OK. So I'm really excited about this. I've been troubled for some time by some problems with scripture.


1. Matthew seems to say that there are 14 generations leading to Jesus, immediately following an account where only 13 generations are presented.
2. The lineages of Jesus differ greatly between Matthew and Luke.
3. Jechoniah of Matthew 13 (G2423) shares a name with Coniah (H3204), a man who was told that his seed would never be allowed to sit on the throne of David. Therefore, he cannot have taken part in Jesus' lineage.
4. Scripture is God-inspired and cannot be false by any respect.

I did some research and here's what I found out:


First off, this website:
http://www.peshitta.org/bethgazza/Gabra.htm


1. To summarize, the site is a long word-study on G435, the word for 'husband' in Matt1:16 ("Joseph, the G435 of Mary). The word-study concludes that the word can be translated "father". The website uses English letters in some weird ways, but after doing some other research, I think it's legit.

This would make sense since David's line is supposed to rule, and Mary's father isn't mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, so this could very well be the lineage of Mary, whose father was also named Joseph.

This is indeed the only way I've found to make sense of the scripture, since we need 14 generations and with this Joseph as Mary's husband, we only have 13.


2. If Matthew gives the lineage of Mary and Luke gives the lineage of Joseph, husband of Mary, then it's ok for them to have different lineages.


3. It's true. The name Jechoniah from Matthew 11 is G2423, which comes from H3204, which is the Hebrew equivalent, Coniah. Coniah was a descendant of David whose descendants were never allowed to rule on David's throne (Jer 22:30). Here, I did a study of my own:

Check Jeremiah 22:24. This Coniah's father's name was Jehoakim (H3079). Well, Jechonia's father's name in Matthew 1:11 was Josiah (G2502) which was from H2977 (also Josiah). Looking at the 2 Kings 22:34, we see that Jehoakim was also Josiah's son. So, this leads us to believe that Jechoniah was Coniah's uncle, and they had the same name in the Hebrew. Problem solved.

Here's the lineage tree for Coniah and Jechoniah:

...........Joisah
............../\
...|.....................|
Eliakim...........Jechoniah
...|
Coniah

"...because He will save His people from their sins."