Advent - Historical Jesus
The Genealogy of Jesus Christ
"The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,..."
"...and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations."
Matthew 1:1-2, ... 16-17
The bible mentions lists of genealogies and people normally skip through them, we all do. We even cut off a big portion from the excerpt above.
Genealogy
The Jews of old were meticulous in their record keeping. They were probably the original inspiration for genealogy websites and DNA tracing businesses. The Jewish people always had a thing for looking into who begot who and who were the parents of whoever.
It is no wonder the religious leaders of His time questioned or worse, denigrated Jesus (who was born in a tiny insignificant Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth, an off-the-beaten-path nothing good will come out of town), for being nothing but a peasant, the son of a carpenter, a day laborer.
The Jews of old were meticulous in their record keeping. They were probably the original inspiration for genealogy websites and DNA tracing businesses. The Jewish people always had a thing for looking into who begot who and who were the parents of whoever.
It is no wonder the religious leaders of His time questioned or worse, denigrated Jesus (who was born in a tiny insignificant Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth, an off-the-beaten-path nothing good will come out of town), for being nothing but a peasant, the son of a carpenter, a day laborer.
Doubt
The early Jews were so absorbed with careful record keeping, and we would think it is because of the foresight of God that He made them so.
The early Jews were so absorbed with careful record keeping, and we would think it is because of the foresight of God that He made them so.
(It is no coincidence that families of royalties the world over keep meticulous records of their bloodline, their genealogies).
God made the early Jews so meticulous with their historical and religious record keeping, because humans being philosophers, skeptics or just biased will think up ways to throw doubt on things about the past.
But the things that indeed happened in history can be deemed from both those important things which were written down and even from the unimportant things that were left out.
If we keep an open mind and when we are open to finding the truth, we might just find it. God's Spirit or our heart or our gut will lead us there.
God made the early Jews so meticulous with their historical and religious record keeping, because humans being philosophers, skeptics or just biased will think up ways to throw doubt on things about the past.
But the things that indeed happened in history can be deemed from both those important things which were written down and even from the unimportant things that were left out.
If we keep an open mind and when we are open to finding the truth, we might just find it. God's Spirit or our heart or our gut will lead us there.
There were a few things about Jesus that historians regard as true. One of them is that He was crucified -- sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate. Jesus of Nazareth was a real man who lived among us.
The Pilate Stone*
*The Pilate Stone - a damaged block of carved limestone with a partially intact inscription attributed to and mentioning, Pontius Pilate, prefect of the Roman province of Judaea from AD 26 to 36. It is particularly significant because it is an archaeological find of an authentic 1st-century Roman inscription mentioning the name "[Pont]ius Pilatus". In effect, the inscription constitutes the earliest surviving, and only contemporary, record of Pilate, who is otherwise known from the New Testament bible, the Jewish historian Josephus and writer Philo, and references by Roman historians such as Tacitus. [Wikimedia Commons].
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