HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 36, 3 January 1874, Page 13

HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

By the Abb 6J. E. DAKBAa.

(Translated from the French for the New Zealand Tablet.) § VII. Genealogt of Jesus Chbist. 33.— Difference of the two Genealogies of St. Matthew anl* St. Luke. The structure of the Gospel does not need so many foreign supports in order to conciliate our faith. It suffices to us that it has a being ; its existence alone proves its veracity ; and according as each new ceDtury rolls over its venerable stratum, leaving undisturbed its every stone, the sum of evidence, in proof of its authority, goes on increasing even with the progress of ages. We know that the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke give, each, the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Matthew traces his from Abraham to Joseph, the spouse of Mary, through the family of David, following the royal line of Juda, from Solomon to Jesus Christ. The genealogy shown by St. Luke, follows an inverse order ; it commences from Jesus Christ, and traces back the course of ages, through David, Abraham, Noe, and the antideluvian patriarchs up to Adam, " who was of G-od." Now, these two genealogies, running in parallel line up to David, and beginning from that king, have but two points of contact : Zorobabel and Salathiel. All the other intervening degrees are different. The genealogy of St. Matthew traces the descent of Jesus Christ, from David, by Solomon ; the genealogy of St Luke traces the descent of Jesus Christ from David by Nathan. *' The inexactitude and the contradictions of these two genealogies, says rationalism, lead to the belief that they were the resaH of popular ideas operating at various points, and that none of them were sanctioned by Jesus." (1) Never was such nonsense written. If the two genealogies were the result of "popular ideas," executed at a distance from each other, care would have been taken, above all, to make them agree — to do away with the apparent contradiction which rationalism discovers in them — the explanation of •which, all the fathers, Greek and Latin, from Irenaeus and St. Justin, have given us. None but a Jew — and a Jew, contemporary with Jesus Christ, could have traced these two genealogies. The united tcience of the academies of the world could not invent them in our day. And for this reason — 34.— Impohtance of Genealogies among- the Hebeews. Among the Hebrews, genealogies were sacred. The original records of these — confided to the Scribes, placed under the charge of the priests, were deposited in the archives of the temple, and the study of them constituted an essential part of education. The people were divided into tribes, and each had its own territory ; and time was measured for the purpose of genealogies, by the number seven and its •quares. There was in this essentially Jewish practice — an example of which occurs in St. Matthew's genealogy — not only a mechanical practice for helping the memory, but an application to the ssries of human races, of the grand septenary law, which we have seen applied to days, weeks, years, men, animals, fields and inheritances throughout the entire Hebrew history. How insert Such usages as these as an after thought ! At each period of seven weeks of years, that is to say, at every half century, when the trumpet of Jubilee sounded the deliverance of captives, the restitution of sold estates, the extinction of debts, and the restoration of each family, of each individual, to the primitive order ; it waa the genealogical lists, preserved in the archives of the temple, and in the domestic sanctuary, which presided at this great revolution. Alliances even, exacted on the part of the family and of the state, the scrupulous observance of the law of genealogies, the religious hierarchy, the civil constitution, the national existence of the Jewish people, rested solely on the tables of genealogies. It would not be possible then, among tne Hebrews, to fabricate for oneself a genealogical tree, at will. The archives of the temple would have immediately confounded the imposture. Josephus, too, in his " Autobiography," (2) takes a certain vanity in exposing to- the eyes of the patricians of Rome— themselves proud of their origin — the an'iqi i y of his own race ; and he adds that the official and public lists, proved to a certainty each degree of his genealogy. " This order is observed, says he, not only in Juriea, but in all the places where my compatriots are dispersed ; in Egypt, at Babylon, everywhere. They send to Jerusalem the name of the father of her whom they wish to espouse, with a memoir of their genealogy, certified by witnesses. Should a war break out, the priests prepare, or. the ancient tables, even registers of all the women that remain of sicerodotat origin ; and they will not espouse one who has been a captive, lest she may have had commerce with strangers. Can anything be mor* . calculated to hinder all mixture of races? Our priests can, by authentic documents, prove their descent, from father to son," for two thousand years. Should any one fail in the observance of these laws, he is separated for ever from the altar." (3) With such an assemblage of formalities surrounding the Hebrew genealogies, a supposititious genealogy for Jesus Christ was impossible, so long as the temple of Jc -usalern remained stan ling. But after the ruin of the Holy City by Titus, this was not only a moral but a physical impossibility. Fire had consumed all the archives of the temple, and, from that time, the dispersed Jews remained without a genealogy, confounded indiscriminately under the name of sons of Jacob, ignorant themselves to what tiibes their ancestors formerly belonged.