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Mat_1:16. Ἰακὼβ … Ἰωσήφ ] In Luk_3:24, Joseph is called a son of Eli. This variation, also, cannot be set aside. As in the case of most great men who have sprung from an obscure origin, so also in the case of Jesus, the ancestors of no reputation were forgotten, and were given by tradition in varying form. The view, however (Epiphanius, Luther, Calovius in answer to Grotius, Bengel, Rosenmüller, Paulus, Gratz, Hofmann, Olshausen, Ebrard, Lange, Arnoldi, Bisping, Auberlen), that Luke gives the genealogy of Mary, and consequently that in Luk_3:24 Joseph is entered as son-in-law of Eli, or Eli as maternal grandfather of Jesus (Spanheim, Wieseler, Riggenbach in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1855, p. 585 ff., Krafft), is just as baseless and harmonistically forced an invention as that of Augustine, de consen. ev. ii. 3; or of Wetstein, Delitzsch, that Joseph was the adopted son of Eli; or that of Julius Africanus in Eusebius i. 7, that Matthew gives the proper father of Joseph, while Luke gives his legal father according to the law of Levirate marriage (Hug), or conversely (Schleiermacher after Ambrose and others). The contradictions which our genealogy presents to that of Luke are to be impartially recognised. See a more minute consideration of this in Luke after ch. 3.
It is well known that the Jews (the Talmud, and in Origen, c. Celsum, i. 32) call Jesus the son of Pandira[354] or Panthera. See Paulus, exeget. Handb. I. p. 290; Nitzsch in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1840, 1; Keim, Leben Jesu, I. p. 368; Ewald, Gesch. Christi, p. 187, ed. 3.
ἄνδρα ] is to be rendered husband, and not (Olshausen, after Theophylact, Grotius) betrothed. For when the genealogist wrote, Joseph had been long ago the husband of Mary; and the signification of ἈΝΉΡ is never that of sponsus.
ἐξ ἧς ] see on Gal_4:4.
ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός ] if the assumption of Storr (Zweck d. evangel. Gesch. u. d. Briefe Joh. p. 273), that this addition expresses the doubt of the genealogist, an unbelieving relative of Jesus, is a pure imagination, and completely opposed to the standpoint of the evangelist, who adopted the genealogy, still we are not to say, with Olshausen (comp. Gersdorf, and already Er. Schmidt), that λέγεσθαι here means to be called, and also actually to be. This would be to confuse it improperly with ΚΑΛΕῖΣΘΑΙ . See Winer, p. 571 [E. T. 769]. The genealogical source, which found a reception in our Matthew, narrates in a purely historical manner: who bears the name of Christ (Mat_4:18, Mat_10:2, Mat_27:17); for this name, which became His from the official designation, was the distinctive name of this Jesus. Comp., besides, Remark 3, after Mat_1:17.
[354] ôÌÇðÀãÄéøÈà . Epiphanius, Haeres. 78. 7, thus ( Πάνθηρ ) terms the father of Joseph. John of Damascus, de fide Orthodox. iv. 15, removes this name still further back in the roll of ancestors. The Jewish book, Toledoth Jeschu, calls the father of Jesus, Joseph Pandira. See Eisenmenger, p. 105; Paulus, exeget. Handb. I. p. 156 f.; Thilo, Cod. apocr. I. p. 526 f.