Chapter 1 – One God Translation

Matthew

   1 This is the origin[54] of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, and the son of Abraham, beginning with the genealogical record: 2 Abraham fathered[55] Isaac; and Isaac fathered Jacob; and Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers; 3 and Judah fathered Perez and Zerah (their mother was Tamar); and Perez fathered Hezron; and Hezron fathered Ram; 4 and Ram fathered Amminadab; and Amminadab fathered Nahshon; and Nahshon fathered Salmon; 5 and Salmon fathered Boaz (his mother was Rahab); and Boaz fathered Obed (his mother was Ruth); and Obed fathered Jesse; 6 and Jesse fathered King David.
      David fathered Solomon (his mother had been Uriah’s wife); 7 and Solomon fathered Rehoboam; and Rehoboam fathered Abijah; and Abijah fathered Asa; 8 and Asa fathered Jehoshaphat; and Jehoshaphat fathered Joram; and Joram fathered Uzziah; 9 and Uzziah fathered Jotham; and Jotham fathered Ahaz; and Ahaz fathered Hezekiah; 10 and Hezekiah fathered Manasseh; and Manasseh fathered Amon; and Amon fathered Josiah; 11 and Josiah fathered Jeconiah [56] and his brothers, at the time of the exile to Babylon.
       12 After the exile to Babylon, Jeconiah fathered [57] Shealtiel; and Shealtiel fathered [58] Zerubbabel; 13 and Zerubbabel fathered Abiud; and Abiud fathered Eliakim; and Eliakim fathered Azor; 14 and Azor fathered Zadok; and Zadok fathered Achim; and Achim fathered Eliud; 15 and Eliud fathered Eleazar; and Eleazar fathered Matthan; [59] and Matthan fathered Jacob; 16 and Jacob fathered Joseph, who was the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus was born, [60] the one who is called the Messiah.
      17 So all the generations from Abraham to David total fourteen; from David to the Babylonian exile total fourteen; and from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah total fourteen.
      18 The origin [61] of Jesus Messiah was like this: His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together she became pregnant through holy spirit. 19 Joseph, her husband-to-be, was a good man, and since he did not want to shame her publicly, he decided to break the engagement quietly. 20 As he was thinking about these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary to be your wife, because the child who has been fathered[62] in her is from holy spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this happened to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet: 23 “Look: the virgin will become pregnant, and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,” which means “God is with us.” [63] 24 Joseph woke up and did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do. He married Mary, 25 but did not have marital relations with her until she gave birth to a son,[64] whom he named Jesus.

Matthew

[54]

Matthew has deliberately used the powerful Greek word genesis, origin, to ensure that readers understand that the Son of God, the promised Messiah whom he presents is a real human being, though supernaturally “begotten in Mary” (1:20). His words are a direct allusion to Gen. 5:1 which speaks of the “genesis, the origin and birth record of Adam.” On no account are we to think of the much later, post-biblical concept of an “eternally begotten” Son, who had no beginning in time, to whom Greek philosophically minded church fathers attributed the nonsense phrase “beginningless beginning.” CEB translates, “A record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ.” Holman: “A historical record of Jesus Christ.” Matthew intended to rule out and block the very confusing and complicated idea that the Son was older than his ancestors! This excellent statement makes our point, and Matthew’s, very well: “Not only was the Gospel of Matthew referred to among Greek-speaking Jews as Genesis, but also his phrase ‘the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ’ is strongly reminiscent of the Greek version of Gen. 5.1, ‘the book of the genesis of human beings’ and Gen. 2.4, ‘the book of the genesis of heaven and earth’ [the account of God working with preexisting material to fashion the world for Adam]. In Jesus Christ, God had made a new beginning. To borrow from the language of Hollywood, the first Gospel could be billed as ‘Genesis II, the Sequel’” (Douglas R.A. Hare, Matthew). The major importance of Matt. 1:1 is that it defines who Jesus is. John and Paul should not be twisted to contradict this primary, “umbrella” definition of Jesus, meant to identify the true Son of God, the Messiah. Jesus is the visible image of the invisible one God. In Jesus we see the visible glory of God (John 1:18), and Jesus is the visible stamp or impress of his Father, who alone is God (Heb. 1:2). Man is “the image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7), and in Jesus that ideal image is restored. He does what Adam failed to do. Jesus is the “man Messiah” of 1 Tim. 2:5 and certainly not “GOD,” which would make two who are GOD — and this breaks the first command and the creed of Jesus and Israel (Mk. 12:29; John 17:3).

[55]

“begat” = to cause to come into existence, to procreate, to father. Equally true of the Son of God who was begotten, brought into existence by miracle by God in 1:18, 20. The begetting of the Messiah by God was predicted in Isa. 9:6: “A child/Son will be begotten [by God, a divine passive]”; Isa. 7:14: “The virgin will conceive,” implying a divine paternity. See 2 Sam. 7:14 and 1 Chron. 17:13, where God will become the Father of the Messianic son of David (Heb. 1:5). Also Ps. 2:7 and Ps. 110:3 (LXX). Lk. 1:35 and Mt. 1:18, 20 take up the prophecies of divine begetting and show how they were fulfilled in history. John 1:13 (see Jerusalem Bible) speaks of the virginal begetting in the case of the Son of God, Jesus. Heb. 1:5 and 5:5 see the fulfillment of Ps. 2:7 at the birth of Jesus, as does Acts 13:33 (not KJV, which mistranslates here) where the “raising up” is fulfilled when Jesus is begotten. Acts 13:34 speaks in contrast of the later resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 1 John 5:1 speaks of God as the begetter and 1 John 5:18 (not KJV, corrupted in this verse) of the coming into existence, begetting of the Son, who now protects believers. The begetting of the Son in 1 John 5:18 defines a time when this happened. To dissolve the easy word “beget” into timelessness destroys both the unitary monotheism (God is a single divine Person) and the human Messiah, who in order to be a real human, must begin in the womb of his mother (cp. Isa. 49:1, 5). Jesus is the second Adam, and everyone knows that Adam was a human person. Creedal Trinitarianism led to the impossible claim that Jesus is “man but not a man”!

[56]

Known also as Jehoiachin. It is important to know that the royal line from Solomon expired in Jehoiachin (Jer. 22:28-30). The royal successor was “borrowed” from the Nathan line found in Luke 3:27. Shealtiel (Salathiel) is found in both lists. Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) was considered the legal father of Shealtiel (Salathiel). Thus the blood line came through Nathan when the line expired in the list from Solomon. Shealtiel was the uncle of Zerubbabel. Joseph and Mary would both then be of the seed of David. Mary of course had to be, since Jesus, in order to qualify as Messiah (Mt. 1:1), must be related by blood to David (Acts 2:30; Ps. 132:11). Jesus is Son of God by miraculous intervention from God, creating the second Adam, the head of the new creation, and son of Mary and of David, as well as being the promised seed of Eve (Gen. 3:15. For further info. see my Who Is Jesus? at restorationfellowship.org)

[57]

That is, legally, to supply a successor for Jeconiah who was not allowed to have a son on the throne of David.

[58]

Actually the uncle of Zerubbabel.

[59]

Probably the grandfather of Mary and Joseph, Matthat in Luke 3:24. Mary and Joseph would be first cousins, both descendants of the royal house of David. See Lord Hervey’s fine work on the Genealogies of Jesus Christ, also in Smith’s Bible Dictionary. Both lists would be Joseph’s line, i.e. from Solomon, whose line expired, and from Nathan, another son of David.

[60]

The careful reader of Scripture will notice the string of verses which speak of the “begetting” = coming into existence of the Son of God. Thus in Isa. 7:14, the virginal begetting of the Messiah is predicted. In Isa. 9:6 the child/Son (in parallel) is said to be “begotten,” that is, by God, a divine passive. Here in the genealogy of the Son of God, he is “begotten” in and from Mary; the implied Father is God. In the list preceding, fathers begat their sons, but in the case of Mary, the fathering, begetting was authored by GOD. 1 John 5:18 speaks of the Son of God, Jesus, as “the one who was begotten” (aorist pointing to a moment in time). The impossible idea of an “eternal generation,” a phrase with no intelligible meaning, is entirely foreign to the Bible, unknown to any Bible writer.

[61]

The word is genesis = origin (as in 1:1), not just birth, but the point of time at which the Son of God came into existence. A variant gennesis was attempted by some manuscripts because “origin” for Jesus was highly embarrassing, as it still ought to be, to the much later notion that the Son was begotten not in time, but eternity! The later concept of “eternal generation” is foreign to the Bible and has no intelligible meaning. Any reader who is not in the grip of later tradition will have no difficulty at all with Matthew’s Son of God, Jesus, who came into existence some 2000 years ago. Luke’s account of the coming into existence of the Son is no less pointedly explicit (Lk. 1:35). Jesus is called the Son of the Father, and God called the Father of Jesus hundreds of times. This text can create the revolution necessary for returning to Scripture to identify who Jesus, the Son of God, is. And in this way the pure monotheism of Jesus, which he stated was the most important of all teachings, can be restored (Mk. 12:29; 10:18; Jn. 17:3; 5:44).

[62]

The verb is gennao which means “to cause to come into existence,” “to beget,” since this is the activity in Mary, not the later birth of the Son, and it describes the activity of the Father (that is, God, working through His creative operational power, the holy spirit, to effect a miracle). The origin of the Son of God, the Messiah is thus based firmly in history, and the Son of God is a real human being supernaturally conceived and begotten, having his origin in Mary. In later post-biblical theology under the influence of pagan ideas, the Messiah’s origin was antedated to a time before Genesis and later to eternity. This made Jesus essentially non-human, since he was said to be pre-human. The birth, origin,narratives of Matthew and Luke were thus perverted and essential truth about Jesus was lost. Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the origin of Jesus were specifically written to counteract and block the notion of a pre-human Son of God. But tradition and dogma later overwhelmed these accounts. The gospel of John was later used or misused, wrongly, to contradict the very straightforward accounts of the origin of the Son of God. Readers of Scripture would do well to ground themselves in the historical narrative of the origin of the Son of God, who is the head of the new creation, the second Adam. The whole history of dogma turns out to have been a rejection of Scripture at a fundamental level. It is highly significant and instructive to know that people holding to the “orthodox” definition of the Son of God are taught to believe that Jesus was “man, but not a man.” This is incomprehensible and defeats the biblical insistence on the Son of God being “the man Messiah Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5, and very often). For an account of the human Jesus, see Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God.

[63]

This title does not of course mean that the Son of God is God, making two GODS! It describes the function of Jesus as God’s unique agent and revealer of God’s will for humankind. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). “God was in Christ,” not “God was Christ.” A lady in Proverbs 30:1 named her son Ithiel, which is Hebrew for “God is with me.” No one imagined the child was actually God! It was descriptive of the mother’s conviction that God had given her a son. No one in NT times imagined that God could be born, much less that He could die or be tempted!

[64]

After the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary had a normal sexual relationship, producing half brothers and sisters of Jesus named in Mark 6:3. The Roman Catholic notion that Mary never had a sexual relationship with Joseph, the doctrine that she was perpetually a virgin, is completely false. Equally false is the idea that Mary was sinless (called the doctrine of the immaculate conception, not to be confused with the virginal birth), and that she was assumed to heaven bodily at death. Mary is currently dead, sleeping the sleep of death (Ps. 13:3; Ecc. 9:5, 10; John 11:11, 14). She will be raised to life in the future resurrection. Mary was turned into a pagan goddess, along with “saints,” who are in fact now dead. Praying to the dead is strictly forbidden in the Bible as it encourages contact with the demonic world. It was from the second century that paganism entered the church camouflaged, and this is in need of reform in our time. Justin Martyr, a church father of the second century, was deceived to the point of thinking that the holy spirit which overshadowed Mary was actually a preexisting Son effecting his own conception! (see Fitzmyer, Anchor Bible, on Luke 1:35).