How to read this family tree of Jesus
Read the chart from the top down, one generation the Gospels name to a row. A switch picks the reading.1819
A picture is a likeness
A detail of an old painting or woodcut, or a silhouette where none names the man.
A line down is a father
It is solid where Matthew writes begat and dotted for Luke’s Neri and Heli or across generations left out.
A note counts a gap
The Gospel names more generations there than the chart draws.
Two genealogies, written in opposite directions
Matthew opens his Gospel with “the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” and runs forward from Abraham, father to son.1 He divides the names into three sets of fourteen generations, from Abraham to David, from David to the exile in Babylon, and from the exile to Christ.1 From David he follows the kings of Judah through Solomon to Jeconiah.
Luke places his list later, at the start of the ministry, when Jesus “began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph.”2 He runs backward, son to father, past David and Abraham to Adam, “which was the son of God.”2 From David he follows Nathan, another son of David and Bathsheba.25
Matthew’s count of fourteen leaves names out. After Joram, 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 lists Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah, whom Matthew does not name.51
| Point | Matthew 1:1-17 | Luke 3:23-38 |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | Forward, from Abraham to Jesus | Backward, from Jesus to Adam |
| Son of David | Solomon, the line of the kings | Nathan |
| Names from David to Joseph | 27 | 42 |
| Father of Joseph | Jacob, son of Matthan | Heli, son of Matthat |
| Women named | Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Urias and Mary | None |
Where the two lines meet
The family tree of Jesus crosses once. Matthew says that Jechonias begat Salathiel after the exile, and Luke makes Salathiel the son of Neri.12 Both name Zorobabel as the son of Salathiel, and then they part again, Matthew through Abiud and Luke through Rhesa.12
The Hebrew Bible adds two details. 1 Chronicles 3:17 lists Salathiel among the sons of Jeconiah, but 3:19 names Zerubbabel as a son of Pedaiah, a brother of Salathiel.5 Jeremiah 22:30 says of Coniah, the same king, that “no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David.”6
The family tree of Jesus from David to Joseph
- Matthew, through Solomon
- Luke, through Nathan
- Named in both
- David
- A monarch of England
- A marriage
How the traditions explain the difference
Early readers of the family tree of Jesus saw that it gives Joseph two fathers. Africanus, in a letter to Aristides that Eusebius preserves, explained them by the law that a man should raise up children to a brother who died childless.10 In his account Jacob and Heli had one mother, Estha, and fathers of the lines of Solomon and Nathan.10 Heli died childless and Jacob married the widow, so that Joseph was “his own son by nature, but by law the son of Eli.”10
A second reading takes Luke’s list as the line of Mary, with Heli as her father.12
Jewish tradition does not accept the Gospels, and Aish sets out the objections a Jewish reader raises. The Messiah must descend from David on his father’s side, and a birth without a human father would leave no such descent.12 Luke’s line runs through Nathan and not Solomon, and both lists pass through Jeconiah’s family, on which Jeremiah laid his curse.126
Mary’s and Joseph’s families in the texts
Joseph is “of the house and lineage of David” in Luke 2:4, and Matthew 1:20 has the angel call him “thou son of David.”41 Both Gospels tell of a conception without a human father, Matthew 1:18-20 and Luke 1:34-35, so the chart draws Joseph as the father of Jesus in law and Mary as his mother.13
The Bible names no parent of Mary. Her kinswoman Elisabeth, called “thy cousin” in the King James Version, was “of the daughters of Aaron” and married to the priest Zacharias, and their son was John the Baptist.3 John 19:25 mentions “his mother’s sister” at the cross.9 The names Joachim and Anne come from the Protoevangelium of James, an early Christian text outside the Bible.11
Mark 6:3 names four brothers of Jesus, James, Joses, Juda and Simon, and speaks of sisters.78 Protestants mostly read them as sons of Mary and Joseph, the Orthodox as sons of Joseph by an earlier wife, and Catholics as cousins, sons of Mary of Clopas.1517161413
JosephBy Guido Reni.
MaryBy Sassoferrato.
ElisabethBy Philippe de Champaigne.
John the BaptistBy Leonardo da Vinci.
Questions about the family tree of Jesus
Why the family tree of Jesus has two versions
Matthew and Luke follow different sons of David. Africanus explained Joseph’s two fathers by a levirate marriage, and others read Luke’s list as Mary’s line.
Whether Mary was descended from David
The Gospels give Joseph’s descent from David, not Mary’s. Reading Luke 3 as her line is an interpretation.
Who the parents of Mary were
The Bible does not name them. The Protoevangelium of James, an early Christian text outside the Bible, calls them Joachim and Anna.
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 28 people on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the 19 numbered sources this article cites. It also gives the credits of the portraits and this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.