johnson1010 wrote:
Who is the father of Joseph?
MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.
That should do for now.
Stahrwe says. All of the objetions are very old saws which, as pointed out previously are addressed by any basic apolgetics website. If you want to have a serious discussion I suggest that we have a study of the enire Bible. My answer to the above question as it appears in ISBN ISBN-13: 978-1-6064-3081-1
Appendix I - Zelophehad’s Daughters And The Geneologies
Every year the media trot out the “experts” to educate the unwashed masses about Christmas. Invariably those “experts” consist of “scholars” from The Jesus Seminar, or similar groups. They sound impressive as they advise that most of what the Bible records about the birth of Jesus is not intended to be taken literally, afterall, the genealogies of Jesus as recorded by Mathew, and Luke do not even match, and they are correct, they do not. Why would they? Each of us has a family tree that has two main branches; our mother’s, and our father’s.
The issue we immediately encounter with Jesus’ genealogies is that neither identifies itself as Mary’s while both refer to Joseph. If you are already predisposed to believe that Jesus was just a great teacher, and that is all, this would be reason enough to stop, and say the Bible is not trustworthy because it does not even report the family tree of Jesus correctly. But wait a minute, Matthew Chapter 1 verse 11 reads, “…and Josiah begat Jechoniah, and his brethren, at the time of the carrying away to Babylon.”
Jechoniah was also known as Coniah, and in Jeremiah we find:
Jeremiah 22
24As I live, saith the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah wore the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence;…28Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he, and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not?…30Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.
Note: No descendant of Coniah will ever sit on the throne of David. Based on this passage, Joseph, and his descendants are excluded from being able to lay claim that throne. So we are finished! Jesus had no right the claim to be king of the Jews therefore, he was not the Messiah.
Not so fast, there is another genealogy, the one in Luke. In it there is no offending Coniah, and while it does not say that it is the genealogy of Mary, it does begin in an interesting way;
23And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,…
Note, it does not say this is the genealogy of Joseph, nor does it say that Jesus was Joseph’s son. The wording implies that people said that he was Joseph’s son. Based on that it is not unreasonable to assume that the Luke genealogy is that of Mary, that would mean that Jesus inherited the claim to David’s throne through her, and not Joseph, but that is not how inheritance worked, it was passed down from father to oldest son, so once again it appears that we are stuck. But appearances in this case are wrong.
In some rather obscure passages in the Old Testament, we encounter Zelophehad’s daughters. When Moses was advising how property was to be divided in the Promised Land these daughters approached him:
Numbers 26
33And Zelophehad the son of Hepher had no sons, but daughters:, and the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
Numbers 27
1Then came the daughters of Zelophehad…
2And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest,…saying, 3Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. 4Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father. 5And Moses brought their cause before the LORD. 6And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 7The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father's brethren;, and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. 8And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.
So God said that women could inherit from their father provided that he had no sons, but this created a controversy:
Numbers 36
2… my lord was commanded by the LORD to give the inheritance of Zelophehad our brother unto his daughters. 3And if they be married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the children of Israel, then shall their inheritance be taken from the inheritance of our fathers, and shall be put to the inheritance of the tribe whereunto they are received: so shall it be taken from the lot of our inheritance. … 5And Moses commanded the children of Israel according to the word of the LORD, saying, The tribe of the sons of Joseph hath said well. 6This is the thing which the LORD doth command concerning the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry. 7So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe: for every one of the children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers. 8And every daughter, that possesseth an inheritance in any tribe of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe of her father, that the children of Israel may enjoy every man the inheritance of his fathers. 9Neither shall the inheritance remove from one tribe to another tribe; but every one of the tribes of the children of Israel shall keep himself to his own inheritance. 10Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad: 11For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their fathers brothers' sons: 12And they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father.
The sons of Joseph were complaining that if a woman inherited from her father, and married outside her tribe, then her inheritance would pass to her husband’s tribe. The ruling was that the inheritance would pass to the daughter of a man with no sons provided that she married within her own tribe.
Joshua 17
3But Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, had no sons, but daughters:, and these are the names of his daughters, Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. 4And they came near before Eleazar the priest, and before Joshua the son of Nun, and before the princes, saying, The LORD commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren. Therefore according to the commandment of the LORD he gave them an inheritance among the brethren of their father.
These women were persistent, and got their inheritance.
Returning to Jesus’ genealogies, Joseph was excluded from inheriting the right to claim the throne of David. Mary would be able to claim that right provided that her father had no sons, that she was of the tribe of Judah, and that she married within the tribe of Judah.
Assuming that Luke’s genealogy is Mary’s, it establishes that she is a descendant of Judah via David, and therefore would be eligible to inherit from her father, provided that she was the oldest, and had no brothers. So why bother with Joseph’s genealogy at all? Because it had to be established that Mary married within her tribe. The genealogy in Matthew shows that Joseph descended from Judah via David. This validates Mary’s right to inherit from her the claim to David’s throne, and since Jesus was Mary’s son, but not Joseph’s, he also had a legitimate right to be King of his people.
As you encounter these pieces in the Bible, several things become evident. First, the story of the Daughters of Zelophehed pops up several times. Paper was expensive when the scriptures were written, so to devote so much space to this story seems to demand our attention. Second, it is amazing that pieces from Numbers are critical to solving a puzzle presented in Matthew, and Luke, and that all of the pieces are necessary to complete the story.
