Matthew 1:17 – The missing ancestor of Jesus
If you take the time to count them, you’ll notice that in other Bible translations, there’s a generation missing in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ genealogy.
Matthew 1:17 says:
‘So there were 14 generations from AbraHam to David, 14 generations from David until the deportation to Babylon, and 14 generations from the deportation to Babylon to the Anointed One.’
Yet, in most Bibles, Matthew’s list of ancestors after the deportation to Babylon only shows 13 names! What’s going on?
The Aramaic text of Matthew (which seems less corrupt than the Greek text) says that the last ancestor, ‘JoSeph the son of Jacob,’ wasn’t Mary’s husband JoSeph. No, rather this JoSeph was Mary’s father, who just happened to be named JoSeph as well. So that would make 14 generations. Problem solved.
This is just another example of the corruptions present in the Greek text of Matthew.
Indeed, the Aramaic version must be correct, because Luke’s Gospel lists the ancestry of Jesus going through his adoptive parent JoSeph (you can see how the names are different). In that ancestry, JoSeph is described as the son of Heli (Luke 3:23), not the son of Jacob. So the two men are indeed different.