Anyway, keep up the good work!

I find two interesting things about this quote (this being scripture that would have influenced Paul’s and other early Christians expectations of a Davidic messiah). The first is that most modern translations of “I will raise up your sperm after you, which shall come from your belly” have been adjusted to instead say “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood” (or something along these lines), which tailors the prophecy to a modern Christian interpretation that removes the weirdness about it (the weirdness being that sperm would be raised up from the belly of David after he died, as opposed to simply referring to a descendant).

The second thing is more telling in how an early Christian would interpret this, and something you touch on. If the referenced eternal throne was clearly not established on earth (which would have been obvious by then to Jews/Christians living in the first century), then where was it, or where would they have conceived it existed? The answer is found by looking to where Jesus resides post resurrection, something any Christian today should be able to tell you: in the heavens, at the right hand of the father, upon his cosmic throne. So if the second part was (and is currently) determined by Christians as referring to a heavenly, cosmic throne, then it actually follows that they could and would have conceived the first part as also referring to heavenly, cosmic events. Not only is this plausible, it’s actually logical.

The peer reviewed literature most commonly agrees the genealogies are symbolic (they are in essence a bible code with a meaning only insiders were given). This is why so many manuscripts have so many wanton alterations and changes. It’s not as if someone had access to better genealogical records for Jesus. So why keep changing which names are there and why? Why did Luke completely revise the one in Matthew? Etc. (And 1 Tim. 1 and Tit. 3 both admit to Christians faking up numerous different genealogies for Jesus in “myths” of him.)

The names mean things, and communicate something about the Gospel. Scholars disagree on just what the names meant, but many attempts at interpreting the various family trees are in the literature. In a sense it’s like the fig tree: there is no sane or logical reason why even supernatural Jesus would curse one for not bearing figs out of season; it’s obvious the author did not intend that story to be taken literally. Likewise the genealogies. They are a smokescreen. For people who want to take the text literally, thus misdirecting them so they can’t be saved by the text (the “outsiders” Jesus condemns as fooled and thus damned in Mark 4; in contrast to the “insiders” who are told the secret real meaning of everything). One has to be saved by joining and becoming an insider. Being taught then the secrets, the mysteries, of the kingdom of God.

It’s also possible the genealogies served the double truth model, which dominated in the second century and after, over the damning of outsiders model, as I show Origen explaining in OHJ Element 14 (Ch. 4). In that model, as Origen outright says, the literal text is for the weak and unenlightened, to save them efficiently; while the real meaning is understood by the ranking enlightened initiates of sufficient education. As such, the genealogies could have been composed to “Save the weak” rather than to “Exclude the outsider.” In short, someone who needed to believe in a savior with the right pedigree (by adoption, Joseph’s stepson would still be heir to the throne: the Christian model of spiritual descendance is thus symbolized even here), would be saved by the genealogy being there; everyone else would be saved by understanding the esoteric cosmic truth of what God really did.

And finally, the first genealogy was invented by Matthew, who is creating Jesus as a new Moses, complete with new Pentateuch (the Five Great Discourses). It’s long been noted (most especially by MacDonald and Brodie but they aren’t alone) that Matthew is in many ways a sophisticated rewrite of Deuteronomy. But as a “new Moses,” Moses had a genealogy (in the Pentateuch) and was adopted and made an heir to a throne (albeit by the Pharaonic family, the reverse of what happened to Jesus). In fact most mythical heroes, pagan and Jewish, had elaborate genealogies students in school often were made to memorize. It was a thing. An expected trapping of any hero myth. Luke then is trying to rewrite Matthew into a Gentile-friendly super-Gospel that encourages cooperation between them and Jewish Christianity rather than exclusion or hostility, so he uses his rewrite of the genealogy to be a part of that message as well.

These explanations are not mutually exclusive. But it’s evident the genealogies were not created to establish biological descent. Just as the withering of the fig tree story was not created because someone remembered it happening (and “there must be a withered tree we can go see to confirm it”). The purpose was other. And possibly multiple. And whatever it was, as we did not get to be inducted into the Christian mysteries in the communities whose Gospels these were, we may never know what those purposes were. That oral lore was lost forever.