{"id":31781,"date":"2015-09-15T10:02:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T14:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=31781"},"modified":"2015-09-15T10:02:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T14:02:13","slug":"were-jesus-grandparents-a-gay-couple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/09\/were-jesus-grandparents-a-gay-couple.html","title":{"rendered":"Were Jesus’ Grandparents a Gay Couple?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The question is facetious, but I presume readers are aware of the genuine issue that lies behind the question. If not, I will sum it up briefly: The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both provide genealogies for Jesus. They contradict one another in after David except for a brief convergence around\u00a0Zerubbabel.<\/p>\n

So why propose \u2013 even in jest \u2013 this solution to the two male parents of Joseph\u00a0who were purportedly distant cousins of one another?<\/p>\n

The reason is because this proposal is more straightforward, and fits what the texts say better,\u00a0than\u00a0those which have been proposed<\/a> by conservatives<\/a> trying to defend Biblical inerrancy by harmonizing the genealogies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The most common ancient approach was to posit a series of Levirite marriages, so that a woman\u2019s husband died without producing children, and\u00a0the dead man\u2019s brother married his widow in keeping with Jewish Law. The most common modern approach\u00a0is less convoluted and simply ignores what the text says, pretending<\/a> that one of the genealogies is Mary\u2019s<\/a> rather than Joseph\u2019s.<\/p>\n

It is certainly a much more straightforward (if indubitably anachronistic) to have Jacob and Heli be a gay couple who both provided sperm\u00a0in order for a woman to conceive a child for them, and so either could be\u00a0the father.<\/p>\n

Why avoid this simpler solution?\u00a0Simple: because the\u00a0same ideology that drives them to force a resolution to the contradiction also drives them to not want to appeal to this particular explanation. And it is important to notice this, that what drives the attempts at harmonizations is a particular ideology, one that ultimately will eschew a\u00a0simple solution for a more complex one in order to\u00a0maintain conformity to that ideology. Because ultimately it is that ideology and\u00a0the defense of it that matters most, and not the\u00a0elimination of problems in the Bible for their own sake.<\/p>\n

As for the differences in the genealogies considered from a scholarly perspective, there is a relatively straightforward explanation why they differ. Luke may have known that Jeconiah had been told, according to Jeremiah<\/a>, that none of his descendants would sit on the throne of David. Yet Matthew\u2019s genealogy has Jesus descended from Jeconiah! And so this could well have motivated Luke to \u201cfix\u201d the problem.<\/p>\n

What is probably most interesting in this is its relevance to the Synoptic Problem. The three\u00a0options are that Luke knew Matthew\u2019s Gospel, that a genealogy like Matthew\u2019s was in Q<\/a>, or that both independently inserted genealogies. The last option seems too coincidental. The first seems problematic to me given how Luke diverges so substantially from Matthew, especially in the\u00a0infancy stories, although I am open to being persuaded. The Q hypothesis has rarely made a genealogy part of that source. Are there other options? Which of the above seems most likely to you, and why?<\/p>\n

\"Padova_Scrovegni_Giotto_incontro_porta_oro-672x372\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The question is facetious, but I presume readers are aware of the genuine issue that lies behind the question. If not, I will sum it up briefly: The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both provide genealogies for Jesus. They contradict one another in after David except for a brief convergence around\u00a0Zerubbabel. So why propose \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":31782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,32,34,43],"tags":[2173,3828,4151,5154,5677,12189],"class_list":["post-31781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-gospel-of-luke","category-gospel-of-matthew","category-inerrancy","tag-contradictions","tag-genealogies","tag-grandparents","tag-inerrancy","tag-jesus","tag-synoptic-problem"],"yoast_head":"\nWere Jesus' Grandparents a Gay Couple?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The question is facetious, but I presume readers are aware of the genuine issue that lies behind the question. 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