In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss the relationship between Jesus and King David. Akin explains the complexities of royal lineage and how Jesus fits into the line of David, addressing common misconceptions and providing historical context.
Transcript:
Cy Kellett: It’s about Jesus and his relationship to King David. Because we know he’s from the house of David. We know that’s important for the Messiah. you know, that’s an important qualification for the Messiah. But we were thinking in our little meeting that we have, we don’t actually know how he’s related to King David. Like, you can be related to King David a thousand years before you and just be a member of the family or the tribe, you know. Or is he the direct royal line descendant of David, or is it something else? Like, how do we think about the relationship between Jesus and David?
Jimmy Akin: Well, it all depends on how the line of succession works in a given country. And different countries have different rules for how this works. For example, in ancient Egypt, and we don’t have a complete understanding here, but we do have a pretty good one. you needed, in order to become pharaoh, you needed to not be descended from the right person. You needed to marry the right person. and so there was a royal woman that you needed to marry, and she’s the one that needed to be descended from someone. And then whoever her chief husband was or her only husband was, that person became Pharaoh. but over the, you know, 3,000 years of Egyptian history, they had a bunch of different dynasties where there were interruptions, you know, like more than 20 dynasties, there were interruptions. And so it wasn’t one continuous thing. And periodically they’d get into difficult situations where they didn’t have any appropriate heirs and they had to kind of scramble to find, well, who is going to be a royal woman here. And sometimes they had to pick, people who didn’t have royal ancestry. And that’s pretty typical in any given line. Now, you can have lines of descent that get tracked over a thousand years, like the difference between David and Jesus. In fact, that’s the case, in England today. In England, you, you have, descendants of William the Conqueror, you can trace the line from William the Conqueror down to Charles iii. And in fact, you can trace multiple lines of descent from, William the Conqueror to Charles iii. Because one of the things about people, but it’s even more true about royalty, is they tend to marry within a certain fairly restricted circle. And sometimes that can get out of hand. Like, that’s why the House of Hanover in Europe got hemophilia, because they married too closely for too long. They didn’t have enough gene flow coming into the pool. But because people tend, and especially royals tend to marry in kind of the same circles, you get a modern person who’s descended from multiple different lines, from a person a thousand years ago. And so you can trace Charles III’s ancestry back to William the Conqueror through multiple different line lines. And then it becomes, well, so which line governs in terms of inheriting the throne? And they have different rules about that. Now, one of the rules about that is, you can’t be adopted in England, if you get adopted into the royal family, you do not inherit the throne, at least not the way the law is configured currently. But legal adoption does not count. However, that was not the case in Rome. In fact, in Rome in the first century, multiple Roman emperors were adopted. So, like, Tiberius was adopted, well, Augustus, the first emperor, he was adopted by Julius Caesar. Then Tiberius was adopted by, Augustus. Caligula was adopted by Tiberius. Nero was adopted by Claudius. And so you had lots of adoption going on. And in their culture, adoption would let you, pass on offices and things like that. So what about Israelite culture? Well, we don’t have a complete knowledge of how their rules worked. We do know that there were sometimes interruptions in the line and disagreements in the line of inheritance. like when one of the kings of Judah dies and his mother, Athaliah takes over and slaughters the entire she thinks royal family so that she’ll have no. I mean, she’s killing her own grandsons so she can be queen, except she missed one. And they kept him hidden for six years, and then they overthrew her and restored the line. So that was like an interruption in the line. And, you know, that kind of thing happens in the history of royalty. We do know that it’s normally primogeniture, of the main line. Whoever the eldest son is of the first wife, that son tends to inherit. But we also know fathers could make other arrangements. Like, for example, and you see this repeatedly in Genesis, where one of the fathers, one of the patriarchs, will pick his younger son to be his primary inheritor rather than the eldest son. So they could overrule the principle of primogenitor, which is the eldest son inherits in a special way. So remember that fathers get to do that. Okay. What about Jesus? Did he have a human father?
Cy Kellett: Not.
Jimmy Akin: Did he have a human father? Yes or no?
Cy Kellett: Yes. Okay.
Caller: Yes.
Jimmy Akin: Oh. So who was his human father?
Cy Kellett: Of an adoptive kind.
Jimmy Akin: Oh, of an adoptive kind.
Cy Kellett: Well, I mean, I was going to make a qualification, but then you jumped on me.
Jimmy Akin: Okay, okay. I’ll give you that. So Jesus does not have a biological father. So he would not inherit, under the ordinary rule. But he does if you require biological descent. But. He is the legal son of Joseph. And what we don’t know in Israel is if you do the adoption, would that count for inheritance? So that’s an open question. There’s also another related issue, which is. Well, even though he couldn’t have inherited biologically through Joseph, it’s possible that Mary was a descendant of David. in Romans 1, St. Paul says that Mary was. Was, that Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh. And if you take that to mean biological flesh, well, then the only place he could have gotten it is for Mary. The problem is, according to the flesh may just mean according to human nature, and it may incorporate human institutions like adoption. the other problem is that, Mary we know was some kind of a fairly close relative of Elizabeth, who was a Levite rather than a member of the tribe of Judah. And so there’s a question about, well, was Mary a Levite or a Judahite? And there are people who advocate both sides of that. But we can say with confidence that Jesus was at least legally descended from, David. And in more than one way. This is why I mentioned the multiple lines of King Charles, the current king of England, because he is descended from William the Conqueror in more than one way. Well, the same thing is true of Jesus. And you see that now it would be true anyway because Davidites would tend to marry other Davidites. But you can see it in Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel because they both give us genealogies, and they both trace Jesus’s descent from David, but they trace Jesus descent from David in different ways. In Matthew, Jesus is descended from David through his son Solomon, the next king. But if you look in Luke, Jesus is descended from David through a different son named Nathan. Now, okay, well, that’s certainly possible, just like King Charles is descended from William the Conqueror in more than one way. But why would the gospels choose to record this descent in more than one way? We don’t know for sure, but here is a possibility. At the time of the Babylonian exile, there was a king of Judah named Jeconiah, and Jeconiah had displeased God. And God said, write this man down as childless. None of his sons will inherit. And he was a descendant of Solomon. And so, you could take that prophecy in different ways. It could mean none of his immediate sons, are going to be, king. But after that first generation, well, maybe he’d have a grandson who could be king. It doesn’t necessarily mean none of his descendants ever will be king, just none of his immediate sons. But other people didn’t take it that way. Other people took it as Jeconiah is disqualified or all of his sons are disqualified and all of his descendants are disqualified. And so it could be that Matthew preserves the line of descent through Solomon in order to make it clear that if you think Solomon is the right line, Jesus qualifies. And Luke could have preserved the Nathan line to make it clear that if you think the Solomon line is entirely disqualified, don’t worry. Still qualifies because he’s descended from David through Nathan. So we have both, lines pointing to Jesus, and whichever one, he would be qualified. No matter how you interpret the prophecy of Jeconiah, there’s still, though, that matter of we don’t know about the adoption situation because Jesus was clearly legally adopted into the line of David. He might have biological ancestry from David through Mary or, you know, but even if you assume that it wasn’t through biological. It wasn’t through the mother’s line that people inherited the kingship. It was through, the male line that people inherited the kingship. But remember what I said about fathers getting to choose who inherits?
Cy Kellett: Yes. Oh, yeah.
Jimmy Akin: Did Jesus have a father who determined he was going to inherit? Maybe not a human father.
Cy Kellett: He certainly did. One perfectly capable of making that choice. Yes.
Jimmy Akin: So his father and our Father in heaven made that determination, regardless of what the laws at the time would have said.
Cy Kellett: Jimmy, thank you. Thank you very much. We’ll, take a break.