Zorababel is the son of Pedaiah, according to Matthew, he is the son of Salathiel, according to Luke, he is the son of Neri; according to Chronicles, Zorobabel left eight children, but neither Matthew’s Abiud, nor Luke’s Rhesa, are among them.  The same discordance is found when Matthew and Luke again touch each other in Joseph, the husband of Mary; according to the one, Jacob begat Joseph, according to the other, Joseph was the son of Heli.  To crown the absurdity of the whole, we are given two genealogies of Joseph, who is no relation to Jesus at all, if the story of the virgin-birth be true, while none is given of Mary, through whom alone Jesus is said to have derived his humanity.  We have, therefore, no genealogy at all of Jesus in the Gospels.  Various theories have been put forward to reconcile the irreconcilable; some say that the genealogy in Luke is that of Mary, of which supposition it is enough to remark that “Mary, the daughter of,” can scarcely be indicated by “Joseph, the son of.”  It is also said that Joseph was legally the son of Jacob, although naturally the son of Heli, it being supposed that Jacob died childless, and that his brother Heli according to the Levitical law, married the widow of Jacob; but here Joseph’s grand-fathers and great-grand-fathers should be the same, Heli and Jacob being supposed to be brothers.  Besides, if Joseph were legally the son of Jacob, only the genealogy of Jacob should be given, since that only would be Joseph’s genealogy.  No man can reckon his paternal ancestry through two differing lines.  To make matters in yet more hopeless confusion, we find Chronicles giving twenty-two generations where Matthew gives seventeen, and Luke twenty-three; while, from David to Christ, Matthew reckons twenty-eight and Luke forty-three, a most marvellous discrepancy.

“If we compare the genealogies of Matthew and Luke together, we become aware of still more striking discrepancies.  Some of these differences indeed are unimportant, as the opposite direction of the two tables....  More important is the considerable difference in the number of generations for equal periods, Luke having forty-one between David and Jesus, whilst Matthew has only twenty-six.  The main difficulty, however, lies in this:  that in some parts of the genealogy in Luke totally different persons are made the ancestors of Jesus from those in Matthew.  It is true, both writers agree in deriving the lineage of Jesus through Joseph from David and Abraham, and that the names of the individual members of the series correspond from Abraham to David, as well as two of the names in the subsequent portion:  those of Salathiel and Zorobabel.  But the difficulty becomes desperate when we find that, with these two exceptions about midway, the whole of the names from David to the foster father of Jesus are totally different in Matthew and in Luke.  In Matthew the father of Joseph is called Jacob; in Luke, Heli.  In Matthew the son of David through whom Joseph descended from