Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/224

 Various observations offer themselves on these discrepant genealogies. In the first place it will be observed that Matthew, in his anxiety to show that the whole period comprised is divisible into three equal parts of fourteen generations each, has actually omitted no less than four generations contained in the authorities he followed. For since he traced the descent of Joseph through the royal line of Judah, we are enabled to check his statements by reference to the Book of Chronicles (1 Chron. iii.), and thus to convict him of positive bad faith. In the first instance he omits three kings, representing Uzziah as the son of Joram, who was his great great grandfather; in the second he passes over Jehoiachim, making Jehoiachin the son instead of the grandson of Josiah. In the third period we have no authority by which to verify his statements beyond Zerubbabel, but his determination to carry out his numerical system at all hazards is shown by the double reckoning of Jehoiachin, at the close of the second and the beginning of the third division. The latter has in fact but thirteen generations, and it was only by this trick—a little concealed by the break effected through his allusion to the captivity—that the appearance of uniformity was maintained. Luke has adopted a different method. Leaving the line of kings, he connects Joseph with David through Nathan instead of Solomon. Now beyond the fact that Nathan was the offspring of David and Bathsheba, nothing whatever is known about him. Indeed it may have been his very obscurity, and the consequent facility of creating descendants for him, that led to his selection in preference to Solomon, though unless it were that his name stood next above Solomon's (2 Sam. v. 14)—there is no obvious reason for his being preferred to several other children of David. However, he answered the purpose as well as any, and after him it was not a difficult operation to invent a plausible list of names to fill up the gap between him and Joseph. The compiler of the list in Matthew had the advantage in so far that he did not require to draw on his imagination except for nine names between Zerubbabel and Joseph, while the compiler of the list in Luke had to supply the whole period from Nathan downwards with forefathers. But the second compiler had the advantage over the first inasmuch as his fraud did not admit of the same easy exposure by