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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: About Literalism: in what sense is Jesus son of David
Message-ID: <1050@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 21:38:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1050
Posted: Tue Jul 30 21:38:12 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 20:44:05 EDT
References: <2194@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 39

In article <2194@sdcrdcf.UUCP> glenn@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Glenn C. Scott) writes:

>>>"Begat" and "son of" do not always mean "directly".  It may mean, and
>>>sometimes *does* mean, more distant descendants.

>>This strikes me as really stretching.  One normally goes one generation at a
>>time when establishing a lineage.  It's also not at all clear why it's
>>really very important to establish that both lineages are correct (or
>>indeed, that either is correct).

>  I'm not sure I understand what you mean.  Really stretching what ? 
>There are other cases in the Old Testament of reciting a lineage and 
>excluding individuals of no great importance.  It's probably not good 
>to automatically assume that if the geneologits books are not like 
>yours that something is wrong.

The whole point of this argument (at least from my point of view) is that
people are approaching the quite evident problem of these two texts from
the point of view of (a) they must both be correct and (b) it's very 
important that they be reconciled.  Which takes us to...

>  One of the criteria for being the Messiah is that the Messiah has to be a
>decendant of David.  Therefore it's important to establish the geneology of
>Jesus to determine whether Jesus was or was not a descendant of David.

Perhaps so, but this sort of argument leads in a completely different 
direction.  What produces the attempts to "fix" the genealogies is starting
from the belief that the genealogies ARE correct.  The reasoning runs the
opposite direction.

>  The only reason I've been able to come up with for having both the lineage
>of Joseph *and* Mary recorded is to simply show that no matter which 
>side of the parents you chose to establish ancestry Jesus' father and 
>mother both qualify as decendants of David.

Except that no genealogy is given for Mary (both are given for Joseph). 
Without editing the Bible, you can't get such a genealogy.

Charley Wingate