Jesus’ Genealogy Errors/Contradictions

They are fictitious genealogies written independently of each other, so it’s little surprise they don’t match. See Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah.
Like Matthew, Luke appears to have used a numerological formula to build his list. It features about 77 generations (depending on how you count them and which manuscript you use), and multiples of seven seem to have some significance. For example, if we make Adam #1, we get:

Primeval period: Adam to Abraham (21 generations)
Pre-monarchy: Isaac to David (14 generations)
Monarchy: Nathan to Salathiel (21 generations)
Post-monarchy: Zerubbabel to Jesus (21 generations)
It has also been noticed that Enoch is the 7th generation, and 70 generations come after him, bringing to mind the prophecy of 1 Enoch 10:12 that there would be 70 generations from Enoch’s day until the judgment:
…bind them for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, until the day of their judgment and consummation, until the everlasting judgment is consummated.
There is also a parallel in 2 Esdras (4 Ezra), which speaks of the age being divided into twelve parts:
For the age is divided into twelve parts, and nine of its parts have already passed, as well as half of the tenth part; so two of its parts remain, besides half of the tenth part. (2 Esdras 14:11–12)
If we take seven generations to be one “part”, then the final part would begin with Jesus in Luke’s genealogy.

Although it is hard to imagine these correspondences being entirely coincidental, there are numerous textual difficulties. Various ancient manuscripts and sources leave out some names, making it difficult to be sure we know what the original said.
In fact, the genealogy is missing entirely from two manuscripts and was not part of the early version of Luke used by the early second-century Marcionites. See Jason BeDuhn, The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon, p. 129.
The contradictions between the two Gospel genealogies are as follows:

1. Luke has Jesus descended from David through his son Nathan; Matthew’s genealogy goes through Solomon.
2. The genealogies converge again at Salathiel, but give him different fathers: Jechoniah according to Matthew, but the otherwise-unattested Neri according to Luke.
3. The genealogies once again diverge after Zerubbabel, with no names in common until Joseph. (It’s particularly problematic that Joseph’s immediate ancestors — father, paternal grandfather, etc. — differ from those in Matthew’s genealogy.)
4. Luke puts significantly more generations between David and Salathiel and between Zerubbabel and Joseph. Chronologically, his genealogy is somewhat more plausible than Matthew’s.
5. Luke has two unknown names, Admin and Arni, where Matthew has Aram.
6. Luke has Sala as Nahshon’s son where Matthew has Salmon.

Luke’s Biblical Sources
It appears that Luke, unlike Matthew, was not familiar with Chronicles. This would explain why he does not know of Zerubbabel’s supposed Solomonic ancestry (which appears only in 1 Chronicles in the Old Testament) and has to create a pedigree of his own. It also explains why he doesn’t know who the sons of Zerubbabel were as listed by the Chronicler.

On the other hand, it is apparent that he used the Greek Septuagint of Genesis (and not the Hebrew Genesis or Chronicles) to construct his genealogy from Adam to Abraham. The surest sign of this is the inclusion of “Cainan” at #65, who is found in the LXX of Genesis 10 and 11 but not the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT):
Luke 3:35–36: …Sala, son of Cainan, son of Arphaxad…

Gen. 10:24 (MT): Arpachshad became the father of Shelah…
Gen. 11:12 (MT): When Arpachshad had lived thirty-five years, he became the father of Shelah.

Gen. 10:24 (LXX): Arphaxad became the father of Cainan…
Gen. 11:12 (LXX): Arphaxad lived one hundred thirty-five years and became the father of Cainan.
What inspired Luke to make David’s son Nathan the forerunner of Jesus? Although some have suggested an allusion to the prophet Nathan, the reason I find most compelling is that Luke used LXX Zechariah 12 — a prophecy about a siege against Jerusalem and the city’s salvation — as a source. Verses 12–13 in the LXX read:
And the land shall mourn, tribes by tribes, the tribe of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves, the tribe of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves, the tribe of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by them- selves, the tribe of Simeon by itself and their wives by themselves.
And what do we find in Luke’s genealogy, but the following names: David (#42), Nathan (#41), Simeon (#34), and Levi (#33). The same two pairs of names, separated by seven generations. It is not surprising that Luke would have been drawn to this passage, for it seems very likely that the preceding verse 10 was understood by early Christians as an allusion to Christ:
And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
Anachronistic Names
An additional factor that prevents the reader from interpreting Luke’s genealogy as “genuine” (or at least genuinely old) is the appearance of personal names based on the tribal patriarchs. In addition to the aforementioned Levi and Simeon, the names “Judah” and “Joseph” also appear during the monarchic period between David and Salathiel. However, these names were not applied to individuals in pre-exilic Israel. udah, Levi, and many of the other tribal names were not originally personal names; only much later, once stories establishing the fictive tribal founders had been first invented and then widely popularized, did people begin adopting those names for their children. Levi, Simeon, Judah and Joseph cannot be dated as personal names to any time earlier than the Hellenistic period. Like the deliberate allusion to Zechariah 12, this shows that Luke’s genealogy is a literary invention. (Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, p. 295.)
Repetitions and other oddities

Various scholars have noticed repeating sequences of similar names in Luke’s list. For example:

This too is evidence of the genealogy’s artificial nature.

Six men have nearly the same name: Matthat, Mattathias (twice), Maath, Maththat, and Mattatha. These names are apparently associated with the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Judaea prior to Herod the Great.³ Mattathias, of course, was a Levite priest who helped launch the Maccabean revolt, and he plays a prominent role in 1 Maccabees.

A great many of the names in the monarchical and post-monarchical sections are absent from the Bible and are rare or unattested in other Jewish texts: Melchi, Esli, Naggai, Rhesa, Addi, Cosam, Elmadam, Jorim, Jonam, Melea, Menna, etc.
Zerubbabel the Prince?
Several scholars have noted that “Rhesa” might be a transliteration of rēšā, Aramaic for “prince”. This leads to speculation that a Greek source behind Luke’s genealogy (or part of it) might have been based on an Aramaic list that read “Zerubbabel the Prince” followed by his son Hananiah (1 Chr. 3:19). As the idea goes, the Greek copyist turned “prince” into the name Rhesa, and “Hananiah” got corrupted to “Joanan”. Not impossible, but it seems like a bit of a stretch.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to know what to make of most of the names in Luke’s genealogy. Catholic scholar Raymond E. Brown, in his famous book The Birth of the Messiah, concludes:
What one may say with surety of Luke’s list is that, in part, it is artificially arranged in numerical patterns of seven and that it contains enough inaccuracies and confusions to suggest a popular provenance (rather than an archival provenance) among Greek-speaking Jews. (p. 93)

…This means that, while the two NT genealogies tell us how to evaluate Jesus, they tell us nothing certain about his grandparents or his great-grandparents. The message about Jesus, son of Joseph, is not that factually he is also (grand) son of either Jacob (Matthew) or of Eli (Luke) but that theologically he is “son of David, son of Abraham” (Matthew), and “Son of God” (Luke). (p. 94)
Genealogies in Greek and Jewish Literature
There is nothing unusual about the use of invented genealogies in Greek and Jewish works of that period. The historian Flavius Josephus, for example, provides a genealogy for himself that is clearly full of exaggeration and inconsistencies — if not outright falsification — in an attempt to demonstrate royal Maccabean blood.

Even having multiple contradictory genealogies was nothing unusual in the Greek world. Contrary accounts of Agamemnon’s parentage were given by numerous authors — and in one case, by the same author. (Apollodorus gives his parents as Atreus and Aerope in Epitome III.12, but as Pleisthenes and Aerope in Library III.2.) The father of King Theseus of Athens was said to be Aigeus in The Iliad but the god Poseidon in The Odyssey.

An interesting case from Jewish literature can be found in the deuterocanonical book of Tobit. When the archangel Raphael is introduced to Tobias’s father, he is forced to invent a suitable human genealogy for himself in order to be accepted! (Tobit 5:11–13) The absurdity of an angel claiming biological ancestry makes the encounter a humorous one, but is the supernaturally conceived Jesus not in the same boat?
Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 2nd Edition, p. 38.
These examples are from Gerard Mussies, “Parallels to Matthew’s Version of the Pedigree of Jesus”, Novum Testamentum 28/1 (1986), pp. 43–44.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1560666
Errors in the genealogies (Prof. Miller)
Luke’s Genealogy and the Old Testament

Peculiarities in Luke‘s Genealogy

Two sequences of names look curiously similar.

• Jesus, Eliezer, Jorim, Maththat, Levi (3 :29) and
• Jesus, Joseph, Eli, Maththat, Levi (3:23-24)
  Six names are so similar that they might be variations of the same name.
• Maththat (v.24) Mattathiah (v.25) Maath (v.26)
• Mattathiah (v.26) Maththat (v.29) Mattatha (v.31).

Historical Problems in Luke’s List

• 3:27 Zerubbabel, son oj Shealtiel The Hebrew and Greek versions of 1 Chr 3:19 differ here. In the Hebrew text, Zerubbabel is the nephew of Shealtiel; in the Septuagint, he is his son, as in Luke and Matthew, as well as in notices in Ezra 3:2, Neh 12:1, and Hag 1:l.
• 3:27 Shealtiel, son oJNeri In Matthew, Shealtiel is the son of Jeconiah, as per 1 Chr 3: 17. Neri is unknown.
• 3:29-30 Levi, Simeon,Judah,Joseph These pre-exilic figures are named after the patriarchs of four of the twelve tribes of Israel. However, there is no evidence that Jews named their sons in this fashion until after the Exile.
• 3:32 Sala The Old Testament calls him Salma and Salmon. Sala is another attested form of the same name.
• 3:33 Amminadab, son oj Admin, son oj Arni, son oJHezron Admin and Arni are unknown. In the Old Testament there is only one ances tor, Ram, between Amminadab and Hezron (1 Chr 2:9-10). See also the com ment on Matt 1 :3-4, p. 78.
• 3:35-36 Shelah, son oJKenan, son if Arpachshad In 1 Chr 1: 18, 24 Shelah is the son of Arpachshad, as in the Hebrew text of Gen 10:24 and 11:12-13. However, in the Greek text of Genesis, as in Luke, Shelah is the son of Kenan.

1. Matthew’s Genealogy and The Old Testament

1:8 Joram,father of Uzziah 77 This leaves out three generations. According to the Bible (e.g., 1 Chr 3:11-12). Matthew may have been confused by the similarity in the Greek names for Ahaziah (spelled variously as Ochozia, Ozeia, or Ozias) and Uzziah (spelled as Azariah or Ozias). All these variant spellings exist in ancient copies of the Septuagint, so it is possible that Matthew was using a list in which Ahaziah and Uzziah had identical names in Greek. It was a common copying error to omit material between two identical or very similar words. The copyist looked away from the page to write a phrase or two; when he looked back his eye would catch the second word and continue for ward, inadvertently omitting the words in between. Whole lines could disappear in this fashion. If the two above names were spelled the same in the list Matthew was copying, he may have looked away when he got to the first Ozias (Ahaziah), looked back and spotted the second Ozias (Uzziah) without noticing that he had missed three names. It is also possible that Matthew intentionally deleted the three kings between Joram and Uzziah, so as not to have more than fourteen genera tions in this section of the genealogy. 1: 11 Josiah, father ofJeconiah and his brothers This leaves out one generation. Josiah was actually the father of Jehoiakim and the grandfather ofJeconiah, who had only one brother. Perhaps Matthew deliberately skipped a generation, in order to keep the num ber of kings at fourteen. Or perhaps he confused Jeconiah (usually known as Jehoiachin) with Jehoiakim, his father. Jehoiakim had two brothers, Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, who were kings in the tumultous years before Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. Zedekiah was put on the throne by the Babylonians to replace his nephew Jehoiachin, whom they took into exile in Babylon (2 Kgs 24:17).

It would have been easy for Matthew to mistake Jehoiachin for Jehoiakim because the Septuagint, which Matthew used, oddly calls both of them Ioakim. To make mat ters worse, both of them had brothers named Zedekiah. Confused? So was the author of 2 Chronicles, who mistakenly lists Zedekiah, brother ofJehoiachin, as a king (2 Chr 36:10). This error was easy to make, especially since King Zedekiah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, was only two or three years older than the nephew he suc ceeded (compare 2 Kgs 24:8 and 24:18).

Historical Problems in Matthew’s List

1 :3-4 Hezron was the fother of Aram, Aram was the fother of Amminadab The~e two generations cover 400 years. Hezron lived in the time when Jacob’s sons moved to Egypt (Gen 46:12), Amminadab in the time of Moses (Num 1:7). (For the figure of 400 years, see Gen 15:13 and Ex 12:40). In the Hebrew Bible, Hezron was the father of Ram and Ram was the father of Amminadab (1 Chr 2:9-10 and Ruth 4:19). Matthew here relies on 1 Chr 2:9-10 LXX, in which Hezron is father of Ram and Aram, and Aram, not Ram, is the father of Amminadab. To complicate matters further, Ruth 4:19 LXX lists “Arran” as the son of Hezron and father of Amminadab. 1:5 Boaz, whose mother was Rahab Rahab lived in the time ofJoshua’s conquest, 200 years before Boaz. 1: 12 Shealtiel was the fother of Zerubbabel The Hebrew and Greek versions of 1 Chronicles differ on this point. In the Hebrew text, Shealtiel’s brother, Pedaiah, is the father ofZerubbabel (1 Chr 3:18). In the Septuagint (1 Chr 3: 19), as in Matthew and Luke, and according to notices in Ezra 3:2, Neh 12:1, and Hag 1:1, Zerubbabel’s father is Shealtiel. 1: 13 Zerubbabel was the fother of Abiud Abiud is not mentioned among Zerubbabel’s eight children in 1 Chr 3:19-20.

Mistaken Identities

1:7 Asaph (a psalmist, to whom Psalms 50 and 73-83 are ascribed) should be “Asa,” a king (1 Kgs 15:9). Several ancient New Testament copyists corrected Matthew’s mistake. 1:10 Amos (a prophet) should be “Amon,” a king (2 Kgs 21:19; 1 Chr 3:14).

1. Three Times Fourteen?

Matthew claims that the genealogy has three sets of fourteen generations. A simple count show this to be inaccurate (see Box 4.3).

• From Abraham to David there are 14 names, in 13 generations (i.e., 13 begettings).
• From David to the Exile there are 14 generations (although four histori cal generations of kings are missing from Matthew’s list).
• From the Exile to Jesus there are 13 generations (12 if we don’t consider Jesus’ birth to be the result of a begetting). Is this an honest mistake? Probably. Matthew points to the 3 x 14 as a sign of divine providence.

So it’s unlikely that he deliberately miscounted, especially when readers can so easily spot his mistake. If he were trying to deceive, he would have added a name to the third set; after Zerubbabel they are all unknown, so no one would be the wiser. There is no miscount in the second set of names.