From one of my previous posts...
Matthew’s list contains 28 names including David and (step-dad) Joseph. Luke’s contains 42 names including David and Joseph and apart from these two individuals only two more names match in these lists.
Some biblical apologists have attempted to reconcile these lists by claiming that neither list actually attempts to give full accounts. The terms “son of” and “begat” don’t mean a direct father-son relationship but if we put the overlapping lists together we get a fuller genealogy of Jesus. In other words Luke mentions people not mentioned in Matthew and vice-versa.
OK let’s take a closer look at this and see if it works. David lived in the 10th C. BC giving us about 1000 years between David and Jesus. As we said above Matthew gives us 28 names and Luke gives us 42. This works out at an average of 35 years per generation according to Matthew and only 23 years according to Luke. If we combine them and are careful not to count the names that appear in both lists twice that gives us a minimum of 67 generations and a time span of only 14 years per generation. This also assumes the unlikely factor of every one being a first-born and that there are no other names that both Matthew and Luke forgot to include. This is an impossible explanation.
However Matthew does not actually allow us this generous explanation. He says emphatically…
“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". Matt 1:17
So according to Matthew there were only 28 generations between David and Jesus. So even allowing for the possibility of some individuals having more than one name Luke’s 42 generations cannot be reconciled with this plain statement of Matthew.
2 Sam 7:12 said “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.”
Paul wrote in Romans1:3 concerning “…his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David,”
And yet as we observed above there was no fleshly link at all between David and Jesus if we are to take the virgin birth story literally.
Other apologists have proposed that one list traces the genealogy through Joseph and one through Mary. This is flatly contradicted by both gospels.
“..and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” – Matt 1:16
“Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,” – Luke 3:23
Notice by the way that they can’t even agree on the name of Joseph’s dad, typically Matthew wants to make an OT parallel and so of course Joseph has to be the son of Jacob!
The two names that do correspond in the list also rule against this idea. If the two lists are the separate genealogies of two people they don’t get to merge at random points in this way.
