From Abraham to David

This post was first published on ROOTSS on Sunday, 2nd March 2008

Continuing from where we left off last time regarding the fulfillment of the prophesy recorded in Gen 3:15 about Eve's seed, let's trace the genealogy from Abraham to David, as record in both Matthew 1 and Luke 3:

21 Isaac
22 Jacob
23 Judah
24 Perez (by Tamar)
25 Hezron
26 Ram
27 Amminadab
28 Nahshon
29 Salmon
30 Boaz (by Rahab)
31 Obed (by Ruth)
32 Jesse
33 David

Women in the Genealogy

It is interesting to note that while genealogies as they appear in other parts of Scripture do not contain the names of women, the Holy Spirit saw fit to include the names of women in Matthew's account, namely Tamah, Rahab, Ruth (and also Bathsheba and Mary). I have blogged about that separately here.

Admin and Arni

In Luke's account, some early manuscripts have in place of Ram, the names of Admin and Arni. Arni is a variant of the Greek equivalent of the name Ram. Ram is rendered Aram in Septuaginta. The name Admin is likely to be a corruption of the name Amminadab, and the insertion of the name Admin is likened to be an error.

The above explanation would make it consistent with other parts of the Scripture, viz:

Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab (Ruth 4:19)

Ram was the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, the leader of the people of Judah (1 Chron 2:10)

Up to this point (ie. from Adam to David), there is no major disputes. It is from David downwards that the genealogical accounts of Matthew and Luke vary. While Matthew traces it down to Joseph (legal line) via King Solomon (Matt 1:6) , Luke traces it down to Mary (biological line) via the another son of David named Nathan (Luke 3:31).

I have been reading various fascinating articles as to why this is so and will try to provide a condensed summary in a future post.