h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bible has ultimate answer: A87862675

Yes, but there was only *one* generation from God to Jesus.

Also, it's possible for the generations to be different when you're comparing the genealogy of mothers and fathers. Maybe it took 74 generations form Adam to Jospeh, but only 59 from Adam to Mary. of course, the difference was entirely focused on the generations after Jacob. Joseph and Mary traced their ancestry to different sons of Jacob. David was in there somewhere, too.

I've always found a couple of things odd about the genealogy of Jesus thing.

Firstly the father-to-son thing leads you to Joseph, who wasn't Jesus' da anyway, according to Christians.

Secondly, as far as I'm aware Jewish tradition traces ancestry through the maternal line, anyway, so Joseph's ancestry seems neither here nor there.

These things seem so obvious, that I'm sure they've been explained and debated by generations of scholars who've invested much more in it than I have, of course.

Traveller in Time on his head
"Wasn't it in a certain book, the scientists worked out that one equals zero.

Don't forget to mention the myth < A530560 >
or The Flying Spaghetti Monster < A18740559 > "

60 generations between Adam and Jesus?

Aren't you begetting something?

Jewish tradition traces *Jewishness* through the mother's line. Roman tradition traces descent through the male line. Put these two traditions together, and you get *Roman* Catholic Christianity, which codified the books of the New Testament roughly three hundred years after Christ's crucifiction. At that kind of remove, who's going to be able to go back and trace the male or female lineages. I expect that they went with whatever was already believed about the family lines. At the present time, it's believed that roughly ten percent of all fathers are not really the fathers of the children that claim to be descended from them. So, on the slim chance that generations of lineage-trackers got it right about alleged paternity, actual fatherhood was only 90% accurate.

Not that I care. Jesus seems to have been a pretty decent fellow, whether he was divine or not. His appeal through the ages has depended at least partly on the fact that he suffered immensely for the sake of the rest of us. Victimization was turned into a virtue. Plus, very few people have had a good opinion of the excesses of ancient Rome's Emperors and their flunkies.

Herod was an interesting case. He was a Jewish King, but he was pro-Roman, not a situation calculated to endear him to Jews who wanted heir country to be independent. Also, he is supposed to have died in 4 B.C. Tell me if you think it strange that Jesus, who was supposed to have been born 4 years *after* Herod's death, would have had to flee Israel because this 4-years-dead king was killing babies in an effort to rid himself of the threat that Jesus posed?

>winkeye<

From post 1: 7.5 is a figure that frequently comes up in electronics and optics calculations involving frequency and wavelength, usually skewed somewhere between about 7.3 and 7.75, depending on intrinsic errors of the measurement technics.

This is an illegal reduction since the speed of light in quantum units is actually 15d/2t (d = distances and t = times) in elementary quantum distances and times and elementary quanta must always be in integer numbers, e.g., there cannot be a fraction of an elementary quantum of distance.




http://www.gotquestions.org/Herods.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=The+generations+of+Herod&oq=The+generations+of+Herod&aqs=chrome..69i57.22277j0j4&client=tablet-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=vpKvIz22RCRpIM%3A

Paulh, there's no evidence that Jesus was born in 1 AD. In fact the death of the first Herod is usually used to "prove" that Jesus was born before 4 BC. I think a date of 7 BC is the current favourite.

I don't know how that fits in with the visit of the 12 Wise Men, though.

I would have finished that sentence at, "Paulh, there's no evidence that Jesus."

I base most of my biblical knowledge on Lew Wallace's 'Ben Hur'. It's a far better read, and has a pretty cool chariot race.

The BC/AD calendar dates back to Dionysius Exiguus, who, just after he submitted it and had secured papal approval, noticed his own mistake: Jesus was born four years before 1 AD. The pope refused to let him correct it and we have had the faulty version ever since. So I read somewhere.

The question of fatherhood is an interesting one though. From my reading through the bible many years ago I came to the conclusion that they took a different meaning from 'father', more in the line of 'heir'. So if a brother died, his surviving brother was expected to father children on his widow, *for* him. Also someone worthy of being killed was called 'the son of death'. And so on. Genetics counted for motherhood, but fatherhood was a matter of legal succession. So it appeared to me.

" the death of the first Herod is usually used to "prove" that Jesus was born before 4 BC. I think a date of 7 BC is the current favourite." [Gnomon]

I'm grateful to you for bringing me up to date on that. I've tried to read the most current books on recent Biblical research*, but I'm sure that there's a lot that I've missed.




*I try to stay open-minded on theological matters. There may be something as yet undiscovered that could mean a lot once it comes to light.