. John was writing primarily to the Greeks. So he goes back into the eternities and relates Jesus as God. The Old Testament contains many genealogies, four long ones in Genesis alone. To the ancient Hebrew, lineage was crucial. If your veins held even a trace of foreign blood, you would lose your right to call yourself a Jew. Herod the Great was despised by Jews because he was half Edomite. Consequently, he had the official records destroyed so that no one could produce a purer pedigree than his own. He was not a "complete" Jew, so he destroyed all the records. Matthew gives the names of four women in the list. This was contrary to Jewish custom. And three of these women were also guilty of gross sin, and two of them were foreigners. Matthew 6 emphasizes Bathsheba: "David was the father of Solomon whose mother had been Uriah's wife," not David's wife, underlining the sinfulness of that link in the lineage. This tells us that not only was Jesus born for sinners, Jesus was also born through sinners. A message that spells hope for you and me. This is a constant theme for Matthew, for Jesus came not to call the righteous, but He came to call the sinners (Matthew 9:13). The truth is that Jesus did not come just to be born, but rather to die for the sins of the world. The Bible declares that God demanded an adequate, perfect sacrifice for sins. Since man in his sinful state was incapable of providing such a sacrifice, God in His love and wisdom provided His own sacrifice in the perfect person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus was Joseph's LEGAL son, meaning:
Jesus had the Legal right to be the King of the Jews.

Why did Jesus not have the curse on Him from Jeconiah?
Jesus was NOT a Physical Descendant of Jeconiah.
Jesus was a Physical Descendant of David through His mother.