why do they both mention Joseph?
**
Genealogy of Christ
…**
The convergence of the two distinct genealogical lines in the person of St. Joseph, has been explained in two ways:
(a)
St. Matthew’s genealogy is that of St. Joseph; St. Luke’s, that of the Blessed Virgin. This contention implies that St. Luke’s
genealogy only seemingly includes the name of Joseph. It is based on the received Greek text,
on (
os enomizeto ouios Ioseph)
tou Heli, “being the son (as it was supposed, of Joseph,
but really) of Heli”. This parenthesis really eliminates the name of Joseph from St. Luke’s
genealogy, and makes Christ, by means of the Blessed Virgin, directly a son of Heli. This view is supported by a tradition which names the father of the Blessed Virgin “Joachim”, a variant form of Eliacim or its abbreviation Eli, a variant of Heli, which latter is the form found in the Third
Evangelist’s genealogy. But these two consideration, viz. the received text and the traditional name of the father of Mary, which favour the view that St. Luke gives the
genealogy of the Blessed Virgin, are offset by two similar considerations, which make St. Luke’s list terminate with the name of Joseph. First, the Greek text preferred by the
textual critics reads,
on ouios, hos enomizeto, Ioseph tou Heli, “being the son, as it was supposed, of Joseph,
son of
Heli”, so that the above parenthesis is rendered less probable. Secondly, according to
Patrizi, the view that St. Luke gives the
genealogy of Mary began to be advocated only towards the end of the fifteenth century by
Annius of Viterbo, and acquired adherents in the sixteenth. St. Hilary mentions the opinion as adopted by many, but he himself rejects it (Mai, “Nov. Bibl, Patr.”, t. I, 477). It may be safely said that
patristic tradition does not regard St. Luke’s list as representing the
genealogy of the Blessed Virgin.
(b) Both
St. Matthew and St. Luke give the
genealogy of St. Joseph, the one through the lineage of Solomon, the other through that of Nathan. But how can the lines converge in St. Joseph? St. Augustine suggested that Joseph, the son of Jacob and the descendant of
David through Solomon, might have been adopted by Heli, thus becoming the adoptive descendant of
David through Nathan. But Augustine was the first to abandon this theory after learning the explanation offered by
Julius Africanus. According to the latter, Estha married Mathan, a descendant of
David through Solomon, and became the mother of Jacob; after Mathan’s death she took for her second husband Mathat, a descendent of
David through Nathan, and by him became the mother of Heli. Jacob and Heli were, therefore, uterine brothers. Heli married, but died without offspring; his
widow, therefore, became the levirate wife of Jacob, and gave birth to Joseph, who was the carnal son of Jacob, but the legal son of Heli, thus combining in his
person two lineages of David’s
