Posted on 12/19/2007 7:03:18 PM PST by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, December 17, 2007 |
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AT CHRISTMASTIME, Nativity scenes help bring the family of Jesus to life. However, they present only a small portion of his family. Scripture informs us that Jesus grew up in a large, sprawling clan, with many relatives. What became of that clan? Some branches may have survived. It is possible that some people living today might be related to Jesus.
Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code contends that Jesus wed Mary Magdalene and fathered a royal dynasty of France. The book sparked interest in Jesus’ bloodline. Unfortunately, Brown's wild speculations and burning hostility toward the Church tainted the subject with an odor of crankery.
The fictional bloodline of Jesus ballyhooed in Brown’s novel should not be confused with Jesus' real bloodline.
Ancient writings make clear that Jesus hailed from an old and honored family. The first sixteen verses of the Gospel of Matthew set forth a genealogy depicting Joseph, the father of Jesus, as the twenty-fourth great grandson of King David.
Early Christians plainly viewed Jesus as an heir of David, a legitimate claimant to the throne of Israel.
Of course, they also viewed Jesus as the son of God, not of Joseph. This complicates the picture, but an adopted prince is a prince nonetheless.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, also came from a prominent family. Luke 1:5 tells us that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth was a Levite, descended from a long line of Israelite priests.
Mary's parents Joachim and Anna (or Hannah) were a wealthy and pious couple favored by God, according to the Gospel of James. Though never included in the Bible, the Gospel of James has received respectful study from generations of Christian scholars.
Despite his illustrious pedigree, Jesus worked as a humble carpenter. This should not surprise us. In his day, the sons of Herod ruled Judea, serving as puppets of Rome. The House of David was out of power, out of favor, and, in Jesus' case, out of pocket as well.
The New Testament names other relatives of Jesus. "Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Cleophas...", states John 19:25.
It may seem odd that two sisters would share the same name, but these two Marys were probably cousins, not sisters.
Poor translation is to blame. The oldest known manuscripts of the New Testament are written in Greek. However, these Greek documents apparently drew on earlier sources composed in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.
Neither Aramaic nor Hebrew has any word for cousin. In these ancient tongues, the only precise way to identify a cousin was to use a clumsy formula such as "the son of my uncle". Consequently, Hebrew and Aramaic scribes often referred to cousins and other relatives as "brother" or "sister".
For example, in Genesis 29:15, Laban calls Jacob, his nephew, "brother". Genesis 14:12-14 refers to Lot as the "brother" of his uncle Abraham.
Four men are called "brothers of the Lord" in the Gospels; James, Simon, Jude and Joseph. Mark 6:3 also mentions “sisters” of Jesus. These "brothers" and "sisters" were most likely cousins of Jesus.
Two of them -- James and Joseph -- are probably the sons of "Mary, wife of Cleophas" whose names appear in Matthew 27:56. This same Mary also had a daughter named Salome, according to Mark 15:40.
At least a dozen blood relatives of Jesus can be identified by name. Could any of these have living descendants today?
Written records provide only fragmentary clues. Other research methods are available, however.
One such approach was featured on a March 27, 2006 episode of the History Channel's archaeology series Digging for the Truth.
Former host Josh Bernstein put the Da Vinci Code to the test by comparing DNA from the bones of a French Merovingian queen with DNA from a community claiming kinship with ancient Galileans. Not surprisingly, the samples showed no match. However, Bernstein made a more important discovery.
He found that members of Jerusalem’s Syriac Orthodox Church claim descent from the family of Jesus. This ancient community still speaks and worships in Aramaic. Its origins are obscure.
“These families can be traced all the way back to Jesus Christ?”, Bernstein asked the church's Archbishop Severios Malki Murad.
“Of course”, he replied. “We are from the same family”.
Such claims may or may not withstand scientific scrutiny. But they are worth exploring.
By comparing oral history, DNA and whatever scraps of written records survive, we may yet succeed in locating the nearest living relatives of Jesus.
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Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
well you didn’t address all of them, you just picked one or two and went back to asking “why not joseph?”
Why not? Why not Zechariah? Why not Moses’ DNA? Why not Elijah’s? Why not Abel’s? It’s all so unnecessarily complicated. Doesn’t appear miraculous. Provides scoffers with evidence to support their position.
What is the ultimate point of your whole hangup with this? What’s is the fascination with this? You’ve got to be thinking of something else this would support or would help further another idea you have in your head. It has no bearing on anything essentially Christian in terms of salvation or the resurrection. What is the real reason behind pushing this?
Why not, indeed. I don't have any good reason. It's one of those "great and mysterious" things. God could have imbued his son with the DNA of Nebuchadnazzar, David might be more obvious, He could have given Jesus a lizard tongue. He could have given Jesus twelve fingers and sixteen toes.
What is the ultimate point of your whole hangup with this?
No hangup. No ultimate point. I'm not pursuing an agenda. To me, its a philosophical argument. If God the Father didn't literally copulate with Mary and ejaculate into her uterus, then He must have made choices on what genes to give his son.
It has no bearing on anything essentially Christian in terms of salvation or the resurrection.
No, it doesn't. Even if we could sequence Christ's DNA, which we can't, it wouldn't mean anything.
What is the real reason behind pushing this?
It's an interesting question. A topic for discussion. An idea to kick around. If I were in God's position -- and yes, I know how incredibly presumptuous that is -- comes the time to choose a genome, I'd choose Joseph's.
Probably her brother.
Till he was adopted into Mary's family...
Bump for later...
Yes, they didn't mention "cousin" Elizabeth and John the Baptist (I don't think). But John undoubtedly died without children, and Elizabeth being so old probably didn't have any more (I'm working from memory).
Still there might be collateral bloodline from that couple.
Apart from the fascination of it, the posters are correct that it doesn't matter because whether related by blood or not, all are saved through Christ.
Sorry, I was wrong. They did mention Elizabeth. My bad.
A more fruitful study might be to devote oneself through faih in Christ to studying the doctrine of the bride of Christ as described in Scripture. If one is tempted to investigate claims of a bloodline, then one might approach the study from the more orthodox approach by studying what our Lord has to say about His bride, who it is, His stance on adultery, and trustworthiness assuring us that He has but one bride, (The Church). In order to understand His doctrines on the topic, one will grow by God the Holy Spirit in understanding how His bride is formed. Then draw your own conclusions, through faith alone in Christ alone. All faith is from God.
I'm guessing because Joseph thought she was pregnant by another man. The angel asked Mary first before her being impregnated. It is logical that he would have asked Joseph the same, and not just take it without permission.
Still there had to be something of David's bloodline in Jesus, so I never came up with a satisfactory explanation. Somewhere I read the term parthenogenisis, self-impregnation by some type of cell division, not that I'm buying that either.
In any case, the embryo had to be without the stain of sin, so there had to be some gene cleansing process somehow.
Both Mary and Joseph were in the bloodline of David. Since Joseph was not the physical father, to fulfill the prophecy that the Messiah would be from the line of David, Mary was along that line too. Joseph and Mary were not close relatives so their marriage was not forbidden.
That has to be it. I’ve not thought about it for some time. And I googled that “cousin” is only used in the KJV; I’ve got 3 or 4 different translations and can’t work from them all from memory.
Anyway, it is a mechanical process but cannot be done by human hands because it is so small and delicate, has to be done by a chemical process which is mind boggling.
God can do anything it says in the bible, but it sure doesn't tell us HOW. Plus there is much that went on behind the scenes so to speak God probably didn't choose to reveal even if people of the times would have understood what it or meant for latter times, some of which was revealed in strange visions, like chariots with wings, guessing a chariot of the times with birds' wings. Nothing seems to have been revealed in biblical times in images such as we have today like airplanes. I think a vision of the real thing then they would have understood the purpose, but not of everything we now have like a can opener for instance. Some may have been known and just somehow not gotten recorded plus some of the extra-biblical books might have details in them that are true, and some of the obscure Christians like the Coptics and the ones that speak Aramaic no doubt had slightly different versions of the scriptures, all very interesting.
They was a comment about cloning Jesus. What would they use for source material? I wouldn't accept that, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they could can't think of the word, work it out backwards somehow. If there is any truth to the Shroud and miracle of Lanciano, there would be that. But the most interesting thing is that every cell in the body contains the complete DNA code, then identical twins and triplets (rare) have the same code; otherwise it seems to be unique.
I thought that I read that most of the human body after death ultimately decays over time, bones, hair and teeth last the longest, plus people who were cremated, no DNA material left for the resurrection, not that it will be needed. But Jesus said not one hair on our heads would be lost, something to that effect. I assumed literally it meant that in the resurrection, we would have x number of hairs, now that makes no sense at all because at different times in our lives the count would be different. Final thought is that I thought I read hair decays very slowly, don't know if completely unless burned. But Jesus said God could raise children of Abraham from the stones, I believe he meant that literally, so I don't know what will be involved in the resurrection, what code would be used. Just as well.
Fascinating frontier we findourselves on, some may be a good thing, and some of it is bound to be misused. A scientist would find my thinking laughable and, of those, some the religious part of it wacky.
We are all of the bloodline of Christ. Only an a-hole would claim otherwise.... or a rabid atheist... or a rabid elitist... or neo-psycho
The legacy of Christ lives in all... as the union of America and the rebel spirit of the South.... and the wide open plains of the West.
What I meant was, not that it is of no interest, but that there would be no theological reason for these people to be “half-divine” or some such thing, as some sensationalists have speculated. Catholics, of course, will not expect to find any descendants of Mary, since we believe that she had no child other than Jesus.
S—T—R—E—T—C—H!
I must confess, that relationship completely escaped my notice. Was Joseph of Arimathea really Mary's uncle?
The plot thickens...
Well, the Catholic Encyclopedia is not always right. I suppose those extra-Biblical sources would be worth investigating, whatever they are.
Jesus Huckabee
Say Hallelujah!
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