Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Birth Account in Matthew and Luke

By Gabriel Rise The book of Matthew begins with Jesus lineage. Maybe it was unnecessary, but I compared Jesus lineage in Matthew with chronicles in the Old Testament (1Chronicles 1-3). I just wanted to ensure the reliability of Matthew. I must admit that the family tree is from Abraham till Joseph, Jesus father. So, the first difference in Matthew 1:8, it is told Jehoram the father of Uzziah and in 1Chronicles 3:11 Jehoram had a son, Ahaziah. Than in Matthew 1:9 Uzziah had a son Jotham and in Old Testament (1Chr3:11,12) Ahaziah-Joash- Amaziah- Azariah- Jotham. We can see that three generations are lost. Look further - Josiah the father of Jeconiah (Mt1:11) and Josiah Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin (a variant of Jeconiah) his son (1Chr 3:15,16). Also in 2Kings24:6 we have the confirmation, that Jeconiah was Jehoiakims son, not Josiahs one. And in Matthew1:12 its told that Shealtiel was Zerubbabels father but in 1Chronicles3:17-19 its told that Shealtiel had a brother, Pedaiah and Pedaiah had a son, Zerubbabel. And here we have an interesting thing in xEzra5:2 we read that Zerubbabel was Shealtiels son (the Matthew version). But further Im lost, because there are no names named in Matthew in the Old Testament. So that is what we have with lineage in Matthew. Lets see the story of birth of Christ in Matthew. From Matthew we know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea (Mt2:1) during the time of King Herod. Herod wanted to kill king of Jews and ordered to kill boys in Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. So Joseph went with his family to Egypt and stayed there until the die of Herod; when King had died Joseph came back, but being frightened he went to Nazareth in Galilee (Mt2: 14,15,22,23). Here we have such story. Do you know what I noticed reading Matthew? I noticed that Matthew often recollects words of prophets (Micah5:2, Hosea11:1, Jeremiah31:15, Isiah11:1,10) and uses numbers (Mt1:17) as evidence. Do you know why? Because Matthew wrote for Jewish people and his mission was to convince them that Jesus was the Promised Messiah, king of the Jews, the descendant of David. And I repeat that maybe it was unnecessary to analyze the lineage of Jesus, but it was interesting for me, how Matthew consulted with task of showing Jews that Jesus was really the descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David. And the mistakes, which I listed above, show that Matthew has not ideally coped with the problem. When I read The New Testament I turn a deaf ear the lineage because of two reasons. Firstly Im not a Jew, so the history of someones antecedents is not interesting for me, but is very important to Jews. And secondly, for me, the person of the twenty first century, this lineage does not have any sense - Matthew conducts a chronological tree up to Joseph, but I know that Joseph was not Jesus blood father. And as Jews knew the prophets promises (Ps131:11, Isaih11:1,10), it is another proof that Matthew wrote to make Jews believe him. Let us consider Jesus lineage in Luke (3:23:38). The chronicles begins from God and goes to Joseph. I compared the lineage in Luke with the chronicles in the Old Testament as I did with the lineage of Matthew. The mistake (I considered the story of Luke from the end) is in Luke3:36 Arphaxad was Shelahs son, not Cainans (Gen11:12; 1Chr1:18). And I stopped on David, because he did have son Nathan (Luke3:31, 1Chr3:5) but there were no the chronicles about offspring of Nathan. So here I stopped. Now about Jesus birth in Luke. In those days Caesar Augustus ordered to make population census (Luke2:1). As Joseph was the descendant of David he took Maria and went to the town of David, Bethlehem (Luke2:4,5). And in Bethlehem Jesus was born (Luke2:7). Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem to present Jesus to God (Luke2:22) and than, after doing everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned home, to Nazareth. The only question I have is why Luke wrote the lineage of Christ. And now Ill observe Matthew and Luke together. I dont consider the lineages in details, because from Solomon in Matthew and Nathan in Luke there were totally different names. Ill consider the birth stories. In Matthew the action occurs in Bethlehem while in Luke Joseph and Maria go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. After the birth of Christ in Matthew the family goes to Egypt and in Luke some days they go to Jerusalem. And here Ill try to mix these stories. I can easily add the fact about census into the version in Matthew, but how can I mix Jerusalem travel and travel to Egypt. If Joseph and his family was both in Jerusalem and Egypt, than first they were in Jerusalem (if on the contrary, Jesus would be some years old when he got to Jerusalem and thats cannot be). So the version Bethlehem-Egypt-Jerusalem I reject and consider the version Bethlehem -Jerusalem-Egypt. This version could be truthful for me if not Matthew2:13 and Luke2:39. In Matthew its notified that in Bethlehem Gods angel told Joseph to go to Egypt and nothing about Jerusalem. Well, maybe Matthew has overlooked this fact, but in Luke its told that after doing everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. Joseph and his family were in Jerusalem to complete everything according to the Law (to present Jesus to God and to offer a sacrifice). It is not told that they have come back home only when have executed orders of the God. Of course, we could mix the story of Matthew and story of Luke but there would not be the guarantee that our story is truthful. No the last thought I have about this theme but the last thought in this thought paper is my view of inspiration. I did not even think that that the Bible contains mistakes, because the writers were inspirited by the Holy Spirit. My view of inspiration was wrong: I thought that those writers of the Bible just wrote word in word everything the Holy Spirit inspired them. But now I understand (maybe this point of view is mistaken too) that the writers (by the way alive people who can be mistaken) got the picture of event and changed it according to their mission. Matthew proved that Jesus was the Messiah, Mark showed wondrous nature of Jesus, Luke stressed Jesus acceptance of gentiles, John described inner meaning of Jesus teaching. In any way I want to comprehend the Bible and I want comprehend it without bias, objectively. Gabriel Rise is an expert writer at Essaycapital.com and a writing couselling department expert at Ma-Dissertations.com. The assistance of their writers is an invaluable input in your future professional growth.EssayCapital.com is dedicated to providing a service that is both top-quality and affordable. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gabriel_Rise http://EzineArticles.com/?Birth-Account-in-Matthew-and-Luke&id=309857 anti seizure ativan sonata zolpidem sleeping pills buy ambien ambien and children ambien dosage lethal
Posted by liliana at 16:35:34 | Permalink | Comments Off