hereby to give satisfaction to the Jews, who earnestly desired a Messiah of the seed of David; and therefore began with his genealogy;" and "this for no other reason," as Tertullian adds, "than that we might be informed of the origin of Christ according to the flesh.”

5. We are now free to understand the words of the other evangelist, St. Luke, in their most natural and easy construction, "being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Heli ;" instead of the sense which Grotius and Wetstein judged inadmissible-namely, that Christ was the grandson of Heli, omitting Joseph.

6. Adopting this view, we see a ground supplied by St. Matthew for the confident appeal of the apostles-" For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah," &c. Whereas, if with Grotius and Wetstein we reject the above-mentioned involved construction of St. Luke, and at the same time understand St. Matthew's table to issue in Joseph, as commonly supposed, there will remain no genealogy of our Lord in the Gospels; and this, although Rom. i. 3, Acts ii. 30, xiii. 22, make it necessary, as Elsley observes, that Christ's real descent from David be given by one of the evangelists. See especially Acts ii., and the words "as fruit of David's loins according to the flesh."*

7. We see the reason of that very remarkable fact, that the present discrepancy of the genealogies was never objected by the Jews of the first century. No difficulty existed in their Hebrew copies of St. Matthew;-or they may have possessed a solution of the difficulty in their knowledge of the usages of their nation in genealogical matters.

8. We perceive why it was that the difficulty first appeared at a later period, when the Christian preachers had turned to the Gentiles, and the Hebrew language was disused and forgotten.

It will probably be objected, that in St. Matthew the Joseph of ver. 18 is introduced as a person with whom the reader is already acquainted; but in this Matthew may have trusted to the notoriety of our Lord's reputed father-"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph"-the words have the air of such a reference. On our supposition, it was little likely to occur to St. Matthew as necessary to distinguish the husband of Mary from another Joseph appearing in the roll he had just before formally closed

When the proof of Christ's descent by Mary, from David, is rested, as it often is, on the custom, certainly not invariably observed, of marrying into their own tribes, we forget that, even if we could depend on this, it would only shew him to have been of the tribe of Judah; and not that he was " David's son."

with a numeration of descents; and which roll was, as it would seem, transcribed from the public registers, and prefixed to, but perfectly distinct from, the narrative commencing at ver. 18.

But I hasten to anticipate, in order that I may estimate at its real force, another objection which is sure to occur to the reader. This conjecture, it may be said, removes indeed all difficulty from the face of the genealogy; but it does so by a supposition involving a single but yet considerable difficulty; for it supposes that as far back as the middle of the 2nd century, the general body of Christians mistakingly read husband instead of father in the passage before us; and that, at that period, no trace of the true fact remained, either in disputes as to the particular word, or in various readings of the passage itself.

The whole force of this objection is certainly not encountered by the hypothesis before us. The parentage of Mary was a question solely, or, at any rate, most nearly interesting to the Jewish converts, and they, according to our supposition, did not share in the general mistake; at least, so long as they formed separate communities, using their own Hebrew copies of St. Matthew:-the mistake originating subsequently among the Gentile converts, in a failure to distinguish the Joseph of verse 16 from the Joseph of verse 18, and the misunderstanding being confirmed by the 20th verse, in which the latter is also termed, as he doubtless was, "the son of David." It is even probable, in our view, that the true account may have been long preserved among isolated communities of Christians. Perhaps such communities may have been charged with corrupting the Scriptures, or with errors in doctrine, which causes might lower their authority, and so prevent the correction of the general error by their tradition. On this point, we are not left to conjecture, assuming, as we do, the true account to have existed among the first Jewish converts; they, we know, adhering for the most part to the Mosaic law, withdrew themselves from the Gentiles; and such of the latter as they did communicate with, would be likely to be suspected of judaizing. How often have the prejudices of men-and the first Christians were no more-in this way perpetuated error. The Apostles, indeed, survived their Lord's personal ministry; but in no way can their authority be alleged on a point like this. Their corroboration of the written gospels was of a different and more important character. The evangelical accounts were everywhere received and acknowledged by the Churches as coinciding with what the Apostles, who founded them, had previously delivered. Such of the apostles as had not "fallen asleep" before the circulation of St. Matthew's Gospel, would use it, if at all, not in Greek, but in the Hebrew. It is pretty clear that in the then state and necessities of the infant church, the document prefixed by St. Matthew to his Gospel, in the absence of objection from the Jews, would have little to engage

the attention of the Apostles. Their's was, indeed, a nobler and more difficult work. Yet Luke, in Acts ii. 30, and xiii. 22, and St. Paul, in Rom. i. 2, seem to refer to what we have ventured to call "the true account." There is a passage of Eusebius in which St. John is said to have approved the three gospels; but the expression is vague, and, admitting the fact, does not touch this point.

If we pass to the succeeding Christian writers, their silence as to any various readings in this part of the Greek of St. Matthew, at the period when they first began to inquire into it, does not, to my mind, prove that no variation had existed in earlier Greek MSS. I cannot think that we, at this day, are warranted in insisting on this kind of confirmation of the conjecture before us, however desirable.

We may observe, too, that the codices which are believed to contain the remains of the old Italic version offer a remarkable variation in the very passage in question, being, in fact, a kind of periphrastic change of the expression greater than might have let in the whole difficulty. I refer to the subjoined note.*

There is an observation, too, by the French writer whose book is under notice, which it may not be amiss to mention for consideration-viz., that the Greek word which would supply the ellipse here (αTEρ2) may have given rise (so extraordinary and absurd are Jewish distortions of the gospels) to a story about our Lord's father, current, in early times, among the Jews:

"J'ajoute même que les mots Panthera et Pandera que quelques anciens Juifs, Heretiques et Payens, ont donné pour noms propres au prétendu père charnel qu'ils attribuoient a Jesus Christ,-mots cependant toujours inconnus, comme noms propres d'hommes, partout ailleurs, que dans cette matiere, peuvent fort bien avoir été des corruptions des noms appellatifs Grecs Patera et Andra; cequi feroit conjecturer, qu'il y avoit ici d'abord varieté de leçons, etc., conjecture qui merite plus de reflexions que l'onne le pense.”

It would, indeed, be strangely providential, if a misconception derived perhaps by the enemies of Christianity from some early apostate from the faith, should, after serving the purpose of Celsus and of Porphyry, in the second and third century, be found in the nineteenth to clear up and vindicate the Gospels in an obscure but important particular.

The Codex Vercellensis (Eusebii Magni manu exaratus), of such extreme antiquity as to have been worn with age when the Emperor Berenger, nine centuries ago, covered it with plates of silver, and the Codex San Germanensis, both have Joseph cui desponsata Virgo Maria genuit Jesum," instead of virum Maria. The Codex Veronensis has, "cui desponsata erat Virgo Maria virgo autem Maria genuit Jesum." These words, in their present collocation, give the received sense—“ betrothed to Joseph." But it may be considered whether they may not have gone upon some more ambiguous reading of a Hebrew or Greek original. At all events we must acknowledge the position in the text; viz., that these words furnish an early example of an interpolated change of the expression greater than what might have let in the entire difficulty.

I now turn to those who, admitting the existence of an Hebrew original, will have it, that every word in the Greek, as it now stands, had its corresponding word in the Hebrew original; an unreasonable and extreme position, as it must appear: but even that may be conciliated with the hypothesis here presented, and share in the relief it seems fitted to afford.

To convey what is here intended, it is necessary that the reader should ask himself what is the reason that throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the word BEGAT is never once used of the birth of a daughter by name.* A fact so remarkable may be thought to warrant the inference, that Matthew, who had forty times. employed the word "begat" in the series of male descents, could not, consistently with the customs of his country, use the same word in the 16th verse, supposing him to have designed to convey that Mary was Joseph's daughter-he could not put down, that Joseph begat Mary, a woman !-An obvious alternative would' offer in the words," Joseph the father of Mary." Perhaps, however, this expression might be equally disallowed among that people; and it would certainly not be adopted by the framer of this table, if a more customary, and, therefore, more eligible expression were at hand. The word father, used in genealogies, denoted transmission of certain rights which, it is believed, did not pass to females. How many singular rules may have expressed the maxim quoted by Lightfoot from Juchas, fol. 55,-" The mother's family is not to be called a family;" or, that other saying very common among the Jews, that "no man is the son of a woman, but every man must have a father;" maxims which, by the fact that they are repugnant to the ordinary language of the Hebrew Scriptures, manifestly require a restricted, and, probably, technical application. Certainly none is so probable as a genealogical sense in which such rules may have been observed. It is plain that the same reasons that forbad the recording that a man begat a woman, might originate the converse of this last maxim, and so forbid the inscribing a man the father of his daughter. If so, another and less natural expression was to be sought; and here the compiler of a genealogy would have before him the object of such records, which was to preserve the name from being put out or lost; and also the fact, that those who appear in such tables, do so in a kind of representative capacity. We read

See this most positively stated in the Analyse.

In a feeble and partial reply, printed in the Bible de Vence, the assertion is controverted, and a single example of the contrary adduced. It is in Gen. xxii. 23,Bethuel begat Rebecca. I am not able to give the Hebrew, but it is noticeable that the Vulgate translates, Bethuel de qua natus est Rebecca; a periphrase that would perfectly consist with the assertion in question. While on the subject, I may be allowed to observe, that the English Bible, in Chron., has the words, Jered begat Miriam (a female); but it is remarkable that the Septuagint, in the same place, varies slightly in the latter name, and marks it clearly as the name of a man.

(1 Chron. xxiii.) that "Jeush and Beriah did not multiply sons, therefore they were in one reckoning according to their father's house." An unmarried woman, if reckoned at all, would be reckoned with her father; he would be her man. Distinct information on these subjects can no longer be obtained. Our object would be answered if the reader, meditating on Jewish usages, should perceive some degree of probability that Matthew might designate the father of Mary by a term answering the idea and admitting the interpretation, "her man," her head, and sponsor, and the branch by which she, being a virgin, was joined to the stock of Abraham; and hence, by a transition, easy and unobserved, might come the Greek word for man or husband; and this supposed genealogical sense of the word rendered man derives probability from the known latitude of meaning of the word, which, in most languages, carries the ideas of strength and continuance.

The reader who has accompanied us thus far, will perceive that we understand the other evangelist, ST. LUKE, to give the genealogy of Joseph. That evangelist was not formally deducing our Lord's descent, as Matthew was; but was led, by the course of his narration, to give the supposed descent, on which His claim to be Messiah rested in the eyes of his hearers when he began his ministry" Jesus began to be about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph the son of Heli," &c. &c. This supposed descent explains such passages as Luke xviii. 38; Acts ii. 30. It is remarkable, that although the events attending the birth of the Baptist were "noised abroad through the hill country of Judea," there is no reason to believe that the miraculous conception of our blessed Saviour was at the first made known to his disciples. A legal and apparent descent from David was the preliminary seal required by the Jews, and it was afforded them, though afterwards to be superseded to such as believed when the real circumstances were declared after his ascension. And thus was Christ doubly certified as the promised "Son of David,"-on his legal father's side while his ministry was going on upon earth; on his human mother's side when the miraculous conception was made known.

In our view, no difficulty whatever can be experienced in regard to St. Luke's table, except what consists in the appearance of the two names, Salathiel and Zorobabel, at the same period, and in the same relation the one to the other, in which they stand in St. Matthew's series. I have throughout abstained from contrasting with these remarks the strained hypotheses that have been elsewhere resorted to. The recondite solutions of the truly learned* carry at least the acknowledgment of a difficulty; but

* David Hartley's solution seems to merit more attention than it has received. It might, if necessary, be accommodated to our hypothesis.