30 MES. A. S. LEWIS^ ON THE GENEALOGIES OP OUR LORD. 



2. The second coincidence, which supposes Matthan (St. Matthew) 

 to be identical with Matthat (St. Luke), which I think most 

 probable, can be explained in the same way — that the senior branch 

 of the family followed, as was his custom, by St. Matthew became 

 extinct in Eliazar, Matthan, of the junior branch, becoming head. 



3. Joseph's parentage also, I think, admits of an easy explanation. 

 If Ave suppose that Matthan had two sons, Jacob and Heli, and 

 that Jacob died childless, then Heli would take his wife under the 

 Levirate law. If J oseph were the fruit of this union, St. Matthew 

 w^ould be quite correct in calling him the son of Jacob, and I 

 believe he would be reckoned as first cousin to Mary the daughter 

 of Heli by a regular wife, and therefore Joseph and Mary would 

 not come within the prohibited degrees of relationship. 



4. If Joseph and Mary were living together under one roof, as 

 they probably would be under the circumstances, it is easy to under- 

 stand how Joseph discovered Mary's condition before his marriage 

 (St. Matt, i, 18). This explanation also gives an intelligible 

 meaning to St. Luke's qualifying words (iii, 23), and also corroborates 

 the remarkable statement of the Talmud to which Mrs. Lewis refers, 

 that Mary was the daughter of Heli. 



Dr. Kenyon writes : As one would expect from the waiter, this 

 paper is both learned and stimulating. I do not think there is 

 anything that I could usefully add to it, nor indeed have I time 

 to write at length on the subject. One point only, which Mrs. Lewis 

 makes, I should like to emphasize; namely, that we have no 

 business to assume that records of what one may call generally the 

 Old Testament period were scanty. All recent discoveries go to 

 prove that the knowledge and use of writing were much more 

 widely spread than used to be supposed. The tablets of Babylonia 

 and Assyria, the papyri of ancient Egypt, the correspondence 

 between Syria and Egypt found at Tell-el-Amarna, the records 

 discovered by Sir Arthur Evans at Gnossos, and in later times the 

 Aramaic and Greek papyri found in Egypt, all these go to prove 

 a verylgeneral use of writing in the ancient world, so that one is 

 now entitled to argue that, when direct evidence is wanting, the 

 presumption is in favour of the original existence of records, not 

 against it. 



This is a consideration which has a wide bearing on the criticism 

 of Old Testament history, not confined to the genealogies with 



