Who’s Your Daddies?

By Daniel out of the Lion's Den ~

I’m reading Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion. Now, I have read the entire Bible, and most assuredly have read the books of Matthew and Luke many times over. And due to enduring countless Advent and Christmas Eve services, I have listened many more times to Matthew chapter 1 ad nauseum, and Luke chapter 3 to a lesser extent... which is why this astonishes me: that I have never heard of or noticed what Dawkins describes in his chapter ‘Arguments for God’s Existence’ in the section ‘The Argument From Scripture’. He points out that the genealogy of Jesus documented in Matthew is markedly different than the one documented in Luke. Specifically, the lineage from King David to Joseph (the husband of Mary) not only contains predominantly different names, but Matthew has 26 generations from David and Joseph, while Luke has 41!

Needing to see for myself, I created the following table from the two books, showing the discrepant patriarchal lineages from David to Joseph. Since Matthew lists the lineage in descending order, while Luke’s genealogy is in ascending order, the side-by-side comparison is needed to make the contrast more evident. If this isn’t enough to indict the Bible for having contradictions, then nothing is.

The way theologians have rationalized this gaffe reveals the epitome of blind faith and refusal to believe that the inerrant Word of God does indeed contain errors. Theologians have assigned this discrepancy to the following causes:

1) The Old Testament law of taking your brother’s wife when he dies. So one list is a step-father list? And every single father, save two, died and a brother took the wife? This still doesn’t explain the 26 vs 41 generations. Comical…

2) The corresponding names are actually different versions of the same name. That is quote a stretch. But the non-corresponding names? Even more comical…

3) The Matthew list is the genealogy of Joseph, while the Luke list is the genealogy of Mary. What are we, fools? The Luke list starts with Joseph!

Why is this important? I’m sure that all of us have been told from the pulpit on many occasions concerning the importance of the genealogy of Jesus in the book of Matthew. “This proves that Jesus is the Messiah, the rightful heir to the throne! The King of the Jews, the Son of David, the Lion of Judah!” I suppose the Matthew genealogy is addressed most often because it starts out the New Testament. The Luke passage is somewhat ignored... on purpose? Might this be an indication of what I suspect, that the highly educated seminarians preaching at us week after week are cognizant of the contradictions in the Bible, but refuse to point them out due to the ramifications of what doing so might have on the collection plate?

I suppose to my credit, I have, over the years, considered Dawkin’s follow up thought – what does the lineage of Joseph matter at all, since his sperm did not fertilize the egg cell from Mary’s ovary that produced the baby Jesus (allegedly)?

Comments

THE FRIGHTENING FACE

By David Andrew Dugle ~ O ctober. Halloween. It's time to visit the haunted house I used to live in. When I was five my dad was able to build a big modern house. Moving in before it was complete, my younger brother and I were sleeping in a large unfinished area directly under the living room. It should have been too new to be a haunted house, but now and then I would wake up in the tiny, dark hours and see the blurry image of a face, or at least what I took to be a face, glowing, faintly yellow, high up on the wall near the ceiling. I'm not kidding! Most nights it didn’t appear at all. But when it did show itself, at first I thought it was a ghost and it scared me like nothing else I’d ever seen. But the face never did anything; unmoving, it just stayed in that one spot. Turning on the lights would make it disappear, making my fears difficult to explain, so I never told anyone. My Sunday School teachers had always told me to be good because God was just behind m

The Blame Game or Shit Happens

By Webmdave ~ A relative suffering from Type 1 diabetes was recently hospitalized for an emergency amputation. The physicians hoped to halt the spread of septic gangrene seeping from an incurable foot wound. Naturally, family and friends were very concerned. His wife was especially concerned. She bemoaned, “I just don’t want this (the advanced sepsis and the resultant amputation) to be my fault.” It may be that this couple didn’t fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation. It may be that their choice of treatment was less than ideal. Perhaps their home diabetes maintenance was inconsistent. Some Christians I know might say the culprit was a lack of spiritual faith. Others would credit it all to God’s mysterious will. Surely there is someone or something to blame. Someone to whom to ascribe credit. Isn’t there? A few days after the operation, I was talking to a man who had family members who had suffered similar diabetic experiences. Some of those also suffered ea

Reasons for my disbelief

By Rebekah ~ T here are many layers to the reasons for my disbelief, most of which I haven't even touched on here... When I think of Evangelical Christianity, two concepts come to mind: intense psychological traps, and the danger of glossing over and missing a true appreciation for the one life we know that we have. I am actually agnostic when it comes to a being who set creation in motion and remains separated from us in a different realm. If there is a deistic God, then he/she doesn't particularly care if I believe in them, so I won't force belief and instead I will focus on this one life that I know I have, with the people I can see and feel. But I do have a lot of experience with the ideas of God put forth by Evangelical Christianity, and am confident it isn't true. If it's the case god has indeed created both a physical and a heavenly spiritual realm, then why did God even need to create a physical realm? If the point of its existence is to evolve to pas

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Search This Blog