The Savior's shocking lineage

  Genesis | Book of Joshua | 1 Chronicles |  Book of Ruth | Book of Matthew

 CONTEXT: ~ 2000 BCE – 30 AD The patriarch of three religions wanders with his herds into Egypt and back to Canaan.

Jesus’s family tree is so important to Christians that the first gospel in the "New Testament" book of Matthew opens with an eight hundred year genealogy starting with that patriarchal Iraqi fellow Abraham. The improbability of this genealogy notwithstanding (beginning with the family tree described in Luke), the early church fathers' objective was to legitimize various sketchy prophecies.1

However, there are numerous stops along this timeline that are enlightening, perplexing and more or less hilarious (depending on your sense of humor). Since you are reading FUN Bible Stories, we are committed to furnishing entertaining context you most likely haven't encountered previously. This is not conspiracy theory. It's all right there in the Bible if you choose to read it.

Part 1: When did the Hebrews become Jews?

“Only Noah saw it coming,
Forty days and forty nights
Took his sons and daughters with him,
Yeah, they were the Israelites.”
 

These lyrics from “All You Zombies” – an otherwise awesome 1984 recording by the Hooters – are problematic. Simply put, Noah was neither an Israelite nor a Jew. Furthermore, we don’t have any idea what his ethnic or religious affiliation would have been even if he were not a mythical character. We don’t know how far the imaginary Ark floated before it ended up in Turkey or Armenia because we have no point of embarkation. We do know that all humans necessarily descended from Noah, biblically speaking. So whatever Noah is, so are you.

It is stunning how many people get annoyed when informed that Noah was not Jewish, revealing just how poorly most people understand the biblical timeline.2  As I have mentioned any number of times, your average garden variety Christian gets their scripture from leftover Sunday School lessons, and if they attend church a couple times a year, they hear only what the pastor selects for that week. 

According to the internal Bible timeline, if Noah was real he would have lived around 3,000 BCE. A combination of scripture and actual history points to the fact that there would not be any “Jews” for at least 2,000 years.  
 

In fact, it is relatively ambiguous as to when Jews became Jews. There is no question that the term is derived from Judah or Yehuda, an etymological descendant of the Tetragrammaton, which are four Hebrew letters representing the national god YHWH (generally called Yahweh, Yehuda or Jehovah). 

THE PATRIARCHS WERE NOT JEWISH
The most important biblical personage who was not Jewish is Abraham. As the first of the three or four biblical patriarchs, Abram/Abraham is popularly regarded as founding father of the Jewish people; he is also the patriarch of Islam and the forebear of Arabs. He is also important to Christians in that this Jesus-based offshoot patriarchal cult relies heavily on Hebrew scripture for both context and scriptural heft.

According to Genesis, not only was Abraham not Jewish, he was the opposite of Jewish: he was Iraqi or Chaldean; in other words, ethnically Arab. Descended from Noah’s son Shem, he was born and raised in Ur, a city in eastern Mesopotamia. You can’t get more Arabic than that, There is nothing in the actual Bible that indicates the patriarch of the Jewish people was anything but an Arab. Furthermore, his father was an explicitly pagan idol maker.
 

The whole family moves to Haran in Syria and Abraham embraces “the Lord” (in the form of YHWH’s predecessor, the Canaanite deity El). It is not clear why this happened. Although much is written about God choosing him because of his great faith, we don’t really know how he acquired this faith or whence the Lord appeared (absent a burning bush moment such as that experienced by Moses in Exodus). The first thing we know about their relationship is that the Lord told Abraham to move south. Following God’s instructions, Abraham travels to Canaan and settles there.
 

ABRAHAM’S OFFSPRING:
For our immediate purposes, we will discuss only Abraham’s first two sons: Isaac and Ishmael. Both of these kids are 100% Arab on both sides. Isaac is Iraqi through his mother Sarah, while Ishmael is half Iraqi and half Egyptian through his mother Hagar the Slave. 

Continuing with the Abrahamic lineage, we follow the number one patriarch's second son Isaac back to Syria to find a wife. He weds Rebekah, who is Syrian and therefore Arab. She bears him Jacob and Esau, who are therefore both 100% Arabic. We can move Esau off the board for the time being, noting only that scripture identifies him as the forebear of the Edomites, an Arabic people who figure into other Old Testament stories. Note also that Abraham has many other offspring through less important wives, all of whom beget Arabic nations.3Indeed, Mohammed, who lived in a polyglot society that included Jews and Christians, reached back millennia to rehabilitate Ishmael (see chart above) as the founder of the Arab peoples.  
 

Similarly, Isaac’s son Jacob is also instructed to return to Syria to acquire a wife because his father Isaac doesn’t want him marrying the local Canaanite women, who are idolaters. The fact that the Syrians are also idolaters is one of those scriptural mysteries.

It is not clear why Laban is Syrian and Jacob is not.

In the event, the two wives he does marry are both his cousins, Leah and Rachel. His sketchy uncle is identified as Laban the Syrian, and yet it is not clear why Laban is Syrian and Jacob is not.

Of the 12 (13) tribes4, six are descended from Leah and two are descended from Rachel, so members of these eight groups are all Syrian/Iraqi. The remainder are the offspring of two slave concubines, who we must assume are also Syrian.5
 

At this point, we encounter the term “Israelite” for the first time, as God changes Jacob’s name after an all-night wrestling match. It is fascinating that the term means “struggles with God” and equally interesting that the deity at this point in the saga is El (Isra-EL) and not YHWH. They are not different names for the same god – they are different gods.
 

It is from Israel’s fourth son Judah that we derive the term Jew. After Canaan/Palestine6 was divided among the tribes (twelve got land portions, the Levites got the temple swag - see 12 Tribes of Israel article - the region that contained Jerusalem became known as Judea, because the southern kingdom was inhabited by the tribe of Judah and Benjamin. The remaining tribes eventually comprised the northern kingdom, known as Israel. 

This is all confusing to the modern reader and is many centuries in the future of the Bible timeline. It is not until about 1,100 BCE that the story begins to reflect actual history. Judea remained the name of the southern region from that point on, although it was a subject province to other nations for most of this time. Today, the nation of Israel is located in Judea as are the Palestinian Territories.

There is no point that the Hebrew Bible “converts” the Iraqi/Syrian Israelites to an ethnic/religious group known as Jews. For some period of time, it is logical that the term would have applied specifically to members of the tribe of Judah. As time went on, inhabitants of Judea the Southern Kingdom were identified Jews, as referenced in 2 Kings as “men of Yehuda.” When Judea and Israel went their separate ways around 922 BCE and then again following the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE by Assyria, use of the term expanded to more generally include the citizens of the Judean region.
 

Because the ten tribes of the north were never mentioned again in scripture, the only remaining populace still identified with the People of Israel was that of the Kingdom of Yehuda. So the people of Israel and Judeans were merged to some degree, the former term referencing a people that no longer existed politically. Israel no longer existed.
 

When the deportees returned to the Persian province of Yehud/Judea following the Babylonian exile in 534 BCE, the residents began to specifically assume an identity as “Jews.” The word is therefore marked by an evolving connotation: first members of the tribe, then citizens of a geographic region and finally followers of the ancient desert battle god YHWH. The transition was gradual and ultimately resulted in the word that defines the ethnic origin of this people.  
 

Hundreds of years later, Joshua ben Joseph (Joshua also being a derivation of YHWH meaning “Yahweh is salvation”) was born in the Roman province of Judea. And although at this point there is no question that Jesus was Jewish, it is also clear from scripture that his official genealogy was complex and fraught. 

To see how this came about, we must pick up the thread where we left off with Judah in the middle of Genesis. In Part II (see right column), we will see that Jesus’s lineage runs through Tamar, a Canaanite woman who tricks Judah into getting her pregnant, the Canaanite "harlot" known as Rahab and an adulterous concubine of King David.
 

This is just one of the sordid events attached to Jesus’s family line, facts mostly unknown – and if known, infrequently discussed – by believing Christians. This is the topic of Jesus's Lineage Part II in our next Fun Bible Story (see right column).

___________________________NOTES___________________________

1. The key to accurate prophesizing is to wait and see what happens, and then project it backward in time. In other words, pretend the prophecy was written before the events when it was written afterwards.
 

2. As I have mentioned any number of times, your average garden variety Christian gets their scripture from leftover Sunday School lessons, and if they attend church, they hear only what the pastor selects for that week. 

3. At age 140, Abraham married Keturah, who bore him six children. Her name may or may not mean “perfumed with savory spices.”

4. See entry on “the Twelve-ish tribes of Israel.

5. Bilhah and Zilpa.

6. Palestine is named after the Philistines, who inhabited the Mediterranean coast while the Israelites commanded the hill county inland.

In light of the conflicted relationship between Judaism and the offshoot cult known as Christianity, it is ironic that the “Old Testament” prophecies regarding the coming of the savior are so critical to the Christian Messiah narrative. From a Jewish point of view, however, the Messiah was a military leader who would rid Judea of the occupiers (Assyrian, Babylonia, Persian, Greek, Roman). As a warlord, David is the perfect national icon for Savior of the Jews, but not as a role model for peace, love and family values.

In scripture, YHWH assures the Judeans multiple times that a member of the Davidic dynasty would always reign from the monarchial throne (1 Kings 11:36, 15:4, 2 Kings 8:19). That didn’t turn out to be true either biblically or in actual history. The Judean monarchy ended in 589 BCE and has not been heard from since.

It is a serious stretch for bible literalists to explain this clear inaccuracy, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. For the purposes of this discussion, however, that specific broken divine promise is not particularly relevant.

Our topic in Part II concerns only the biblical lineage of Jesus and some colorful stops along the way, each associated with a female forebear. There are only five women listed in the timeline between Abraham and Jesus (about 2,000 Bible years), each associated with a sketchy narrative

 The genealogies in Matthew and Luke don’t match each other.

From Judah to Jesus, the Book of Matthew identifies five women who contributed to Jesus’s DNA:

Tamar: Canaanite unwed mother
Rahab: Canaanite prostitute
Ruth: Moabite
Bathsheba: Adulteress
Mary: Unwed mother, eternal virgin

Let’s proceed.

GOD KILLS A WANKER AND JUDAH’S INDESCRETION
Continuing on from Part I (left column), we look in on Jacob/Israel’s fourth son Judah, a tribal chieftain settled in the hills of southern Palestine. We will pick up the story at Genesis 38, which opens with YHWH killing Judah’s first two sons, Er and Onan.

As we saw previously, Judah is ethnically Iraqi and Syrian. He proceeds to marry a Canaanite woman. Canaanites are traditionally considered to also be Arabic, so the offspring of the man who gives his name to the Jewish people are Arabic on all sides. 

YHWH kills Judah’s firstborn son Er and in short order also his younger brother Onan. We don’t know why or how he kills Er, but we do know that Onan was offed because he masturbated away his seed rather than fulfilling his duty to impregnate Er’s widow Tamar. Look up “onanism” in the dictionary.

It is clear from scripture that Onan was punished for not having sex with his sister-in-law. Extra biblical sources tell us that this obligation is stipulated by levirate law, yet levirate law is first encountered in Deuteronomy and would not be given to Moses for hundreds of years. So Onan is punished for breaking a law of the future.

After Er and Onan are murdered by God, Judah has one son remaining, but hesitates to put him in the levirate saddle with Tamar. Considering the fate of the first two sons, this is entirely understandable. “Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did.” - Gen 38:11 [ KJV] He continues to put Tamar off.

Upon hearing that Judah is planning a sheep shearing road trip with a buddy and concluding that the clan boss is not going to willingly provide her with a mate, Tamar hatches a plan. Posing as a prostitute on the way to the sheep shindig, she entices her father-in-law into her tent. Not recognizing his veiled daughter-in-law, Judah agrees on a kid goat sex fee and takes his pleasure with his sons’ widow. He promises to send her the goat payment later and provides surety by leaving his signet ring, staff and bracelets. Rookie mistake. The latter were emblematic of his official position as chieftain. 

Upon returning from the sheepfest, Judah is true to his word. He has his friend take a kid goat and go pay the prostitute, but no such person can be found. Puzzled, Judah moves on.

But unlike his hapless son, Judah did not spill his seed. Tamar becomes pregnant with a child who will be a forebear of the Messiah, although this is not remotely clear to the casual reader. Three months later, the mean girls in Judah's camp see that the Canaanite widow is showing and report her sinful condition to Judah. As chief of the clan, Judah is enforcer of the law, although no law has been given by YHWH.

Judah gets on his high horse and commands that Tamar be burned for violating tribal morality standards. He sends for her and prepares to execute her for being an unwed mother. But in an excellent plot twist, Tamar produces the personal items Judah had pledged during their amorous encounter. 

“As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, “By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant.”

 – Gen 38:25. [ESV]

Rut roh.

Judah quickly reconsiders the death sentence and does a little soul searching. Tamar gives birth to twins: Perez and some other guy. We are not told what happens to Shelah (Judah’s remaining son), but based on the scriptural account all descendants of the tribe of Judah are borne by Tamar. Of interest is the relationship between the illegitimate birth of Jesus and his forebear Perez, offspring of Judah and an unwed Canaanite woman. This is never mentioned in the Sunday School lesson.

Judah’s family tree is picked up again in 1 Chronicles 2 with the chain of holy lineage passing through the following individuals: Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon and Salman. In scriptural accounts, Judah’s dalliance with Tamar is glossed over: 

“Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar.”

In summary, the Savior’s blood line runs through Judah’s Canaanite daughter-in-law and not through any of his sons. 

THE CANAANITE HARLOT
Next up in the Messiah’s blood line is Rahab, a good hearted prostitute living in the doomed city of Jericho. This biblical era is the period between the putative post-Exodus arrival of the Israelites in Canaan and the implementation of the monarchy beginning with King Saul.

The account of the prostitute Rahab is found in the "Book of Joshua." The Israelites send two spies to reconnoiter Jericho in advance of the planned attack. Rahab hides two Israelite spies in her home and helps them escape in a basket lowered from the city walls. This act is in exchange for amnesty for her family after the attack. During the battle she hangs a red banner outside her window and the Israelite army spares her family.

I am going to take a moment to call out the Christian accounts of Rahab, which interpret her actions being influenced by her love of God, meaning the Christian deity, who is a repurposing of YHWH. If this account were actual history, Rahab would have been a worshipper of El and would not have encountered YHWH yet. In Sunday School lessons she is described as more or less of a good Canaanite in the same sense that Tonto was a good Indian. And of course, the whore thing is not mentioned. But it is equally legitimate to view her as a traitor who conspires with the enemy who lays waste to her home city.

More fundamentalist Christian sects also argue that it was a different Rahab than the particular harlot found in Joshua, but that is primarily because they don’t like the idea. Therefore, it must not be true. However, there are only a few women mentioned in the genealogy at all, and in terms of chronology this Rahab matches up with the Matthew account.

While Jewish extra biblical tradition has Rahab marrying Joshua, the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) makes no mention of any marriage. If we are to accept the genealogy in Matthew, it has to be Salmon that she marries. The Joshua wedding would not work. 

As an aside, mainstream archeology shows Jericho to have already been destroyed at the time the conquest stores are dated. 

THIS JEWESS ICON IS A MOABITE
This brings us to the tale of Ruth and Boaz. While Ruth is often portrayed as a strong Jewish proto feminist woman, the great grandmother of King David was in fact a Moabite. As described unambiguously in the scripture. This introduces another challenging ethnicity into Jesus’s heredity, as the Moabites are much vilified throughout the Hebrew Bible. In a continuation of the incestuous themes that often pop up unexpectedly, the Moabites are descendants of Lot (Abraham’s nephew) and one of his two daughters. Following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the famous pillar of salt event, Lot and his unnamed daughters. Many many years ago little Sean kept reading and got into trouble with the pastor by asking questions about Genesis 19. 

Bored in the hills of Zoar, Lot’s daughters throw an all night drunken debauch and mate with their dad. Their offspring are the Moabites and the Ammonites, both bad bad people. The Moabites are therefore the product of an incestuous father – daughter relationship and therefore tainted. They were furthermore worshipers of Chemosh, the Moabite god associated with sun worship and blood sacrifice. These are kinds of people Ruth comes from.

Not only is it far from clear why the Book of Ruth focuses on a Moabite woman, the entire story is unrelated to anything that comes before or after. The main point seems to be that Ruth was a loyal hard-working person, and therefore attracts the attention of Boaz, a Jewish inhabitant of Bethlehem. The tale is convoluted, but ultimately Boaz purchases Ruth’s dead husband’s land back in Moab and acquires her in the bargain. Kind of a real estate deal sweetener.

“Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife.”

Ruth then bears him Obed, who is the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David. 

THAT’S NO LADY, THAT’S URIAH’S WIFE
King David and his wife/concubine Bathsheba are next up in the Savior’s gene sequence. Again, we have a series of events that fall on the sketchy side of family values. Most garden variety Christians are only familiar with a watered down version of David and Bathsheba, which is presented almost as a tragic love story about doomed lovers. 

It certainly was tragic for Bathsheba’s first husband Uriah the Hittite, David’s bravest general against the Amalekites, Ammonites, Edomites and Moabites and one of the King’s “mighty men.” The trouble starts when David, who was a party animal and likely bi-sexual (modeled after Alexander the Great) saw Bathsheba bathing on her roof, he has her sent over to the palace for a tryst.

David and Bathsheba have a one night stand which results in a pregnancy. David brings Uriah home from battle to spend quality time with his wife so that it will appear that Uriah is the father. Unfortunately, his soldier’s code of honor will not allow this, so David sends him to the front lines to battle the Ammonites, where he is killed. David goes to the trouble of arranging for Uriah’s to men desert him in the battle and leave him to the enemy.

The King marries Uriah’s hot widow, who eventually becomes Solomon’s mother; the blood line then continues twenty-eight generations to Mary, Joseph’s concubine. It is understood that Mary is the mother of Joshua ben Joseph, but matters such as how she remains a virgin while giving birth to Jesus’s siblings and how Jesus acquires a blood line from David are tricky. Mary is not of the House of David and Joseph is not Jesus’s father. These topics will have to be discussed in another Fun Bible Stories essay.

However, note this fascinating final anomaly: It is critical to fulfilling various prophecies that Jesus be from the House of David, yet in the Matthew genealogy his wife Bathsheba is not even named. 

“David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah.” [KJV]

Bathsheba reduced to baby maker. Ouch.