Month: September 2023

Week 35  Matthew 1

In the middle section of his Names List Matthew lists the kings of Judah – from Solomon to Jehoiachin. Normally I’d just scan through them but I posted on those kings three months ago. Something isn’t right with Matthew’s list.
There should be 19 kings: Solomon Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin.
Here’s Matthew’s list: Solomon Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon Josiah Jehoiachin. There’s only 14.
I wanted to be sure so I wrote the names in two columns. Matthew did not list: Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim. I wondered why.
Maybe Matthew made a mistake.
Maybe he intentionally suppressed the names (for some reason I’d have to guess).
Maybe it was important to Matthew to have a fourteen-name list.
Maybe it was okay in the first-century to abbreviate a list. A reader is left to dope it out: ‘I know this is a short list and that it’s standing in for the complete list’.
It’s hard to say for sure.
But it’s such a glaring mistake that anybody who knew any history would know Matthew was wrong (so he wouldn’t be fooling anyone).
Whatever the reason I figure that a) Matthew didn’t just accidentally forget five names (on a nineteen name list) and that b) he wasn’t trying to rewrite history and say that Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Jehoahaz & Jehoiakim were never kings.

Note: see the ‘kings section’ in Matthew 1:7-11

Week 35

Some bible readers only read the NT.
Some read the NT plus selections from the OT.
Some read the OT and the NT.
But no one reading the bible reads anything about what’s going on between the OT & NT because there’s nothing there.
In my bible the OT ends on page-1334. One page later the NT begins on page-1 (in between is one page that says The NEW TESTAMENT). In my bible there’s nothing but that one page – I turn it and I’ve jumped from the OT into the NT. But in reality an awful lot has been happening.
I check three or four sites to see what’s been going on in the roughly 400-years not accounted for. Three pretty important things for a NT-reader to know about are:
1) One Important Political Fact: Rome is now officially in the driver’s seat. Babylon is gone. Persia is gone. Greece has come-and-gone. Now Rome is the New Big Dog.
2) One Important Geographic Fact: the old territorial divisions between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom are long gone. Now there are three main regions. Jerusalem/Judaea in the south. Galilee in the north. And in the middle is Samaria.
3) One Important Social Fact: there are two distinctive Jewish groups in the NT that weren’t in the OT – the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were religious-cultural-social rivals for the most part.
Three big new developments plus a lot of other novelties. So starting Matthew today I’m in a whole new world.