14 MRS. A. S. LEWIS^ OX THE GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD. 



Jesus, who is called the Christ," perhaps from Maiy his wife, 

 " the daughter of Heli," being added. 



We must remember that Joseph had already exercised the 

 right of a father in naming the Child (see Matthew i, 25), and 

 that any indication of our Lord's real descent would have brought 

 upon Mary the terrible punishment of stoning (see Deuteronomy 

 xxii, 21), which was exactly what Joseph sought to avoid. 



II. Keferring now to our second problem, more than one 

 explanation has been given by commentators in different ages, 

 as to why the genealogy in Matthew differs so completely from 

 the genealogy in Luke. I think that Dr. Heer, like Matthew 

 Henry, has adopted the true explanation. Matthew, having 

 received the story of the Nativity from Joseph, gave also 

 Joseph's genealogy, through which our Lord's claim to be the 

 Messiah and the ofhcial descendant of David is asserted, for 

 Matthew^'s aim in writing his Gospel was chiefly to convince his 

 Jewish countrymen of this fact. Luke, on the other hand, gives 

 us Mary's account of the Nativity, and therefore he gives us 

 also Mary's genealogy. His chief aim was to convince his friend 

 Theopliilus and other Gentiles that Jesus of Nazareth was the 

 Son of God. Our Lord's claim to the Messiahship would have 

 had very little weight with them. I cannot think that the story 

 of the Virgin Mary's parents being named Joachim and Anna 

 rests on any secure foundation. It is derived from a fabulous 

 book called the Protevangelion Jacobi (which I have myself 

 edited in its Syriac dress), and w^hicli, though embodying early 

 traditions, was excluded from the list of canonical, and even true 

 books, by the Decretum Gelasii in the sixth century, but upon 

 which the w^hole worship of the Virgin Mary in the Eoman 

 Church rests. Anna may have been the name of Mary's mother, 

 though it has obviously been suggested to the mind of the 

 romancer, either by the story of the prophet Samuel or by that 

 of Joachim and Susanna. 



The Talmud tells us that the name of Mary's father was Heli.* 

 Men, says Dr. Heer, were often called the immediate fathers of 

 their daughters' children. We can find more than one instance 

 of this for ourselves in the Old Testament. Athahah was the 

 daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, yet in ii Kings viii, 26, 

 II Chronicles xxii, 2, she is called the daughter of Omri, who 

 was Ahab's father. Also Salathiel is called the father of 

 Zerubbabel, although Pedaiah came between them : Ezra iii, 2, 

 V. 2 ; Matthew i, 12. I love to think that our Lord was not an 



Jerusalem Talmud, Chagigah, fol. 77, 4. 



