[ApplegateRanch]

Saint Ismeria is a new one on me; I had never heard of her before.

Nice read, and interesting scholarship regarding a Florentine LEGEND; but the headline is another typical bait & switch. Wouldn’t surprise me if Catherine Lawless was apalled at how this article about her work was titled.

The headline, “Jesus’ Great-Grandmother Identified” is an emphatic statement of Biblical historical discovery.

The subtitle, “Medieval legends suggest that Ismeria, a descendent of the tribe of King David, was the grandmother of the Virgin Mary,” is a ‘maybe’ based upon a Medieval legend that most likely has no more basis in historical fact than the legends of the Questing Beast, or Spencer’s Blatant Beast.

[Salvavida]

I’m glad you picked that up. It amazes me how folks chase after legends with no connection to a primary source. The 14th Century? I could say Aunt Jemima was a great great grandmother of Jesus, with just as much authority as this case. There is no way to test it.

And I have on good authority she made some killer pancakes in her time.

[kabumpo]

There was no “tribe of David”. Both the Virgin Mary and Joseph were descendants of King David, but there was no David tribe.