"Look, Jesus is descended from David through Joseph!"
"So, Joseph is Jesus' father, then?"
"No, Yahweh is his father."
"So, he's not really descended from David, is he?"
"Yes, through Joseph."
"So, Joseph is his father..."
"No, I told you, Yahweh is!"
"So, how is Jesus related to Joseph?"
"Jesus is descended from David through Joseph."

Not the most genealogically sound arguement, I assure you.

Next.

"Actually, there were two different geneologies given for Jesus, both leading back to David. One was Mary's, the other was Joseph's."

So, the points are:

1/ Using Mary's geneology, Jesus leads back to David.

First of Two's religous-hatred filled response:
"True, but since Israel was a matriarchy, feminine lines of descent (through Mary) don't mean much of anything, certainly not to be considered much as regards prophecy."

2/ Using Joseph's geneology, Jesus leads back to David

First of Two's God-ate-my-mum response: "And since Joseph wasn't Jesus's real father, from a biological standpoint, HIS line of descent wouldn't matter, either."

So, Mr "I always answer every argument ever", I say to you:

NEXT!

He said that "since Israel was a matriarchy, feminine lines of descent (through Mary) don't mean much of anything." I reject this premise, on the grounds that it's a non sequitor. What basis does he have for this conclusion? IIRC, even a woman's geneology was important, because you were supposed to marry within your own tribe. Why should her geneology be ignored?

The prophecies said that the Messiah would be of the line of David. Why should it make a difference that it was through a woman?

Yes, but in this case, it's Omega ... not the devil, but close

Wouldn't we all, if you went far back enough, be related? So, then Liam could be the Messiah?

I'm sure he's got some fellow named David in his family, perhaps a crazy uncle with a magic lap, or somesuch.

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"Omae o korusu..." - Heero Yuy

Looks like Gentiles are no good.

In the eyes of those to whom He was speaking, they weren't.

Well, as long as he was reforming everything else about them, why not preach religious tolerance? If he said Gentiles were wrong, it means he felt that way. Or are you saying he was lying, just to keep people listening to him? That would make him quite the hypocrite, eh?

Oot and Gurt begat Ug, who married Brun and begat Gort, one of whose sons begat Mugna, the first anthropoid to use a disyllabic name, who begat Ordo, who begat Grunt, who begat Grunt-un, who begat Muggor, who begat Ungwa, etc, etc, skip several hundred begattings, ...begat Alexander, who begat Robert Ellis, who begat Robert Allison, who begat Rob. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

All this begatting... who did the research for it? Who verified the authenticity of the records? And where are these indestructible historical documents, that somehow survived from David to Jesus's time and beyond, NOW?

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

Wouldn't we all, if you went far back enough, be related?

Yes, through both Adam and Noah. However, that wasn't the prophecy. God promised David (that's David the king, not QW's uncle David, nor, for that matter, my dad David) that one of his decendents would reign for eternity. Thus Jesus, who, through Mary, was a decendent of David, and now reigns for eternity.

Why is this so hard to get?

Tim:

If he said Gentiles were wrong, it means he felt that way.

But He didn't say that. The idea was to make it hit home that the self-righteous Pharasees were really no better than the Gentiles that they despised. Kind of a sarcasm thing, and a way to point out the hypocracy of the Pharasees at the same time. Things like that don't translate well to text, apparently.

Well, as long as he was reforming everything else about them, why not preach religious tolerance?

He did. Good Samaritan parable, for example.

JK:

Who is to say Jesus and not Muhammed is the true messiah?

A whole freakin' bunch of prophets. Oh, and God. Can't forget God.

Rob:

All this begatting... who did the research for it?

Again, who needs to do research? People kept records of their ancestory, adding to them each generation. It would have just been sitting somewhere in a family house.

Who verified the authenticity of the records?

Who verified the authenticity of your family tree? If you don't accept SOME historical records, even when they can't be proven to be accurate, then you have no history to work with. On what basis do you deny the historical accuracy of the books of the Bible? And WHICH books, for that matter? Do you accept ANY of it as accurate?

To me, this seems on the scale of people who deny the accuracy of Smith's account of the Pilgrim settlement of Plymouth (darn, what WAS the name of that book?), just because it shows a failed communist society, and we know that THAT can't happen, don't we?

And where are these indestructible historical documents, that somehow survived from David to Jesus's time and beyond, NOW?

Um... written in the Bible?

I never said it was the exact same physical document that was passed from generation to generation. That's be rediculous. Scrolls would rot after four or five hundred years, in all likelyhood. They probably made several copies, for each child, with his or her personal geneology on it. What happened to the parents', I don't know. Maybe they buried them with the bodies?

When the only way to maintain written records was to manually rewrite the article in question, I'm sure that somewhere, someone along the line said "hey, you know, this doesn't make sense. This prophecy here hasn't been fulfilled properly. Well, I'm sure in all Yahweh's Greatness, He didn't show us so that we mere underlings could understand. But it still happens. So, I'll write that Mary is second cousins with the brother of the wife of Davids great grandson. There, it works, and we have no way of checking it, so this can be the definitive source for the Ancestry of Mary. I am invincible."

No, I'm a Deist, remember? I don't accept the Bible (Or Koran, or Talmud) as accurate just because it SAYS so.

I accept the existence of certain places in the Bible.
-but-
I also accept the existence of Devil's Tower, Wyoming, while not believing that aliens landed there, a la "Close Encounters."

I submit that it is IMPOSSIBLE to ascertain for CERTAIN the accuracy of the genealogies of Joseph and Mary, as claimed by the Bible authors. Therefore their accuracy is entirely a matter of FAITH, a resource I do not spend freely. You have to TRUST too many things for my liking. You have to trust that the writers were telling the absolute, unvarnished truth, with proof (at least at the time), and not simply creating a new myth similar to preexisting myths, (Dionysus, Orpheus, Osiris, the Horned God, Persephone, etc, etc,) and trying to give it authority by claiming descent from a famous historical personage.

Hell, half the Romans claimed descent from some God or another. And as I said, not long ago, EVERYBODY in Europe claimed descent from Charlemagne... there are still a lot of family trees in Europe, in fact, that include Charlemagne on their branches... whether or not it's accurate.

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master