(Luke 3:23)
QUESTION 5: HOW COULD
JOSEPH HAVE TWO FATHERS.—This question is not absurd. St. Matthew says that Joseph
was begotten by Jacob (cf. Matt. 1:16), and St. Luke says that he is the son of
Heli. This difficulty cannot be solved by saying that the same personage bore
two names, as was the custom sometimes among the Gentiles and the Jews. The series
of other generations is a dogmatic refutation of this kind of solution. For how
do you explain why the names of the grandfather, the great-grandfather, the
great-great-grandfather, and the other ancestors are different in two
Evangelists? How do we explain the difference in the number of generations?
Saint Luke counts forty-three, going up from Our Lord to David. St. Matthew,
descendant of David to Our Lord, counts twenty-seven or twenty-eight; and, for
some mysterious reason, the name that ends the series of generations that come
to Babylon’s captivity, it repeated as the first of those what begin upon the
return from captivity. The question of knowing in what sense Joseph could have
two fathers, is not solved. I see three hypotheses among which there may be one
that relates to the thought of the Evangelist. Either Joseph had an adoptive
father in addition to his father according to nature, or by virtue of the
custom according to which, in the case of the Jews, when one of these died
without leaving a succession, a close relative took the wife of the deceased
and assigned the son to the deceased relative. (Cf. Deut. 25:5-6). So, being
begotten by one and assigned to another, it is quite rightly stated that Joseph
had two parents designated a maternal grandfather, or someone of the ancestors
whose relationship, Joseph, could be called the son, without any improbability.
In this hypothesis, the genealogy of St. Luke to David would be different from
the genealogy of St. Matthew. The second of these explanations seems less
solid, because when a man with the Jews had a child of the widow of his brother
or a close relative, the name of the deceased husband was given to this child.
The difficulty will therefore be solved by the hypothesis of adoption, or by
admitting that one of the genealogies supposes the collateral ancestors, or in
any other manner which escapes our thought. But what folly and what end to accuse
an Evangelist of lying, instead of seeking an explanation for this difference
in the name of the ancestors says Christ? It would be boldness already, to
pretend that there are only two possible solutions. Only one, however, suffices
to make all the difficulties disappear. (Augustine, “Questions on the Gospel of
Saint Luke,” in Questions on the Gospels By Augustine of Hippo [trans.
John Litteral; Litteral Truth Publishing, 2019], 37-38)
