MRS. A. S. LEWIS, ON THE GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD. 15 



actual descendant of the gorgeous Solomon, nor of any Jewish 

 crowned head excepting David, the sweet singer of Israel, whose 

 poetic gift seems to have been inherited by the most blessed 

 among women. No. He sprang from a line of more modest 

 ancestors, amongst whom we find no kingly names save those of 

 Zerubbabel and Salathiel, names which may possibly represent 

 quite different people from those in I Chronicles and in Ezra. 

 Possibly Mary may have sprung from a more consistently God- 

 fearing stock than Joseph did. In Zechariah xii, 12 tf., it is 

 remarkable to find the names of Nathan, Levi, and Shimei 

 following one another, all of these being in Luke's genealogy. 

 Justin Martyr* and Irenaeusf both assume that the genealogy 

 in Luke is that of Mary. Justin, indeed, tells us that amongst 

 the Jews a man was often called the father of his daughter's 

 children {Dial. 43), and it is possible in reading Luke iii, 23, to 

 shift the bracket and make the parenthesis begin with " being," 

 and end with " Joseph." We should then read, " And Jesus 

 Himself was the son of Heli." " When He began " is absent 

 from some of the best Latin MSS. and from all the Old Syriac 

 versions. 



And now we must speak further of the startling verse which 

 led many English scholars to think that the text of the Sinai 

 Palimpsest is heretical, before it was subjected to the minute 

 investigations which it has since undergone. 1 think it is 

 Mr. Conybeare of Oxford who observed in the Academy : If 

 this verse had been altered by a heretic, why did lie not make 

 a clean sweep of verses 18-25, which are so contradictory to 

 it ? " The text shows no trace of a like heresy elsewhere. We 

 must therefore seek for another explanation. 



It is quite possible, as Dr. Burkitt and others have suggested, 

 that verse 16 may spring from a misreading of the MS. which 

 underlies the Eerrar group of Greek cursive MSS. But I think 

 that my explanation is a much simpler and more probable one. 

 The phrase, " Joseph begat Jesus," is very probably what 

 Matthew found in the Temple register, the words " to whom 

 was betrothed Mary the Virgin," and " who is called the Christ," 

 being the evangelist's own additions to it. That some such state- 

 ment had to be explained away is shown by the opening clause 

 of verse 18, which in Greek reads : But the birth of the Christ 

 was on this wise. {'Iriaov is omitted also by all the oldest 

 Latin MSS.) To what does that " But " refer ? King James' 

 translators and our own English revisers did not know, for 



* Dial, cum Tryphone, 43, 88, 100, cf. Migne, vol. vi, pp. 567, 686, 710. 

 t Book III, cap. 22. Migne, vol. vii, p. 955, seq. 



