It's true. Jesus was the Son of David. The proof isn't just textual, or a matter of faith. The matter is beyond reasonable doubt.But there's a small qualification. So was Judas.
And Peter, and John...
And Caiaphas, Mary Magdalene, the demonaics, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
"... everyone alive in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus would have been able to claim David for an ancestor."
Check out the fascinating article in the BBC News Magazine.
"If people in this population meet and breed at random, it turns out that you only need to go back an average of 20 generations before you find an individual who is a common ancestor of everyone in the population."
ReplyDeleteI think that may be a flaw in his argument, meeting and breeding at random hardly covers the way stratified human populations actually go about the business of breeding. And physically being an ancestor is not the same as being "able to claim" ancestry. That said I don't see it as being any great revelation that other people would have been biological descendents of David as well, not least Jesus' brothers and cousins to whatever degree!
Should probably also add that it isn't as son of David that Jesus had any claim to uniqueness but as the son of God. Although according to Luke 3 we can all also claim "descent" from God too!
ReplyDeleteYan Wong is a evolutionary biologist, whatever that means! These people operate in the "Fantasy World" of theory, assumptions and erroneous conclusions, derived from mathematical modelling. So the following is posited as factual, thus: "Theory tells us that not only would all of Jesus's contemporaries be descended from King David, but that this would probably be the case even if Solomon had been into monogamy."
ReplyDeleteThis conclusion is not only erroneous, but completely illogical. For example, Caiaphas, who was the high priest, had to be a descendant of Levi in order to hold that office. If he were descended from David, he could not be the high priest.
In addition, despite the imperfections of the Jewish state, marriage was promoted as a sacred relationship, especially among the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes and those who adhered to the laws of Moses. "Jumping into bed with anyone," was often met with ostracism or stoning.
However, according to the infallible authority of the bible, all people are related to one another through Adam and Eve. This fact was emphasised by Paul when he was in the pagan city of Athens(Acts. 17:21-26).
Why and how Jesus's was descended, specifically, from the line of David is a deep mystery, which will be explained in another place.
The infallible authority of the Bible? But Tom, the Bible is full of errors. An obvious one is cited right on this thread - Matthew gives one set of ancestors from David to Jesus, Luke gives a totally different one. They're not even close to one another - hell, the number of generations aren't even the same or close. At least one of them must be an error! So how can a book with errors have infallible authority?
DeletePlease explain, Tom, why Caiaphas couldn't be a descendant of both Levi and David.
ReplyDeleteAnd how about a 'heads up' on where exactly this 'deep mystery' will be explained, and by whom.
>Please explain, Tom, why Caiaphas couldn't be a descendant of both Levi and David.<
DeleteFirstly, if Caiaphas was also a descendant of David, the office of the high priest would have passed to the line of Judah before the time of reformation, when it was revealed that Christ was the true high priest in the order of Melchisedec(Hebrews 9:10-11).
Secondly, the high priest could only marry a virgin from among his own people(Leviticus 21:13-14). The reason for this is so profound, that I doubt anyone who has repudiated all that they once believed would understand this mystery.
>And how about a 'heads up' on where exactly this 'deep mystery' will be explained, and by whom.<
If I decide to explain it, I will do so on my blog.
Jonathan Robinson noticed the large assumption in what Wong posits. Wong is doing the math correctly but it assumes that humans all behave alike and that history and geography have no large effects. He does mention a bottleneck but that kind of event only makes his argument more convincing. There are other events that could make what he says less convincing. But I don't think it makes a lot of difference. Instead of 98% of the population of Palestine at the time of Christ being descended from David, it may have really been only 72%.
ReplyDeleteThe human genome reflects that we are all related anyway. We are descended from sub-Saharan black Africans of haplogroup A origin. Caucasians are a mutation. The Armstrong/Hoeh/Blackwell view was that God, Jesus, Adam, Shem etc. were all white people either in appearance or in biological state. All non-whites were mutants. Modern DNA studies indicate that once again the WCG had it exactly and incorrectly backward. If Armstrongites want to equate the historical Adam with the Biblical Adam (and they do, they would have to concede that Adam was a black man (and if created in the image of God, which Armstrongites interpret to mean physically, then God is Black). Can you imagine the reaction of the UCG congregation in Birmingham Alabama if the pastor stood at the lectern and explained this?
>The human genome reflects that we are all related anyway. We are descended from sub-Saharan black Africans of haplogroup A origin.<
Delete"The human genome reflects?" But does it state, absolutely, that "we are descended from sub-Saharan black Africans? It doesn't! The interpreters of the DNA data have come to the same conclusion as Richard Leakey, who was scraping around in Kenyan for years trying to prove that all humans are descendants of Africans. He recently wrote, "If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive,then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."
The idea that all people are descendants of Africans is palpable nonsense, and is a blatant contradiction of the biblical account.
But Unknown, who may be Keith Stump, has also repudiated all that he once believed. So it is not surprising that he now embraces silly ideas!
>Caucasians are a mutation. The Armstrong/Hoeh/Blackwell view was that God, Jesus, Adam, Shem etc. were all white people either in appearance or in biological state.<
Why can't former members of WCG conduct a discussion without seeking to denigrate Mr Armstrong? He misunderstood many things, but he was much wiser than most of his critics.
Hmmmm. Wasn't Caiaphas appointed as the Jewish high priest by the Romans?
ReplyDeleteDoes this BBC article at long last offer definitive proof of British Israelism?
LOL!
BB
I guess Tom thinks that the Israelite tribes didn't intermarry with other Israelite tribes. At some point within 42 generations the ancestral lines of all the tribes would have had to cross each other. But, by that same thing, we could say that any Israelite of 42 generations before Jesus was an ancestor of Jesus. It might not be a direct line but the bible doesn't say it had to be a direct line. Besides that, David was half Moabite, so we could include all the Canaanite tribes in there too.
ReplyDeleteI can explain the "deep mystery" of why and how Jesus was descended from the line of David. It was a two-step proces. First, an anonymous writer in the Old Testament wrote that the messiah would descend from David. Second, hundreds of years later, anonymous writers of the New Testament, with their pen and paper on one side and an open Old Testament in the other, were looking to support the case they were making for Jesus being the messiah. They saw that the messiah was predicted to descend from David, so they wrote that Jesus descended from David. They were making it all up 50-100 years after Jesus' alleged death anyway, so they could write anything they wanted. Who was going to prove them wrong?
ReplyDeleteSee how easy it is to understand? It's really not such a deep mystery.