The first known harmonist of the Gosp«^ls is Tatian, a pupil of Justin Martyr. Hia Diatessaron, however, avoided the difficulty by omitting the genealogies altogether. Half a century later the problem was courageously coufronted by Africanus, a careful scholar, for many years bisliop of Nicopolis (previously Emmaus) in Palestine. His Letter to Aristides (see Spitta, Der Brief det Jul. Africanus, Halle, 1877 ; Routh, Bel. Hoc. ii. pp. 22S-237 ; Ante-Nlcene Fathers, vi. p. 12.5 ; and Eus. HE i. 7) proposed a solution of the dilliculty which quickly gained geueral acceptance in the Church, and tor 12 centuries retained undisputed supremacy. The theory was not derived, aa Eusebius wrongly inferred, from the desposyni, but is expressly stated by Africanus himself (§ 5) to be 'unsupported by testimony.' It assumes a levirate marriage (Dt 25'- °) in the case of either Jacob or Heli, Joseph's father according to Mt and Lk respectively, the son of the widow by his surviving brother being reckoned a son of the deceased in one or the other genealogy. This explanation requires the further assumption that the brothers Heli and Jacob had difl'erent fathers. The objections are overwhelming.
1. The theor>' does not exonerate the evangelists, since on« pedigree or the other uses terms of fihal relationship in fe fictitious and illegal sense. 2. Granting, against all probabihty, the possible continuance of the levirate law, in the case here presupposed — that of uterine brothers — it would not apply (Maimonides, Jabom Ve Chnlitza, c 1). 3. Granting even the applicability of the assumption in the case of Joseph, it cannot reasonably be introduced a second time to accoimt for the fact that Shealtiel, f. of Zerubbabel, is at the same time 8. of Jechonias (Mt) and of Neri (Lk). Yet this expedient (so W. H. Mill, Pantheutic PHnciplcs, p. 105) is less absurd ti-uux to assume, with Augustine (followed by Hottinger and Vose,, that at the same period of Jewish history there were two (Hottinger three) different fathers of Davidic lineage, each bearing the rare name Shealtiel, and having each a son bearing the rare name Zerubbabel. 4. If our own certainly more accurate text • be followed, instead of that of Africanus, and Matthan and Matthat, paternal grandfather of Joseph according to Mt and Lk respectively, be identified, as is probable, the expedient of a levirate marriage by uterine brothers must be introduced, not twice only, but three times over.
Under the weight of such inherent and extreme improbabilities the Africanian theory of harmoni- zation, after suffering various modifications at the hands of later harmonists, has long since broken down, and is to-day universally abandoned.
The alternative harmonistic theory owes its currency to Annius of Viterbo, c. A.D. 1490, an** " See WH, Gr. Test. App. p. 67.
GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST
GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHEIST 139
was widely accepted in the time of the Reforma- tion. It has still an adherent of high repute in the person ol the veteran NT scholar B. Weiss, who in his Lehen Jesu (i. 205, 2nd ed.) puts it in its most favourable light. It assumes that the pedigree of Lk is that, not of Joseph, but of Mary, overcoming the sense of Lk 3^ ii>v vlSs, ujj evofxi'^eroy ^lwffT)(p toO 'HXel, (C.T.X., hy various expedients. Thus the clause was rendered ' being the son (as was supposed of Josopli) of Heli,' i.e. being supposed to be the .son of Jo.scpli, but being in reality the grandsun of Heli ; or the Tov was translated 'son-iu-hiw' (so Holmes, ' Cieneal. of Jesus Christ' in Kitto's Eiuijcl.^ ; Robinson, Harmony of Gospch, pp. 183-185, ct al.), or 'adopted son' (so Wetstein, Delitzsch, ei al., following Augustine). Weiss (following F. Gomar, de Geneal. Christi ; J. Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. vol. iii. p. 54 [ed. Gandell] ; G. J. Voss, de J. Chr. Geneal. ; and Yardley, The Genealogies of Christ) projio.-ies to regard the names as parallel, not con.secutive. The list then would he, not a pedi- gree at all, but a huge parenthesis between dv vl6s {v.'-^} and ToO BeoO (v.^).
The chief objection to thia theory in all its forms can hardly be more convincinj^ly expressed than by citing the naive admission of its advocate, Holmes (in tlic art. above mentioned, p. S«i), >if the fatal weakness of 'all tiieories,' meaning harmon- utic Llienries : ' If it be objected that this table [LliJ is made out as litcndly as the other, in Joseph's nartie,* and that we violate the literal statement of the evantjclist if we transfer the line to Mary, we answer, that as Joseph cannot have had two fathers, which yet the genealogies seem literally to assign to him (Mt l^^^ Lk 3'-<), some explanatory accommodation is necessarj' to all theories.'
The confession of violence to the text is not without reason. It is incredible that wof can mean both ' son ' and ' grandson ' in the same breatli, as in the first of the proposed renderings :t equally incredible that in the same connexion too should stand once for ' son-in-law ' and the other 75 times for ' son ' ; while tne suggestion that the genealogy is not intended for a gene- alogy, but merely a list of names of persons of whom Jesus might have oeen considered the son, though in reality the Son of God, will convince no candid thinker.