Significance of the Genealogy, part 1

Rather than potentially boring some people with all the history, and literay criticism of the Gospel (especially when it comes to the original language it was composed in as far as Greek vs. Aramaic) I just decided to jump in and start talking about it.

So that brings us first of all to the genealogy. You know there is a lot of people who really don't know what to do with that. I especially recall that from my Protestant past, where the genealogies of both the Old and New Testaments were thought to be the most boring and potentially useless part of the text. I recall some people laughing and saying that if you had trouble sleeping at night you should read them. And a Charismatic preacher say, how if you really are a student of the Bible, or "in the Spirit" you will be blessed by everything......... even the genealogies!

Unfortately I think comments like that really show how we are in many ways alienated from the mentality and context of the Bible. As far as I can tell the genealogies serve at least 3 important functions.

I will only cover the first of these in this post.

The functions are: 1) Integral to the formation of Jewish and Christian idenity(to be explained later in this post),

2) establish Christ as the Jewish Messiah, 3) provide a background for future doctrine of Apostolic Sucession.

As far as the first function that I said was "integral to the formation Jewish and Christian idenity" that point came from a wonderful Rabinnic article I read 4 years ago online. And unfortately I have never been able to find since. But I will do my best to describe it to you. The article was on the Jewish passover Haggadah. I found it while searching for an articles on the passage "my father was a wandering Aramean". I had written a well received article on "The Kiss of Peace" for the web site the ooze and I was looking to maybe do a sequel on it. Where I talked about that verse, and how it was used liturgically by the Jews, and its potenial allegorical meanings. Anyway I found this great article. Called something like "Like Children and not slaves", written by a traditonal (non-Messianic) rabbai.

Anyway this article besides making some insightful comments about the Haggadah liturgy, and the part that verse played in it. It really said some wonderful things about the importance of genealogy, and lineage in the Jewish idenity, culture and Faith. The rabbai explained how genealogy and lineage were inextricably connected to Jewish idenity and Faith. Essentially everything a Jew did came because of the promises that Jews have received from God by promises made to their ancestors the patriarchs. A Jews entire idenity, and hope for a bright future came through that blood line. So rather seeing this as stuffy history, instead this reminds more of that passage of St. Paul that says Hebrews 11:1[ By Faith We Understand ] Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’Exodus 3:15

The author especially noted the sinister affect of slavery. Slavery usually meant erasing the lineage of those held captive. Because families were frequently seperated, children sold off to other households at a young age, women raped and so on, all to undermine the will of the captives. Anyway slavery frequently resulted in a loss of one's lineage. For a Jew this was devestating because the loss of both their temporal heritage (their claim to specific land and property In Israel) and their greater spiritual heritage (their tribal identification which has great signifcance ot both their culture and their faith i.e. - are they members of the priestly tribe of Levi where the priests and Levites came from. This even affected then learning about their very Faith itself). As the rabbai said, "to be a Jew without any knowledge of his heritage is to be a Jew cut off from any hope of the future". It's basically a kind of excommunication, a curse, a kind of orphanhood.

Anyway when we read the genealogies in the Bible, both here and the old Testament I really think that is the kind of thing to keep in mind when we think of why they are there and what purpose they serve. I will also submit later, that this severing of the past, equated with slavery in Judaism creates confusion in present day Christianity as well. But that will be a point to develope for another day....