Have a Merry Matthew Christmas!

On behalf of everyone at Internet Infidels / Secular Web (if I may), I'd like to wish you a happy and safe holidays!

Here are some fun ideas about Christmas in the Gospel of Matthew, particularly the genealogy or bloodline presented:

Want to know a fun fact? In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (really of Joseph) we see Joseph adopted Jesus into a family with a Davidic royal bloodline. This fits in with the idea that Jesus was to restore the Davidic throne. God, after all, had promised the Davidic throne would be reestablished. Yet in Jesus’s time, there was little chance of that happening with Imperial Rome. But here’s a further problem. Rich Robinson notes:

According to the genealogy in Matthew 1:12, Jesus is a descendant of Jeconiah. But Jeconiah was cursed in Jeremiah 22:24 and 22:30:

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As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off.

This is what the LORD says: “Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule any more in Judah.”

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Since no descendant of Jeconiah could ever sit on the throne, if Jesus is a descendant of this cursed king, he is disqualified from being the Messiah.

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What was Matthew doing? He was accounting for the fact that Jesus was killed instead of re-establishing the Davidic throne, but the curse was ultimately overcome because Jesus would rule in the coming kingdom of God, since Jesus was not directly in the cursed bloodline but only adopted into it. This is the genius of Matthew’s genealogy. The throne of David would be resurrected because Jesus was not physically Davidic. This fits in with the notion in the ancient world of the power of being adopted into a family, like Augustus Caesar. Contrast this with Paul who said Jesus was physically of the seed of David.

There’s another interesting feature of Matthew’s genealogy. There are women in it who are associated with sexual immorality in the Old Testament, who Spong labeled the Shady Ladies:

The incest of Tamar, the prostitution of Rahab, the seduction of Ruth and the adultery of Bathsheba were the experiences in his ancestry through which Jesus came to be born, as shown in the story of Matthew’s genealogy. All of these women were foreign, and by the standards of that day, all of these women were sexually compromised. This is the way Matthew introduces the story of Jesus’ birth.

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Sexual immorality in the bible basically suggests that you defile yourself so you can’t come into the presence of God. Interestingly, if you look at these women apart from the sexual sense that follows them, they are quite heroic.

The symbolism seems to make the obvious connection that Jesus who is born of a mother that knew no sexuality and was only adopted into the sexual immorality (including David’s sexual immorality) line of Joseph, he was heroic like the shady ladies without having sexual proclivity or acts that would defile him. This is one of the main senses Jesus was without sin. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8; cf. Psalm 24:3–4). Jesus was adopted into Joseph’s Davidic bloodline as believers through baptism are also adopted into God’s family, Paul calling Jesus the firstborn of many brethren.

Have a great holiday season everyone!

Well, I am with Emmanuel Accommodationist Temple, and we have moved past your revelations. In the words of our founder, Les Kirby DDS, BTh, "We see, we saw, we succeeded." At Temple we accept the basics about Our Lord's provenance.
1) The Holy Ghost was his father, so the genealogies are irrelevant. Church elders differ on whether Holy Ghost/Mary was consensual, but the Temple long ago stopped pontificating over what she was wearing (i.e., robe off the shoulder, alluring ointments, etc.)
2) Galilee = hill country, and hill folk = nasty primogenitors, i.e. whores, meth addicts, leches, incestuous pervs, inbred geeks., etc. And yet they can also produce an Abe Lincoln or a Patsy Cline. Don't judge.
3) Jesus had only human X chromosomes, so he was born female. This is where all the other Christian denominations dump on us, but as Dr. Kirby says, "It's only a pronoun."
More information? Contact the Temple c/o Appalachian Dental in Hurricane, WV.
We see, we saw, we succeeded. And Merry Christmas.

By that logic, all of humanity is born into a "cursed bloodline", Mary included, owing to God's curses against Adam and Eve. But I see no evidence that Matthew actually meant to imply any of the above.

Someone asked me why I did my Christmas Secular Frontier post on Matthew's genealogy of Joseph but not Luke's. Good point! So, here's the new Christmas post including Luke's genealogy of Joseph: https://secularfrontier.infidels.or...ption-of-jesus-by-joseph-in-matthew-and-luke/

ABOVE LINK UPDATED!