Genealogy In The Four Gospels

As the most influential book in the world, the Bible has been widely appreciated and studied by people from all nations through thousands of years. The Christian New Testament includes the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the first four books, and they offer the most significant source of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Though there are some similar stories related to Jesus in these books, the four Gospels give four distinctive accounts of Jesus ' life, earthly ministry, teaching, and resurrection. Among these dissimilarities, one most obvious and principal difference is the record of Jesus’ genealogy. Both Matthew and Luke offer the family tree of Jesus, but the two Gospels trace the ancestry of Jesus in different …show more content…
The reason why Luke provides the genealogy of Jesus after Jesus ' baptism is that the baptism paves the way for God’s appearance and calling of Jesus as “my Son, the Beloved” (Luke 3: 23). Those very words from the Father are the basis for Luke 's later assertion in the book that Jesus is the Son of God. In addition, Luke’s account of genealogy progresses in a chronologically regressive way, enabling Jesus to appear again as the “son of God” in the end and parallel God 's own testimony (Luke 3: 38). Such backward description also places Adam, the man who is created directly by and from God, as also the son of God. Through linking both Adam and Jesus to God and placing the temptation narrative right after the genealogy, Luke is making an implicit comparison between Adam and Jesus, the two sons of God who both experience temptations. With Jesus’ successful resistance to the lure by the devil, this placement of genealogy proceeds Jesus’ uniqueness as being not only the son of God but also the true Son who is able to resist temptation. Thus by placing the genealogy here, Luke is able to show Jesus as fulfilling the role as the true Son of