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Mar. 12, 2005 Here are some thoughts on the improbability or impossibility that Jesus or anyone else, ancient or modern, could trace his anestry back 1000 years, and on the notion that Luke, saying that Joseph was the son of Heli, really meant that Mary was the daughter of Heli. In the balance is the credibility of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, with their mutually contradictory genealogies. Pharaohnic Egypt, which lasted from about 2920 BC to 332 BC, was ruled by 31 dynasties, the longest being the Eighteenth Dynasty, (about 1570 BC-1293 BC), which consisted of 14 Pharaohs, the following: Ahmose I, Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Thuthose III, Hatshepsut, Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV, Amenhotep III, Amenhotep IV (also called Akhenaten or Ikhnaton), Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun (Tut), Kheperkheprure Ay and Horemheb. There's no such thing as interdynastic succession, as far as I know, a new dynasty always amounting to the displacement or overthrow of a preceding dynasty. Not even in a single dynasty is patrilineal succession infallible. In the Eighteenth Dynasty, Pharaohs Thutmose I and Kheperkheprure Ay were not the sons of their predecessors, but commoners risen to the throne. Horemheb's antecedents are unknown. Hatshepsut was a woman, but she was the daughter of Thutmose I and the sister and wife of Thutmose II. So the longest line in Egyptian history is from Thutmose I to Amenhotep IV (1551-1334), which is 217 years. If I'm mistaken please correct me. The Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) consisted of 55 emperors, of which Augustus, not Julius Caesar, was the first. The so-called Twelve Caesars are the following: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus Flavius and Domitian. They in no way constitute a dynasty based on patrilineal succession. Augustus was the grand nephew of Julius Caesar. Tiberius was the adopted son of Augustus. Nero was the grand nephew of Claudius. Galba was from Spain, totally unrelated to the Caesars. And so it goes on and on till the time of Romulus Augustulus, who was deposed by the Germanic chieftain Odoacer in 476 AD. Thus the whole empire lasted only 503 years. Rome was a kingdom from 753 BC to 509 BC and a republic from 509 BC to 27 BC. During the republic, elective consuls, serving one-year terms, ruled Rome. The first two Roman kings, Romulus and Numa Pompilius, are considered legendary. The longest reigning dynasty in Chinese history is the Zhou Dynasty, whose dating is problematic. Zhou began in the 11th or 10th century BC and ended in 256 BC, showing a long line of kings patrilineally descended. I, for one, am skeptical. The dynasty begins in the legendary age of bird-nosed kings, and so forth, and ends in the period of genuine history, just like the Roman kingdom. The last four dynasties are the Song (960-1279), Yuan (1279-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912). There can be no interdynastic continuity, as Yuan emperors were Mongols and Qing were Manchus, while the other two were Han Chinese. Similarly, Russian tsarist dynasties are discontinuous. For example, Catherine the Great was a German woman who deposed her husband Peter III and gave birth to an illegitimate son who would become Paul I. I realize that King Abdullah II of Jordan claims to be the direct descendant of Muhammad, and I am sure he can produce masses of documentation, but I would not pretend for one second to take his claim seriously, even though I personally am very favorably disposed to Arabs and Muslims. Not only does one have to have a legally defensible genealogy to prove great ancestry, but he has to prove paternity in each and every case, if we're talking about patrilineal succession. Shall I pretend that adultery doesn't exist? How do I know that Zorobabel's wife was not unfaithful, thereby throwing a disjunction into the lineage of Jesus Christ? For the record, here is Luke 3:23, "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli." Some Christian scholars maintain that the interpolation of '(as was supposed)" means that it was only supposed that Jesus was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, and that in reality he wasn't. But if everyone in a community had believed, while the trial was still in progress and no verdict yet had been reached, that John Smith killed James Williams, for example, when the verdict was finally pronounced, a newspaper might say, " Jury finds that John Smith (as was supposed) killed James Williams." In this way, the phrase does not cast doubt on the finding at all, so it cannot be concluded that Luke 3:23 necessarily means what the scholars, who all have a vested interest anyway, contend that it means. Checking the Greek Bible, we find "os nomizeto" (=as thought, as supposed) and this does not preclude that Luke was indeed stating that Jesus was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli. If one wishes to assume that it does preclude that interpretation, fine! But show me where it says in the Bible that Mary was the daughter of Heli. This is a retroactive invention contrived to reconcile the two irreconcilable genealogies. If Mary was the daughter of Heli, why didn't Luke come right out and say it, instead of playing guessing games with the faithful? ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. 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