Said, I Ch. iii, 19, to be son of Pedaiah, Salathiel's brother.

§ Omitted in 1 Chronicles and Matthew.

Omitted in Matthew and Luke. There is evidently confusion in the

list in Chronicles at this time. The identification of Hananiah with Joannan is

pretty clear, that of Hodaiah with Abiud more doubtful.

End of line in Chronicles. Possibly identical with Abiud and Judah. ** Brothers.

++ Son of Jacob by Levirate marriage, Joseph dying childless.

2. The second coincidence, which supposes Matthan (St. Matthew) to be identical with Matthat (St. Luke), which I think most probable, can be explained in the same way-that the senior branch of the family followed, as was his custom, by St. Matthew became extinct in Eliazar, Matthan, of the junior branch, becoming head.

3. Joseph's parentage also, I think, admits of an easy explanation. If we suppose that Matthan had two sons, Jacob and Heli, and that Jacob died childless, then Heli would take his wife under the Levirate law. If Joseph were the fruit of this union, St. Matthew would be quite correct in calling him the son of Jacob, and I believe he would be reckoned as first cousin to Mary the daughter of Heli by a regular wife, and therefore Joseph and Mary would not come within the prohibited degrees of relationship.

4. If Joseph and Mary were living together under one roof, as they probably would be under the circumstances, it is easy to understand how Joseph discovered Mary's condition before his marriage (St. Matt. i, 18). This explanation also gives an intelligible meaning to St. Luke's qualifying words (iii, 23), and also corroborates the remarkable statement of the Talmud to which Mrs. Lewis refers, that Mary was the daughter of Heli.

Dr. KENYON writes: As one would expect from the writer, this paper is both learned and stimulating. I do not think there is anything that I could usefully add to it, nor indeed have I time to write at length on the subject. One point only, which Mrs. Lewis makes, I should like to emphasize; namely, that we have no business to assume that records of what one may call generally the Old Testament period were scanty. All recent discoveries go to prove that the knowledge and use of writing were much more widely spread than used to be supposed. The tablets of Babylonia and Assyria, the papyri of ancient Egypt, the correspondence between Syria and Egypt found at Tell-el-Amarna, the records discovered by Sir Arthur Evans at Gnossos, and in later times the Aramaic and Greek papyri found in Egypt, all these go to prove a very general use of writing in the ancient world, so that one is now entitled to argue that, when direct evidence is wanting, the presumption is in favour of the original existence of records, not against it.

This is a consideration which has a wide bearing on the criticism of Old Testament history, not confined to the genealogies with

which Mrs. Lewis deals; but there need be no hesitation in assuming that these genealogies were derived by the Evangelist from written, and possibly official, records.

Dr. MARGOLIOUTH writes:

"The genealogies of our Lord," which you have kindly sent me, I am unfortunately not able to study closely at present, being rather in bad health just now. From the cursory perusal, however, of it which I have been able to make, I gather that the subject is treated in it in a very interesting and instructive way. One point that struck my attention was this: If the report of Julius Africanus that Herod the Great caused most of the Temple registers to be burnt be true, is it likely that such a document as the genealogy given in St. Matthew would have escaped destruction if it had been one of the records preserved in the Temple at that time?

Mr. E. J. SEWELL writes:

Mrs. Lewis is of opinion (p. 14) that St. Luke gives us Mary's genealogy.

So far as this rests upon the statement on the same page that"the Talmud tells us that Mary's father was Heli," it is, I think, open to very grave doubt. Dr. Gore, now Bishop of Oxford, in his Dissertation on the Virgin-birth of our Lord says (p. 39) that the statement-“. is based on a quite untenable translation." He quotes the Hebrew of the citation from the Talmud referred to by Mrs. Lewis. It is, of course, unpointed. Lightfoot adopted one possible pointing and rendered it: He saw Miriam the daughter of Heli among the shades. "But," says Dr. Gore (p. 40), “I am assured that the only legitimate translation is: He saw Miriam, the daughter of Onion-leaves (a nickname of a kind not uncommon in the Talmud); and there is no reason to suppose any reference to our Lord's mother."

Without the support of this statement from the Talmud there is very little reason to connect Heli with Mary. This is not, of course, urged as any reason for doubting that the Virgin Mary was, in fact, descended from David. Mrs. Lewis' very interesting and important statement that "the Sinai Palimpsest tells us that Joseph and Mary

were both of the lineage of David "and that the Armenian version of the Diatessaron has the same reading strongly support the inference which one would draw independently of them from St. Luke i, 32; Rom. i, 3, and other passages that through His

earthly mother our Lord was "born of the seed of David according to the flesh."

As regards our Lord's descent from David there may be added to the considerations on pp. 11 and 12 of Mrs. Lewis' paper the statement of Ulla, a Jewish Rabbi of the third century, that Jesus was treated exceptionally because of this royal extraction. (Bishop Gore quotes as authority for this the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 43 (a): cf. Derembourg, p. 349, n. 2.) See also Farrar's Life of Christ, vol. i, p. 9, note, and Renan Evang., p. 60.

Dr. Gore further quotes (Dissert., p. 380, the authorities there quoted) that the great Hillel, grandfather of Gamaliel, who belonged to a family of Jewish exiles in Babylon, and came to Jerusalem about 50 B.C., was recognized as of David's family, and that "appeal was made in vindication of his claim to a pedigree found in Jerusalem."

REPLY.

I am asked by Archdeacon Potter why the Revisers of our English Version left out the word "wife" in Luke ii, 5? They doubtless did so chiefly on the authority of and B; which, though the oldest of our extant Greek MSS., are probably not older than the Sinai Palimpsest, nor than the old Latin a and b, which have "wife" always, like the Diatessaron and the Peshitta. I appreciate the arguments used by Dr. Thirtle; but yet I hold that the phrase "who was betrothed to him" must convey the impression, to plain English people, that Mary was not yet legally married to Joseph. Probably the "his espoused wife" of the Authorized Version describes the situation better than any other phrase would do.

I cannot agree that the Virgin Mary would require a fortnight to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The path was probably, as now, a frequented mule-track, over soft grass. My sister and I have done it, very leisurely indeed, in seven and a half days. Mary perhaps thought that there would be ample time to allow of her return to Nazareth before the expected event; and the usual rate of progress, three miles an hour, did not necessarily put any great strain on her.

I agree with Canon Girdlestone that we must try to understand Jewish methods of registration if we wish to explain the genealogies