Luke's Account: Nathan to Mary

This post was first published on ROOTSS on Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Today we'll talk about Luke's account of Jesus' genealogy.

As mentioned previously, Luke portrays Jesus as the Son of Man, and hence traces Jesus' ancestry upwards all the way to Adam.

Though both he and Matthew cite David as an ancestor, Luke traces the route via Mary upwards to another son of David via Bethsheba known as Nathan (2 Sam 5:14, 1 Chron 3:5, 1 Chron 14:4).

A point to be made here is that women were generally not included in genealogies (Matthew made an exception by including the names of 5 women, but that was to serve another purpose, ie. even women who were disqualified by the Law, God could qualify). Hence, even though Heli was Mary's dad, Luke puts her husband's name Joseph in the listing. We see from Matthew's account that Joseph's own father was Jacob.

A second point to be made is that even though Joseph was Jesus' adopted and legal father, he was not Jesus' biological father. After all, Mary conceived supernaturally via the Holy Spirit. By tracing the line via Mary, Luke actually attests to the virgin birth since it was a woman's seed (rather than a man's seed) that would crush the serpent's head.

I got most of the above information from a very well-researched article. It addresses the various issues such as genealogical abridgements, property rights, the curse of Jehoiakim, etc, and I commit it to your reading.