But since Matthew and Luke, in their gospels, have handed down to us differing genealogies of Christ, and are thought by many to disagree, and since each of the believers, in ignorance of the truth, has been eager to invent explanations of these passages, come, let us set forth also the account concerning these things which has come down to us—which Africanus, whom we mentioned a little before, recorded in a letter to Aristides on the harmony of the genealogy in the gospels.
Having refuted the opinions of the rest as forced and false, he sets forth the account which he himself had received, in these very words: 「For since the names of the generations in Israel were reckoned either by nature or by law—by nature, by the succession of genuine offspring; by law, when another begat a child in the name of a brother who had died childless (for since no clear hope of resurrection had yet been given, they imitated the future promise by a mortal resurrection, that the name of the deceased might remain unfailing)—
since, then, of those comprised in this genealogy some succeeded their fathers as genuine sons, while others were begotten of one man but reckoned to another by adoption of name, mention was made of both—of those who were the actual begetters and of those who were reckoned as begetters.
Thus neither of the gospels lies, reckoning both nature and law. For the lines of descent were interwoven with one another—that from Solomon and that from Nathan—by the raisings-up of the childless, by second marriages, and by the raising-up of seed; so that the same persons were rightly reckoned at different times as sons of different men, of the reputed fathers in some cases, of the actual ones in others. Hence both accounts are strictly true, coming down to Joseph in a complicated, yet accurate, manner.
But that what is said may be plain, I will relate the interchange of the generations. Reckoning the generations from David through Solomon, Matthan is found third from the end, who begat Jacob the father of Joseph. And from Nathan the son of David, according to Luke, likewise third from the end is Melchi, whose son was Heli the father of Joseph; for Joseph was the son of Heli, the son of Melchi.
Joseph, then, being our object, it must be shown how each man is recorded as his father—both Jacob who traces his descent from Solomon and Heli who traces his from Nathan, each deriving his line; and first, how these very men, Jacob and Heli, were two brothers; and before that, how their fathers, Matthan and Melchi, being of different lines, are shown to be grandfathers of Joseph.
Now then, Matthan and Melchi, having in turn married the same woman, begat children who were brothers by the same mother, since the law did not forbid a woman who was widowed—whether divorced or by the death of her husband—to be married to another.
Of Estha (for that is the name by which the woman has been handed down), Matthan first, who traced his descent from Solomon, begat Jacob; and when Matthan had died, Melchi, who traced his descent to Nathan—being of the same tribe but of a different line, as I said before—having married her in her widowhood, had a son, Heli.
Thus we shall find Jacob and Heli, though of two different lines, to be brothers by the same mother; of whom the one, Jacob, when his brother Heli had died childless, took his wife and begat of her a third son, Joseph—by nature and in the proper sense his own son. Wherefore also it is written, 「And Jacob begat Joseph.」 But by law he was the son of Heli; for Jacob, being his brother, raised up seed to him.
Wherefore the genealogy concerning him will not be invalidated, which Matthew the evangelist reckons up, saying, 「And Jacob begat Joseph」; while Luke, conversely, says, 「who was, as was supposed (for he adds this too), the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Melchi.」 For it was not possible to express the birth according to law more distinctly; and as to the word 「begat,」 in such a manner of begetting children he kept silence to the very end, carrying the reckoning back, by way of resolution, as far as Adam, the son of God.
Nor indeed is this without proof or hastily devised; for the kinsmen of the Saviour according to the flesh—whether out of a desire for display or simply by way of instruction, but in any case speaking the truth—have handed down these things also: that Idumaean brigands, having fallen upon Ascalon, a city of Palestine, carried off from a temple of Apollo which stood by the walls, along with other spoils, Antipater, the son of a certain Herod, a temple-slave, as a captive; and since the priest could not pay a ransom for his son, Antipater, brought up in the customs of the Idumaeans, was afterward befriended by Hyrcanus the high priest of Judaea.
And having gone on an embassy to Pompey on behalf of Hyrcanus, and having freed for him the kingdom which was being curtailed by his brother Aristobulus, Antipater himself had the good fortune to be styled procurator of Palestine. But Antipater, treacherously murdered out of envy at his great prosperity, was succeeded by his son Herod, who afterward, by a decree of Antony and of the senate of Augustus, was adjudged to reign over the Jews; whose sons were Herod and the other tetrarchs. These things, indeed, are common also to the histories of the Greeks.
And since up to that time the genealogies of the Hebrews were on record in the archives—including those of the proselytes traced back as far as Achior the Ammonite and Ruth the Moabitess, and of the mixed multitude who came out together from Egypt—Herod, since nothing of the lineage of the Israelites contributed anything to him, and goaded by the consciousness of his own ignoble birth, burned the registers of their genealogies, thinking he would appear well-born if no one else were able, from a public record, to trace his line back to the patriarchs or proselytes, or to those mixed people called geioras.
A few of the careful, then, having kept private records for themselves—either remembering the names, or otherwise possessing copies of them—took pride in preserving the memory of their noble descent. Among these happened to be those mentioned before, called the Desposyni (the Lord's people), because of their kinship with the Saviour's family; who, coming from the Jewish villages of Nazara and Cochaba to the rest of the land, expounded the foregoing genealogy as far as they could reach, from the Book of Days.
Whether, then, it be thus or otherwise, no one else, as I at least think—and as every fair-minded man would judge—could find a clearer explanation. And let this one suffice, even if it is not supported by external testimony, since we have nothing better or truer to allege. The gospel, at all events, is in every way true.」
And at the close of the same letter he adds these words: 「Matthan, descended from Solomon, begat Jacob. When Matthan had died, Melchi, descended from Nathan, by the same woman begat Heli. Therefore Heli and Jacob were brothers by the same mother. When Heli had died childless, Jacob raised up seed to him, begetting Joseph—by nature his own son, but by law the son of Heli. Thus Joseph was the son of both.」 So far Africanus.
And indeed, Joseph being thus genealogized, Mary too is virtually shown, together with him, to be of the same tribe—if indeed, according to the law of Moses, it was not permitted to intermarry with other tribes; for he enjoins that a man be joined in marriage to one of the same district and the same kindred, so that the inheritance of the line might not be transferred from tribe to tribe. So let these things, then, stand thus.