The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Welcome once again to Monday School – “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense You Learned Yesterday!” Just leave your gifts of Forbidden Fruit on my desk, find a seat, and we’ll get started… 

Anyone reading the Gospels of Matthew and Luke will find two separate genealogies for Jesus. These genealogies raise many questions:

1) Why are they there at all? 

Both 1 Timothy 1:4 (“Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith”) and Titus 3:9 (“But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain”) frown on such things, yet there they are in the very same New Testament with ‘em. Luke’s version, in fact, is the longest continuous genealogy in the entire Bible, running as it does from Jesus all the way back to Adam. If any genealogy might be considered “endless” by the author of 1 Timothy, this list of some 75 names would have to be it. Read it at your own risk.

2) Why are they significant? 

Although the Gospels of Matthew and Luke seem to present these genealogies in an attempt to prove that Jesus was a descendant of David (and thus fulfilled one of the prerequisites of the Messiah allegedly prophesied by the Old Testament), the fact that both genealogies lead to Joseph seems to render them utterly irrelevant. After all, these same Gospels tell us that Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father. 

3) Was Jesus the biological son of Joseph despite what Matthew and Luke say about the Virgin Birth? 

Acts 2:30 and13:23, Romans 1:3, 2 Timothy 2:8, Hebrews 2:16, and Revelation 22:16 all seem to indicate that Jesus was, in fact, the result of normal reproductive practices. One can accept what they say, or one can accept the Virgin Birth account. One cannot logically accept both. (Click here for a handy comparison of the relevant verses as presented on the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible site.) 

4) Why do the genealogies in Matthew and Luke conflict so badly? 

Good question! There are no good answers. Some claim that Luke is actually giving the genealogy of Mary rather than Joseph, but that claim doesn’t survive close examination. For one thing, the genealogy itself specifically mentions Joseph, not Mary. For another, all other Biblical genealogies seem to trace descent through the male line – never the female. Finally, Mary is said by Luke to be a cousin of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth described herself as a Levite – not a family descended from David. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible speculates that Luke was a Gentile not familiar with Jewish genealogical records and simply made up the names he gives (p. 940). Matthew seems obsessed with grouping his list of names into sets of 14 even if he has to severely edit the data to make it fit. Why? The only thing that seems clear is that Matthew and Luke wrote up two very different accounts on the basis of very different information or needs – and one must be wrong. (Click here for a comparison of the two genealogies as presented on the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible site.) 

5) Why does some of Matthew’s genealogy conflict with the one presented in 1 Chronicles 3:9-15? 

Another good question with no good answer. Could it be that the Bible is simply a messed up collection of ancient words? If that doesn’t explain all these problems, what does? (Click here for one last handy chart comparison.)

6) What did Jesus think? 

Judging from Mark 12:35-37, Matt. 22:41-46, and Luke 20:41-44, he breezily dismissed the idea that Christ could possibly be a descendant of David. Then again, the scholars behind the so-called Jesus Seminar dismiss all these quotes of his as fictional additions to the Bible. (For a complete look at the methodology and reasoning of these scholars, check out The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus by Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, et. al. [Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993]). 

Bottom line: If someone offers you a Bible or a cookie, take the cookie. Cookies are far easier on the head.