Now, I'm not going to re-hash a list of inconsistencies that someone else compiled, or compile my own list, or anything like that. What I am going to do is go in-depth into one that I found on my own. As evidenced by the title of this page, it involves the genealogies of Jesus. For those of you who don't know what genealogy means, it's basically the tracing back of a person's family, usually by father to grandfather, to great-grandfather, etc. as far back in history as you can go. The ones listed in the Bible for Jesus are inconsistent, and likely incorrect, and not connected with any reality, according to what I've found.

If you've seen this sort of thing before, you might be thinking that this is a regurgitation of the old "Matthew vs. Luke" argument. For those of you who don't know, that's the one that says:

"Hey! Matthew and Luke give two different genealogies of Jesus! What's up with that?"

To which the apologists (people who give explanations - i.e. apologies - for the inconsistencies in the Bible - a practice I don't understand, because wouldn't it stand to reason that if the document were perfect, apologies wouldn't be necessary?) reply:

"It was a mis-print, silly. One of them is Joseph's genealogy, and the other is for Mary. You see, because of the status of women at the time the books were written, a woman couldn't really have a genealogy. They weren't important enough in the male-dominated society."

To which I reply, that's nice. I don't think it's correct, and I certainly don't agree with the practice of belittling women like that, but hey, he's God, and we all know that God's perfect, and he's allowed to do that sort of thing, I mean, be a chauvanist and all. Y'know what I'm saying?

Anyway, I am thinking about mentioning that little bit, as it is a part of this whole mess. It's actually what got me started on this, because, really, the two just don't add up in a number of ways. But who am I to comment about that inconsistency when so many larger minds have already commented on it? I'm just a simple guy with simple thoughts and simple needs. All I want to do is correlate the data, so to speak. And then crack a cold one.

So I asks myself, I says, "Self, if you wanted to find some sort of collaborating evidence, the kind that will fly in a court of law, or in this case, in some coffee house with some stimulated hyperactive minds, where would you look?" And I replied, "Why not look in the Old Testament? You can do some research, and perhaps trace some of the names." And then I said (to myself again), "Wait a minit! Just go to Chronicles! There's a veritable wealth of information there!" And there I went. This rant is the result of what I found.

For easy reference, I've appended the actual verses from the Bible that I used to the bottom of this document. I chose the NIV because it was there, and easy access is the best, I think. I added them so that you can double check me if you like, or if you want to see them for yourself, or if you want to make sure that this isn't something I made up, and I'm inventing verses of my own for the Bible, etc. etc. etc.

For starters, let's take a look at the three versions.

Matthew -

This is by far the easiest to read; it's pretty straightforward. "Bob was the father of Bill, who was the father of Fred, who was the father of Jim, who was the father of. . . " and so on, except that it starts with Abraham, and ends with Jesus. I can only surmise that the author figured that everyone knows the order from Adam to Abraham, so why bother wasting papyrus?

What I find interesting is that at the end, it says, "Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ." Pretty convenient and smart of them to set it up like that. Three sets of fourteen, which is six sets of seven. One set of 42. Three is a pretty important number in numerology, and so is six and seven. I can't remember how, I think 6 is the number of man, 7 is the number of god, and 3 represents the trinity. So, 6 * 7 must mean Jesus is THE real son of god. Or something like that. Which means to me that the author was trying to tailor the list for people who give numerology credence. Since it's easy enough to find evidence that the author dropped a couple of people's names (Joash, Amaziah, Azariah) to fit the scheme, I find this explanation believable. I also find the scheme wrong. Why a perfect god would have someone falsify information like that, I don't know. I mean, we all know that the bible was inspired by god, and men's hands were directed by Him. And who am I to question that?

The author screwed up, though. The total number of generations listed is 41. He must have counted someone twice, somewhere along the line. Maybe in Babylon. After all, things were pretty messed up there, and we all know that Babylon is the city of the devil and all.

Luke -

Luke is also pretty straightforward. The only real difference with it is that it runs backwards, as in starting with Jesus, and going back to Adam. The only real problems I have are that he takes a different route, by saying Joseph was the son of Heli, and deviating until he reaches Nathan, the son of Solomon. There is a point where he mentions a Shealtiel and Zerubabbel, but who they are and why he places them there is beyond me. If they are the same people mentioned in the other two genealogies, something is amiss here.

At Solomon, he links up with the rest, and follows pretty much back to Adam. I say pretty much, because he inserts someone by the name of Cainan into the mix, between Arphraxad and Shelah. It makes for a nice 21 generations from Adam to Abraham, but why do that? Numerology? I don't know and don't care to speculate; the fact is that either Chronicles or Luke is wrong. They contradict each other. And therefore, the Bible is not a perfect document as it is assembled today.

1 Chronicles -

This is perhaps the most confusing to read through. It just goes on and on, and on and on, and on and on about who was related to who, from father to son, and how many sons there are, and if there were any concubines that gave birth to sons, and if there were any daughters of note that gave birth to grandsons, and so on, and so on, and so on. It jumps around, so that at one verse, you are reading about one person's sons, and the next, you are jumping backwards 10 generations to look at the next line. Then you go all the way through that, only to jump back and forth to different people. So you have to go back to find out where you are, and keep track of where you are very carefully. But if you keep at it, you can trace things through to Zerubbabel.

Now, in my attempt at tracing this geneology, I think it reads that Shealtiel fathered Pediah, who fathered Zerubbabel. After all, it does get really confusing at the end of chapter three, and I could have made a mistake. It was at the time of the Babylonian takeover of Jerusalem, and things back then, I'm sure, were confused. Carnage and pillaging, slaughtering and raping, and all that fun stuff that goes along with conquering vanquished enemies. Anyway, the prophets Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai all mention Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel. Since they apparenly lived at that time, I would guess that you could give their references some credence. Maybe there's some bit that I'm missing. Perhaps Pedaiah was killed soon after the birth of Zerubbabel, and Shealtiel took him as his own. I don't know what happened, so I can't say. I wasn't there. All I know is that there is some information missing, or the Bible is inconsistent.

More points of contention: not only the inconsistencies that I've already commented on, but Abiud is not mentioned in Chronicles as a son of Zerubbabel. Yes, it was confusing, and perhaps someone changed his name, or something. Things like that happen in the Bible. Jacob became Israel, Saul became Paul, Abram became Abraham, etc. Who knows? To me it is inconsistent. Also, Josiah fathered Jehoiakim, who fathered Jehoiakin(Notice the emphasis?). Now I know Jehoiakin is sometimes translated as Jeconiah, and I have no problem with that. The problem is, what happened to Jehoiakim? He supposedly got booted from being king (or something like that), but is that any reason to leave him off the list in Matthew? That's like saying Nixon was never president because he resigned in disgrace. Not true, and not very good history.

So there you have it, in a nutshell. The thing that did me a major double take on the bible, and sealed it for me as far as being an atheist. You see, up until the point I discovered this, I was a wavering atheist. I said I didn't believe, but I wasn't entirely convinced myself. In the back of my skull, I still thought that the Bibble was somehow sacrosanct, and infallible. Now I know otherwise, and that, my friend, is that.

Copyright 1999, by Eric B. Ptak. All rights reserved. Any and all replications in part or in whole should give credit where credit is due.

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