shernren said:
Well it's possible, but one of them couldn't possibly be completely literal. Matthew 1 has:
Matthew 1:16And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
and Luke has:
Luke 3:23And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
Both are on the surface genealogies of Joseph. So that suggestion requires a non-literal reading of the text.
Another interpretation is that the Matthew lineage was a lineage of royal descent whereas the Luke lineage was a lineage of natural descent. Again, another non-literal reading of the text.
This is actually an important issue. If one has to take the genealogies of the Gospels as non-literal, why shouldn't we have similar license to take the genealogies of Genesis as non-literal? And on a related aside, isn't this what YECs do to get a date of 10,000 odd years for the earth? The Ussher date gives 6000 years and as far as I know it directly refers to the Genesis chronologies, so a 10,000 years date needs some fudging of the same ...
Well let's ask a simple question: Are you suggesting that the authors who wrote those geneaologies, who walked with Jesus, knew His family, were taught by Jesus, wouldn't know His lineage? They wouldn't know who Mary's father was and they wouldn't know who Joseph's father was? Is that your suggestion?
I know you and many TEs may think of "literal" as a bad word now in the creation and evolution debates; probably just as much as YECs think of myth or allegorical as a bad word in these debates, but that is not the case. It is not that you need to take a "non-literal" approach to these verses or any verse that you don't understand. You need to understand what the author was trying to convey to his readers.
There are two schools of thought about these genealogies, one is that Luke is looking at Mary's genealogy because Joseph was not the natural father, but Mary was the natural Mother - after all she gave birth to Jesus.
The second school of thought is that Matthew traces the legal descent of the house of David using only the heirs of the throne, while Luke traces the actual bloodline of Joseph to David.
The second school of thought is the most likely and would also be common since it was prophecied that Jesus was the coming King from the line of David.
It seems what you are doing is looking for a reason to take geneaologies as mythical, meaning Adam can and could be an archetype rather than a real person. When it comes to hermeneutics, this is committing a fallacy that is often referred to as the "reader gives the text its meaning". This is a popular way to interpret any piece of literature today, but this should not be the case with the Bible.
We should approach the Bible looking for what the authors wanted the reader to understand. When we look to this, we will realize that the message never changes throughout history. The implications of the message can apply differently throughout history, such as Jesus quoting Isaiah to refer to the Pharisees when Isaiah probably never had the Phariees in mind, but the conveyed meaning of the author would still apply nonetheless.
Another example would be where Paul says do not get drunk off of wine. So is it ok to get drunk off of beer instead? Or how about vodka? No, of course not, we understand that Paul was referring to anything that makes one loose control of their mind and body. So the implications can be different, such as substituting heroine in for wine.
So, when you look to the text concerning these geneaologies you need to look and see what the author wanted to convey. This will never change throughout history. Since Matthew was writing to the Jews, it seems relevant that he would trace the lineage of heirs to the throne of David since that is what the Jews were looking for.
