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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Prof. Bart D. Ehrman
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Matthew’s gospel was written to convince Jewish readers that Jesus is the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. It attempts to do so, right at the start of the book, by offering a timetable of genealogies. In this, Matthew tries to show that every 14 generations of Israel’s history, something very significant happened. However, the groups of 14 do not unfold easily and Matthew produces a skewed timeline to make the “14” work.
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Editor's prefatory comment:
Dr. Ehrman explains that the 5700 early copies of the New Testament – copies of copies of copies – contain hundreds of thousands of discrepancies.
Many of these are inconsequential but a significant number alter the meaning of the text in important ways. Most of these constituted mere human error in copying but some of them, it appears, were purposefully injected into the text by editorial judgment of scribes.
This entire area of scholarship is far more complex than most realize, leading the objective reviewer to understand that, in many cases, we have no knowledge of the original text of the New Testament.
In addition to Dr. Ehrman’s books, his lectures are available on youtube; for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE&t=12s
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Dr. Ehrman speaks of this in his lectures on "The New Testament," in the section, "Matthew - Jesus the Jewish Messiah," published by The Great Courses.
Matthew says that there were 14 generations between Abraham and David, then 14 generations to the Babylonian captivity, and then another 14 generations to the coming of Jesus.
This 14 – two times a “perfect” seven – seems to offer poetic affirmation of the messiahship of Jesus. However, none of this is true. Matthew produces a massaged version of timeline as it leaves out sections of the genealogy found in the Old Testament to create an illusion of historical symmetry.
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