Laura Reads Matthew (1:1-17)

Judah and Tamar, School of Rembrandt, public domain

 I write here in fits and spurts. But, after nearly 2 years of no writing, I feel compelled to do it again. 

I am reading Matthew...again. I think it's my favorite book of the bible. My faith waxes and wanes, but when it grows strongest, it's the words of Matthew's gospel that attract me the most. We don't know for sure who the author of the gospel of Matthew really was. However, we're pretty sure that he was a Jewish writer writing for a Jewish audience. And so, he begins with a geneology, tracing Jesus' ancestry back to Abraham.

My first husband's mother had a framed document that showed their family geneology traced back to both Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. She was very proud of it. At the time, I though it very impressive, but I have since learned that there were quite a few fraudulent such geneologies, giving innocent folk the impression that they had descended from ancient rules who had established Christianity in medieval Europe. In a similar fashion, my grandmother was sure that she was a direct descendent of Gen. Robert E. Lee. She was, like many of her generation, take in by the revisionist history put out by the notorious Daughters of the Confederacy that Gen. Lee was not guilty of the ownership of slaves, much less their mistreatment. She saw him as a hero, not a traitor to the Union. However, I've done the work. I do share a common ancestor with Gen. Lee, but we are not direct descendants. 

It all goes to show that people put much stock in who their ancestors (supposedly) are. Folks feel that descending from someone important makes them important too, I guess. None of us really wants to contemplate the reality that we will be lost among the hundreds of millions of people who have lived and died on this earth. 

It was important to Matthew to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy, and to prove that he had a pedigree of royal descent. But, you have to recognize that the things may have been, well, fudged a little to prove the point. For one thing, Matthew's generation count is off. Also, Luke provides a different geneology. At the end of the day, whether Jesus' geneology is entirely accurate in regards to the prophecies doesn't change whether or not I choose to believe in him. But, then, I'm a gentile in 2025, not a Jew in the first century. 

History is told by the victors. We never really know what is and isn't accurate. I don't put much stock in the idea that scripture was miraculously preserved as accurate. And so, I don't know, and frankly don't care whether the geneology in Matthew was 100% right. But here's what I do care about.

Matthew includes women in his geneology, and all of them have potential sexual disqualifiers. The first is Tamar, who tricks her father-in-law into having sex with her (he thought she was a prostitute) so that she can have an heir to the family's estate. The second is Rahab, a prostitute who assists the Israelite spies who are scouting out the promised land. The third is Ruth who lies at the feet of Boaz to get him to marry her. And finally, there is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who has somehow become pregnant by other than Joseph. They are all not just women, but potentially disgraced women. And we read about them today in Matthew's gospel. They are not forgotten. They are not cast aside. They are worthy, according to Matthew, because Jesus descended from them. It's yet another way that we see the upside-down kingdom of Jesus. The geneology was, ostensibly, to show Jesus' ancestral creds. But instead, we see the backwards creds of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. If we believe that he is the Messiah, then he legitimizes them, in spite of their stories. 

And so, what might have been the most boring passage in scripture becomes an inspiring one to me.