Who Was Jesus’ Grandfather?

Jesus had two grandfathers? Matthew says Jacob, Luke says Heli—contradiction? Jimmy Akin tackles this head-on in a thrilling deep dive! He uncovers five clever solutions (skipped generations, adoptions, heiresses, levirate marriages & more), then drops the bombshell: Jesus’ own relatives (the Desposunoi) told the early Church the real story! No contradiction—just ancient family tradition revealed! Don’t miss this eye-opening episode of The Jimmy Akin Podcast!

 

TRANSCRIPT: 

Coming Up

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both give us genealogies of Jesus and, as you would expect, they both name Joseph as his father.

But the genealogies give different names for his grandfather. One says Jesus’ grandfather was named Jacob and one says he was named Heli or Eli.

Skeptics have been quick to call attention to this and other differences in the two genealogies and claim they both can’t be right.

So who was Jesus’ grandfather—and what did Jesus’ own family have to say about the matter?

Let’s get into it!

* * *

Howdy, folks!

We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast

 

Introduction

Matthew opens his Gospel with a genealogy stretching forwards from Abraham down to Jesus. The final part of this genealogy reads:

And Jacob [was] the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Luke also gives a genealogy, except his stretches backwards from Jesus back to Adam, the original “son of God.” The initial part of this genealogy reads:

Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli.

Both genealogies have fascinating aspects that would require considerable discussion, but here we’re interested in a specific question: Who was Jesus’ grandfather?

According to both of the passages we’ve just read, Jesus was the legal son of Joseph, but Matthew indicates that Joseph’s father was named Jacob, while Luke says Joseph was the son of Heli or Eli.

How can this be explained?

At first glance, it looks like Matthew and Luke are preserving two different lines by which Jesus’ ancestry goes back to David, and these two lines join at Joseph.

Our question is: How does that joining work?

 

Why Different Lines?

Before going further, we should discuss why Matthew and Luke would trace Jesus’ genealogies through different lines.

One of the things you discover if you read the genealogies in their entirety is that they trace Jesus’ ancestry through different sons of David. Matthew traces it through the line of David’s son Solomon, while Luke traces it through the line of David’s son Nathan.

And it is not at all unexpected Jesus would be descended from David in more than one way.

People tend to marry within their own community, and if you go back multiple generations, it is very common to find that someone is descended from an individual in more than one way.

Given how tight-knit Judean culture was, it would be inevitable—over the course of the thousand years that separated David and Jesus—that Jesus would be descended from David in more than one way.

By way of parallel, the current king of England—Charles III—is descended from William the Conqueror (who lived a thousand years before him) in multiple ways.

For example, Charles is descended from William the Conqueror both by the line of William’s son King Henry I of England and by the line of William’s daughter St. Adela of Normandy.

The question for us is: Why would Matthew and Luke use different lines?

Part of the answer may be as simple as, “Well, these were the lines that they had documentation for when they were writing their Gospels, so they used the genealogical information that was available to them.”

However, there may be other reasons, including good ones why Matthew and Luke might choose to trace Jesus’ lineage through Solomon and Nathan.

After King David’s time, the line of Judean kings passed through Solomon until the Babylonian Exile, when the line ended with Jehoiachin (who was also known as Jeconiah).

The prophet Jeremiah then issued a curse from the Lord on Jeconiah, stating,

Jeremiah 22:30

Thus says the Lord:

“Write this man down as childless,
a man who shall not succeed in his days;
for none of his offspring shall succeed
in sitting on the throne of David,
and ruling again in Judah.”

However, according to multiple Jewish sources, this curse was later lifted, which would mean Jeconiah’s descendants would again be eligible to be kings.

The result was that there was a doubt about whether future kings of the Jews would need to come from the line of Solomon or from the line of another one of David’s sons.

Difference of opinion on this matter would admirably explain why Matthew uses one line and Luke uses the other.

• For those who believe legitimate kings could not come from the line of Solomon, Luke shows how Jesus is descended from David by way of Nathan.
• And for those who believed legitimate kings needed to come from the line of Solomon, Matthew shows how Jesus’ ancestry is traced through him.

Since Jesus is descended from David in more than one way, those lines join up again at some point.

Here, we’re interested in the merging of the lines that seems to happen in the generation before Joseph.

So, why does Matthew name Joseph’s father as Jacob, while Luke names him as Heli?

 

An Incorrect Explanation

A common explanation that you hear is that Matthew gives us Joseph’s genealogy, while Luke gives us Mary’s.

This guess is perhaps understandable in that Matthew’s infancy narrative focuses on Joseph, while Luke’s infancy narrative focuses on Mary.

However, Jewish genealogies were Patrilineal, which means that they Follow the Father’s Line.

So the idea of this being Mary’s genealogy is unlikely to begin with.

And any simple version of this theory encounters a huge problem, which is that Mary is not mentioned anywhere in Luke’s version of the genealogy.

Her name does not appear at all.

No matter how popular or attractive this view may be to some, no simple version of it can be supported from the text.

The way the genealogies are written, both of them are genealogies of Joseph.

So how can we explain the fact that Matthew lists Joseph’s father as Jacob and Luke lists him as Heli?

 

Solution 1: Two Names

One way it could be explained would be by the grandfather also being known by another name.

People in the ancient world—including in the Bible—sometimes went by more than one name. In fact, we see this repeatedly in the first generation of Christians. Thus:

• Simon was known as Cephas/Peter,
• Joseph was known as Barnabas,
• Saul was known as Paul,
• And John was known as Mark.

Sometimes a person went by two names because he had acquired a nickname, as with Simon and Joseph acquiring the nicknames Cephas/Peter and Barnabas.

Sometimes it was because they were operating in a different cultural environment, so Saul and John used their Roman names Paul and Mark when dealing with non-Jews.

And there could be other reasons.

So, in principle, Jacob and Heli could be two names for the same individual.

And there’s at least a little bit of evidence that might make this more possible than you might initially think. If we look one generation further back, Matthew tells us that “Matthan [was] the father of Jacob” (Matt. 1:15), and Luke tells us that Heli was “the son of Matthat” (Luke 3:24).

It is very common to find variant spellings in ancient documents—including genealogies—and the names Matthan and Matthat are so close that some scholars have suggested this is just a variant spelling, and that Matthan and Matthat were a single person.

In that case, Jacob and Heli might have been two names that his son was known by, and the question of who Joseph’s father was would be solved: He was a man who went both by the name Jacob and by the name Heli.

However, the “two names” theory is not the only one we need to consider and, personally, I don’t consider it the most likely solution.

Jacob and Heli are both Hebrew-Aramaic names, and it’s unlikely that a person would have two Jewish names.

Further, this would not solve every question about the genealogies, because prior to Matthan/Matthat the lines diverge again, though it would resolve our current question.

 

Solution 2: Skipping Generations

A notable fact about ancient Israelite genealogies is that they often skipped generations.

This was in part because Hebrew and Aramaic had no kinship terms for “grandfather,” “great grandfather,” or “great-great grandfather.”

Similarly, they had no kinship terms for “grandson,” “great grandson,” or “great-great grandson.”

Instead, any male ancestor of yours was referred to as your father, and any male descendant of yours was referred to as your son.

This is why Jesus can be called the “son of David” (Matt. 1:1) and how he can inherit the throne of “his father David” (Luke 1:32)—even though David lived a thousand years before Jesus.

Because every male ancestor was a father and every male descendant was a son, you didn’t need to list every generation in a genealogy, and it’s clear that ancient authors sometimes skipped them—either for reasons of brevity or to make a point.

For example, Matthew deliberately skips generations in order to present his genealogy as 3 sets of 14 generations. He writes:

Matthew 1:17

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations

By looking at the Old Testament genealogies—which Matthew was certainly aware of—you can see many of the generations he’s skipping.

We also know that Matthew is skipping generations in the period covered by the final 14 names. Raymond Brown points out:

The Birth of the Messiah, 74-75

The spans of time covered by the three sections of the genealogy are too great to have contained only fourteen generations each, since some 750 years separated Abraham from David, some 400 years separated David from the Babylonian Exile, and some 600 years separated the Babylonian Exile from Jesus’ birth.

If there were only 14 generations in the final, 600-year period, then the average age of fatherhood for each generation would have been 43 years old, and that’s too high.

Fathers have some children earlier and some later, but in the ancient world it was not normal to have your middle or “average” child at age 43.

If we go with a more reasonable estimate of a middle child being born to a father who is 30 years old, we should expect 20 generations during this period, suggesting that Matthew has skipped at least 6 generations.

The likely reason he uses three blocks of 14 names is that in Hebrew and Aramaic the name David adds up to 14.

The letter Dalet or D has a numerical value of 4, the letter Vav or V has a numerical value of 6, and Dalet or D has a numerical value of 4, so that adds up to 14.

With the three sets of fourteen generations, Matthew’s genealogy implicitly sends the message “David! David! David!”

Matthew is making the point that, under God’s providence, Jesus is the legitimate and ultimate Son of David, the Messiah.

The fact that these genealogies skip generations is relevant to our question because, as soon as you skip a generation, you double the number of “fathers” in this system of reckoning.

For example, my name is Jimmy, and my father’s name also was Jimmy (I’m a junior). However, if you skip my father’s generation and look at my male ancestors one generation further back, there are two: My paternal grandfather Howard and my maternal grandfather Allen.

If we were composing an Israelite-style genealogy for me, and if we skipped my father’s generation, I could be described either as “Jimmy son of Howard” or “Jimmy son of Allen,” depending on which line of ancestry you wanted to focus on.

Now here’s the point: This could be what’s happening with Joseph.

We have strong evidence that Matthew skipped something like 6 generations in the final segment of his genealogy, and Luke may have done so also.

If any of these skipped generations was the one before Joseph, then the issue is resolved:

• If Luke skipped the generation before Joseph, then Jacob may have been Joseph’s father and Heli one of his two grandfathers.
• If Matthew skipped the generation before Joseph, then Heli may have been his father and Jacob one of his two grandfathers.
• If both Matthew and Luke skipped the generation before Joseph, then Jacob may have been one of his grandfathers and Heli the other.
• And if there is more than one skipped generation before Joseph, then the options multiply further.

In any case, a single skipped generation before Joseph, by either author, would explain what we see.

 

Solution 3: An Adoption

But not everything you see in a genealogy is to be explained in terms of biological relationships. Genealogies also include legal relations.

Today, if a husband and wife have several kids together but also adopt a child, the adopted child will be listed in their family tree alongside their biological children.

The same was true in ancient genealogies. In fact, in a tribal/patriarchal society like ancient Israel, it was extremely important to know your family line, because it dictated how you would relate to other Israelites.

To be part of Israelite society, you had to be a member of one of the twelve tribes, and when a person from another culture joined the people of Israel, he had to be legally adopted into one of the tribes.

We see an example of this with Caleb—one of the two faithful spies at the time of Moses. Caleb is introduced as “the son of Jephunneh” (Num. 13:6), and Jephunneh is identified as a Kennizite (Num. 32:12).

The Kennizites, in turn, were a Canaanite people (Gen. 15:19), so it appears that Caleb actually had Canaanite ancestry.

This is not surprising, since Egypt was a major world power and quite cosmopolitan. Many people from surrounding cultures ended up there—including Canaanites—and some of them allied with the Israelites at the time of the Exodus and left Egypt.

Exodus 12:38 records that many foreigners departed with them. It says that—in addition to the Israelites, “a mixed multitude also went up with them.”

As a person of Canaanite ancestry, Caleb decided to go with them and eventually became so allied with the Israelites that he became one of them.

Thus, he was adopted into the tribe of Judah, and the patriarch Judah became his legal ancestor. Joshua 15:13 also notes that

Joshua 15:13

According to the commandment of the Lord to Joshua, he gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh a portion among the people of Judah.

And Caleb is regularly associated with the tribe of Judah and listed with it in genealogical material.

It’s just that, in this case, the name of Caleb’s biological father—Jephunneh the Kenizzite—has been preserved, in addition to his new, legal ancestry.

Jesus’ genealogy also incorporates the concept of legal descent, for Jesus was Joseph’s legal son, but not his biological son.

So it is possible that some of the junctures in Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies could be due to legal adoption in which—like Caleb—a figure’s biological parentage has been preserved as well as his new, legal parentage.

Further, since people often take care of the children of their deceased relatives—and sometimes adopt them—it would not be unnatural if, in the thousand years between David and Christ, members of some lines of Davidides adopted members of the extended family, uniting the lines in genealogical terms.

For example, suppose that Joseph was Heli’s natural son, but Heli died prematurely, and Joseph was adopted by Jacob. In this case, Joseph would be the legal son of Jacob but the biological son of Heli.

 

Solution 4: An Heiress

A special form of Israelite adoption could involve heiresses. Under normal circumstances, Israelite women did not inherit property, but it was important to keep land within the family, and if a man died without sons, his property could be inherited by his daughters—making them heiresses.

The most famous case involves the daughters of Zelophehad of the tribe of Manasseh, who died during the Exodus. He had no sons, so his daughters were allowed to inherit a portion of the territory of Manasseh in the Promised Land (Numbers 27:1-11).

However, this created a new issue, because normally women were not required to marry within their tribe. If the heiresses of Zelophehad married outsiders, their land would pass from Manasseh to a different tribe.

As a result, a law was instituted that heiresses could only marry within their own tribe so that the tribe would not have its territory depleted over time (Numbers 36:1-12).

Not only was it important to preserve family property, it also was important to preserve the name of a man with no sons, and this sometimes happened through his daughters.

In 1 Chronicles 2:34-35, we read about a man named Sheshan.

1 Chronicles 2:34-35

Now Sheshan had no sons, only daughters; but Sheshan had an Egyptian slave, whose name was Jarha. So Sheshan gave his daughter in marriage to Jarha his slave; and she bore him Attai.

So to carry on his line, Sheshan married one of his daughters to his Egyptian slave. As a result, the daughter bore a son named Attai, who carried on Sheshan’s line.

In Ezra 2:61 and Nehemiah 7:63, we read of a priest named “Barzillai (who had taken a wife from the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite and was called by their name).”

In 1 Esdras 5:38, the priest’s name is given as Jaddus, and the daughter of Barzillai’s name is given as Agia. Whether or not these were their actual names, it has been proposed that Agia was an heiress, and Jaddus married her and took Barzillai’s name to preserve it since there were no sons to carry on the line.

The function of heiresses to preserve their father’s legal line has been proposed to explain the situation with Joseph.

According to this view, Mary had no brothers and so was an heiress. That is actually indicated by the second century document known as the Infancy Gospel of James or Protoevangelium of James, which depicts Mary as an only child.

Though the Infancy Gospel also gives Mary’s father’s name as Joachim rather than Heli, this solution remains possible.

If Mary was an heiress of the tribe of Judah, then when Joseph married her, he gained the legal lineage of Mary’s father, Heli.

Joseph thus was biologically descended from Jacob but also legally descended from Heli.

It should be pointed out that this is not the same as the common claim that Matthew’s genealogy is Joseph’s and Luke’s is Mary. Mary is not mentioned at all in Luke’s genealogy, so it cannot simply be “her’s.”

On this view, both genealogies are Joseph’s, with Matthew giving Joseph’s genealogy through his biological father Jacob and—with Mary being an heiress—Luke giving Joseph’s alternative legal genealogy through his legal-father-by-marriage (i.e., father-in-law) Heli.

 

Solution 5: A Levirate Marriage

Heiresses were not the only way a sonless man’s line could be preserved. A more common way was through the custom of the levirate marriage.

In Latin, a Levir is a Brother-in-Law, and a Levirate Marriage is one in which a woman marries her brother-in-law.

This practice was used in numerous Ancient Near Eastern cultures, and under the Mosaic Law, this was required when a man died without a son. Deuteronomy 25 states:

Deuteronomy 25:5-6

If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.

And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

The firstborn son would thus be the biological child of the brother-in-law or levir but the legal child of his deceased brother.

This custom was common enough that it found an explicit treatment in the Law of Moses, and it is mentioned in all three of the Synoptic Gospels when the Sadducees’ try to trap Jesus by posing a question involving it (Matthew 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27, Luke 20:27-40).

The custom was common enough that it is found at least twice in the case of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. Matthew 1:3 states simply that:

Matthew 1:3

And Judah [was] the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram.

But if you read Genesis 38, you find out that the situation was considerably more complicated than that.

Judah initially had three sons—Er, Onan, and Shelah. Initially, Tamar was the wife of Er, but when he died childless, a levirate marriage was arranged, and Tamar became the wife of Judah’s second son Onan.

Onan wanted to have marital relations with Tamar but did not want to give his deceased brother any legal offspring, so he frustrated the marriage act. He then died childless also.

Judah was afraid to give his third son Shelah to Tamar in another levirate marriage, and in the end Tamar seduced Judah himself, which is how Perez and Zerah were conceived.

So this is the first instance where a levirate marriage was involved in Jesus’ genealogy.

The second is mentioned in Matthew 1:5, which says:

Matthew 1:5

And Boaz [was] the father of Obed by Ruth.

But when you read the book of Ruth, you discover that she was the widow of an Israelite named Mahlon who died childless. But Mahlon’s brother had also died, so Ruth married their relative Boaz, and in Ruth 4:10, Boaz states:

Ruth 4:10

Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brethren and from the gate of his native place; you are witnesses this day.

So we have a minimum of two of Jesus’ ancestors being involved in levirate marriages, and there could easily be more in the thousand years separating David and Jesus.

It has thus been proposed that this is the explanation for Joseph’s two fathers—that Jacob and Heli were brothers. One was his biological father and the other his legal father.

 

Five Options

We’ve now seen five possible solutions to the question of Jesus’ two grandfathers. The solution could be:

1. Two Names
2. Skipped Generation
3. Adoption
4. Heiress
5. Levirate Marriage

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could ask Jesus’ own family what the correct solution is?

It so happens, someone did ask, and we have a record of their answer.

 

What Did Jesus Family Say?

The extended family of Jesus continued to be known down to the mid-3rd century or around A.D. 250 (See Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, 45-133).

At the time, Jesus’ extended family was known as the Desposunoi (from the Greek term despotês, or “master”).

The Desposunoi were the family of Jesus, the ultimate Master, and their answer to this question was recorded around A.D. 200 by the early Church historian Julius Africanus, who wrote a letter in which he addressed the subject.

Africanus was in a good position to know about things they said. As British scholar Richard Bauckham notes:

Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, 355-356

Since [Julius Africanus] was born in Jerusalem and lived part of his later life at Emmaus, he would have had access to Palestinian Jewish Christian traditions. Descendants of the family of Jesus were certainly still living in Nazareth in his lifetime.

Large portions of Africanus’s letter are preserved by the Church historian Eusebius, so what did Jesus’ family say?

They said that Joseph was the child of a levirate marriage. The two brothers were Jacob and Heli or Eli. According to Africanus:

Julius Africanus (Eusebius, Church History 1:7:9)

Thus we shall find that though the two families were different, Jacob and Eli were step-brothers of the same mother.

And the first of them, Jacob, when his brother Eli died without children, took his wife, and begat of her . . . Joseph, according to nature, for himself.

(And so also according to reason, for which cause it is written [in Matthew], “And Jacob begat Joseph.”)

But according to law he was the son of Eli, for to him Jacob, being his brother, raised up seed.

Africanus also preserves the name of the mother of Jacob and Heli, which he says was Estha (1:7:8).

And that’s significant because this name is not found in the genealogies in the Bible, so it represents an additional piece of data, and this is not simply a speculative deduction based on Matthew and Luke.

Further, Africanus is explicit about where this information is coming from. He writes:

Julius Africanus (Eusebius, Church History 1:7:11)

This is neither devoid of proof, nor is it conjecture, for the human relatives of the Savior have handed on this tradition, either from family pride, or merely to give information, but in any case speaking the truth.

Africanus then gives the family’s description of how Herod the Great—who was an Idumean rather than a Jew—came to power and how . . .

Julius Africanus (Eusebius, Church History 1:7:13-14)

Herod, because the family of the Israelites contributed nothing to him, and because he was goaded by his own consciousness of his base birth, burned the records of their families, thinking to appear noble if no one else was able by public documents to trace his family to the patriarchs. . . .

Now a few who were careful, having private records for themselves, either remembering the names or otherwise deriving them from copies, gloried in the preservation of the memory of their good birth.

Among these were those mentioned above, called desposyni, because of their relation to the family of the Savior, and from the Jewish villages of Nazareth and Cochaba they traversed the rest of the land and expounded the preceding genealogy of their descent, and from the book of Chronicles so far as they went.

Some members of the family of the Lord thus did not remain in the villages of Nazareth and Kokhaba and travelled elsewhere.

That’s something that is confirmed by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:5, where he notes that the brethren of the Lord are accompanied on their travels by their wives.

The desposunoi then used the genealogies at the beginning of the book of Chronicles and their own family records to explain Jesus’ ancestry and its messianic significance.

Unlike the former explanations of the relationship of Jacob and Heli—which are possible but rely on conjecture—here we have an explanation that was being reported by Jesus’ own family at a very early date.

Since it is preserved by Julius Africanus around the year 200, it must predate his time of writing, meaning it was circulating in the second century or even the first.

And it indicates that Joseph did, indeed, have two fathers due to his being the product of a levirate marriage—his legal father being Heli and his biological father Jacob.

 

Conclusions

There is much more that can be said about Jesus’ genealogies in Matthew and Luke.

However, we have seen that there are multiple ways of answering the question of who Joseph’s “father” was:

• Jacob and Heli may have been two names for the same person
• One of the skipped generations may have occurred just before Joseph
• Adoption may have been involved
• Mary may have been an heiress, whose legal ancestry Joseph inherited upon marrying her
• And finally, there is the view that Jesus’ own family was claiming in the early Church—that Joseph was the child of a levirate marriage

Since we have very early testimony from Jesus’ own family that the last was the case, that’s the option that my money is on.

There also are other ways of accounting for this that we haven’t covered.

However, we have seen enough to understand that there is no contradiction between Matthew and Luke’s genealogies regarding Joseph unless one assumes that both genealogies (a) are of Joseph and (b) do not involve alternative names, (c) do not have a skipped generation before Joseph, (d) that no adoption was involved, (e) that Mary status as an heiress was not involved, and (f) that there was no levirate marriage.

We are thus very far from having a contradiction.

* * *

If you like this content, you can help me out by liking, commenting, writing a review, sharing the podcast, and subscribing

If you’re watching on YouTube, be sure and hit the bell notification so that you always get notified when I have a new video

We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years into the future—and can get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast

Thank you, and I’ll see you next time

God bless you always!

 

 

Matthew

1 ¶ The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.*

² Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, ³ ¶ And Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, ⁴ and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, ⁵ and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, ⁶ and Jesse the father of David the king.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, ⁷ and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa, ⁸ and Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, ⁹ and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, ¹⁰ and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, ¹¹ ¶ and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

¹² And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, ¹³ and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, ¹⁴ and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, ¹⁵ and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, ¹⁶ and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. †

¹⁷ So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

 

Luke

²³ ¶‖ Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph,* the son of Heli, ²⁴ the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, ²⁵ the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, ²⁶ the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, ²⁷ the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, ²⁸ the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, ²⁹ the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, ³⁰ the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, ³¹ the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, ³² the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, ³³ the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, ³⁴ the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, ³⁵ the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, ³⁶ the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, ³⁷ the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, ³⁸ the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.