Letter to Aristides on the Genealogies of Christ

Some say, not accurately, that this differing enumeration and mixing of the names, both of priestly men, as they think, and of royal ones, was made rightly, so that Christ might be shown rightly to have become both priest and king; as though anyone disbelieved this, or had any other hope than that Christ is the High Priest of the Father, bringing our prayers to him, and a King above the world, ruling by the Spirit those whom he has set free, having been a fellow-worker in the ordering of the universe. And this was announced to us not by the list of the tribes, nor by the mixing of the recorded families, but by patriarchs and prophets. Let us not, then, descend to such petty quibbling about piety as to establish the kingship and priesthood of Christ by the interchange of the names; for the priestly tribe of Levi was joined to the royal tribe of Judah, when Aaron married Elisabeth the sister of Nahshon, and Eleazar again the daughter of Phatiel, and they had children from them. Then the evangelists would have lied, establishing not the truth but a conjectural praise; and for this reason the one traced the descent of Jacob, the father of Joseph, from David through Solomon, and the other that of Heli, likewise in another way the father of Joseph, from Nathan the son of David. Yet they ought not to have been ignorant that each of the lines enumerated is the family of David, the royal tribe of Judah. For if Nathan was a prophet, so too was Solomon, and the father of both of them; and prophets came from many tribes, but priests from none of the twelve tribes, only the Levites. In vain, then, was the falsehood fabricated by them. Nor may such an account prevail in the Church of Christ against the exact truth, that a falsehood is composed for the praise and glory of Christ. For who does not know that most holy word of the apostle, who, preaching and proclaiming the resurrection of our Saviour and affirming the truth with great fear, said: "If some say that Christ has not been raised, while we both say and have believed this, and both hope and preach it, we bear false witness against God, that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise"? And if one who glorifies God the Father is so afraid lest he should seem to speak falsely in narrating a marvellous deed, how should he not rightly be afraid who provides support for the truth by falsehood, composing an opinion that is not true? For if the families are different and bring down no legitimate seed to Joseph, and it has been said only to establish the one who was to be born, that he who was to come would be king and priest, with no proof present, but the dignity of the words being carried off into a feeble hymn, it is plain that the praise does not touch God, being a lie, while judgment falls on the one who said it, for boasting of what is not as though it were. So, then, that we may both refute the ignorance of the one who said this and keep anyone from stumbling through ignorance, I shall set out the true history of what happened.

For the names of the families in Israel were reckoned either by nature or by law: by nature, through the succession of legitimate offspring; by law, when another raised up children in the name of a brother who had died childless. For since no clear hope of resurrection had yet been given, they imitated the promise to come by a mortal resurrection, so that the name of the one who had departed might remain unfailing. Since, then, of those included in this genealogy some succeeded their fathers legitimately as sons, while others were begotten by some but assigned by name to others, mention has been made of both, both of those who begot and of those who were reckoned as having begotten. So neither of the Gospels is false, for they reckon both nature and law. For the families descended from Solomon and from Nathan were intertwined with one another by raisings-up of offspring for the childless, by second marriages, and by raisings-up of seed, so that the same persons are rightly reckoned as belonging now to one, now to another, some to their reputed fathers and some to their actual fathers. Thus both accounts are true, and come down to Joseph in a complicated but accurate way.

To make what is said clear, I will explain the interchange of the families. Counting the generations from David through Solomon, the third from the end is found to be Matthan, who begot Jacob, the father of Joseph. And from Nathan the son of David, according to Luke, the third from the end is likewise Melchi, whose son was Heli, the father of Joseph; for Joseph was the son of Heli, the son of Melchi. Our aim, then, being Joseph, we must show how each is recorded as his father, both Jacob, who traces his descent from Solomon, and Heli, from Nathan; and how first these two, Jacob and Heli, were brothers; and before that, how their fathers, Matthan and Melchi, being of different families, appear as grandfathers of Joseph. Matthan and Melchi, then, having married the same woman in turn, begot sons who were brothers by the same mother, since the law did not prevent a woman who was widowed, whether divorced or after her husband's death, from marrying another. By Estha (for this is the name of the woman according to tradition), Matthan, who traced his descent from Solomon, first begot Jacob; and when Matthan died, Melchi, who traced his descent back to Nathan, being of the same tribe but of another family, as I said before, married her as a widow and had a son, Heli. Thus we shall find Jacob and Heli to be brothers by the same mother, though of two different families. Of these, Jacob, when his brother Heli died childless, took his wife and begot by her a third, Joseph: by nature his own son, and by reckoning; hence it is written, "And Jacob begot Joseph." But by law he was the son of Heli; for Jacob, being his brother, raised up seed to him. Therefore the genealogy through him will not be made void either, which Matthew the evangelist sets out, saying, "And Jacob begot Joseph"; while Luke, on the other hand, says, "who was the son, as was supposed (for he adds this), of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Melchi." For it was not possible to express legal descent more distinctly; and he refrained throughout from using "begot" for such offspring, carrying the reference back to Adam and to God by tracing back.

Nor is this unproven or improvised. For the Saviour's relatives according to the flesh, whether to show off or simply to inform, but in any case speaking the truth, have handed down this too: that Idumaean brigands, attacking Ascalon, a city of Palestine, carried off from the temple of Apollo, which stood by the walls, among other spoils, Antipater, the son of a certain Herod, a temple slave; and since the priest could not pay a ransom for his son, Antipater, brought up in the customs of the Idumaeans, later became a friend of Hyrcanus, the high priest of Judea. Sent as envoy to Pompey on behalf of Hyrcanus, and having freed for him the kingdom that was being cut away by Aristobulus his brother, he had the good fortune to be named overseer of Palestine. Antipater, treacherously murdered out of envy for his great good fortune, was succeeded by his son Herod, who afterwards, under Antony and Augustus, was appointed by decree of the senate to reign over the Jews; his sons were Herod and the other tetrarchs. These things agree with the Greek histories as well.

Since the Hebrew families were registered up to that time in the archives, including those tracing back to proselytes, as far as Achior the Ammonite and Ruth the Moabitess, and the mixed peoples who came out of Egypt with them, Herod, since the lineage of the Israelites contributed nothing to him, and stung by the consciousness of his low birth, burned their genealogical records, thinking he would appear nobly born if no one else could trace his lineage from a public record back to the patriarchs or the proselytes, and the mixed people called geioras. A few careful people, having private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by having them in some other way from copies, pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble birth. Among these happened to be those already mentioned, called desposyni because of their connection with the Saviour's family, who travelled from Nazareth and Cochaba, Jewish villages, to the rest of the land, and explained the aforesaid genealogy from the book of days as far as they could. Whether, then, it is so or otherwise, no one could find a clearer explanation, as I at least think, and so does every fair-minded person. Let this suffice us, even if it is not attested, since we have nothing better or truer to say. The Gospel at any rate speaks the truth in every respect.

Matthan, descended from Solomon, begot Jacob. When Matthan died, Melchi, descended from Nathan, begot Heli by the same woman. So Heli and Jacob were brothers by the same mother. When Heli died childless, Jacob raised up seed for him, begetting Joseph, by nature his own son, but by law Heli's. Thus Joseph was the son of both.