Honorary Knight Commander
"And it is still stranger that they should trace his genealogy to Joseph, if they did not consider him Joseph's son. Otherwise, the genealogy of 'Sinbad the Sailor,' or 'Harry Haulaway,' would have been as apropos."
In order to exalt the dignity and character of the Christian Messiah still higher than a mere claim for a divine origin ... they tell us that he descended from and through a line of kings embracing the house of David. But in presenting the names, and the number of generations, in their attempts to make out this royal distinction, this kingly exaltation of birth, they exhibit a most egregious bungle, and the most barefaced tissue of discrepancies. For they not only differ widely with each other in this matter, but differ with the Old Testament genealogy, and differ with those texts which give the maternal ancestry of Jesus.
Luke, in his gospel, names and counts off forty-one generations from David, to Joseph, though he had previously represented it as being forty-two; but Matthew says that "from Abraham to David are fourteen generations."
Matthew, after naming twenty-four generations as filling out the line, and making it complete between David and Jacob, concludes by saying, "and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary."
But Luke, antecedent to spinning out his list to fourteen generations more than Matthew, i.e., making it fourteen generations longer, declares that "Joseph was the son of Heli." So that Joseph either had two fathers, Jacob and Heli; or Matthew or Luke, or both, were most egregiously mistaken, with all their "inspiration."
This is a strange way, indeed, of proving Jesus Christ to have had two fathers! -- to be both the son of God and son of David! And it is still stranger that they should trace his genealogy to Joseph, if they did not consider him Joseph's son. Otherwise, the genealogy of "Sinbad the Sailor," or "Harry Haulaway," would have been as apropos.
Such are the beautiful harmony and agreement in the words of "divine inspiration" which Christians prate so much about.
And all this appears to be the result of an attempt to elevate the man Christ Jesus to a level with the demigods of antiquity, nearly all of whom claimed to be of royal or princely descent. Such continual blundering, guessing, cross-firing, and clashing of names as is exhibited in the foregoing exposition, reminds us of the Hibernian's reply when asked for the number and names of his brothers:
"Well, sir, I have fourteen brothers, and they are all named Bill, but Bob � his name is Tom."
Matthew and Luke's attempt to exalt and dignify the character of Christ by making out for him a pure, holy and royal lineage we find, upon a critical
examination not only proved a very signal but a very singular and ludicrous failure, for all his female ancestors who are brought to notice were persons of libidinous or licentious tendencies, according to their own biblical history.
"It is remarkable," says Dr. Alexander Walker, (a Christian writer, in his work on Woman, p. 330), "that in the genealogy of Christ only four women are named: Thamar, who seduced the father of her late husband, and Rachel, a common prostitute, and Ruth, who, instead of marrying one of her cousins, went to bed with another of them, and Bathsheba, an adulteress, who espoused David the murderer of her first husband."
What a pedigree for an incarnate God...
The present custom of orthodox Christendom, in packing their sins upon the back of a God, is just the same substantially as that of various heathen nations who were anciently in the habit of packing them upon the backs of various dumb animals.
Kersey Graves
PHONEY CHRIST
Sixteen Crucified Saviors
