I noted in part 1 that Luke, in a genealogy that, unlike the one in Matthew, does not trace Joseph’s lineage back through the royal line. Instead, Luke traces Joseph’s family back to Adam, whereas Matthew traces Joseph back to Abraham. Matthew shows descent through the royal line, while Luke traces Joseph’s lineage back to Nathan, brother of Solomon. Of course, the two are contradictory genealogies, and, as I noted in Part 1, genealogies are traced through the male line, so clearly we must dispense with the apologetic…one is for Mary. I took the position that the genealogy traced back to Nathan, brother of Solomon, is that of Mary’s first husband, a carpenter named Joshua, and the genealogy traced back to Solomon is that of Joseph. Scripture refers to four sons of David and Bathsheba…Shammuah; Shobah; Solomon; and Nathan. Bathsheba…

…be fair to me; after all, we are all adults here. A nude or semi-nude representation of Bathsheba is quite common. Looking at some of the images, you’ll notice than in some, Bathsheba is holding a piece of paper. What is it? I believe is a Writ of Divorce. If so, this would be cleaning things up a bit…figuratively speaking. If Bathsheba were divorced by Uriah the Hittite, then David would be spared the charge of adultery. As for the image in the middle of the second row, I’m sure it’s not as strange as it looks.

In my quest for pictures of Bathsheba, I encountered some strange images indeed…

…such as a picture that looks like it was drawn by a five year old. And I found some that are down-right disturbing…

…Bathsheba’s great-great-grandmother. But I found one that is really disturbing…

Here, it looks like Bathsheba has been sewn together from two women, leaving a very nasty scar.

…you could at least take off your crown. My favorite is…

…Bathsheba coming up out of the floor like some ghost or apparition. But I was able to find some images of Bathsheba not ready to catch her death of cold…

…but we have to change it to a foot-bath to get there. Yet other images of Bathsheba dispense with her take-a-look-at-me dip in the fountain…

Bathsheba begs Old King David to designate Solomon as his successor, as Abishag watches intensely.

…so the images of Bathsheba come in partial-nude and fully clothes varieties. Take your pick. I did want to show one more image of Bathsheba that reminded me of something…

Ok. I think the naked woman with her feet in the water is Bathsheba. Or Bathsheba is the woman standing in the middle of the picture, who is clearly walking toward the water. But who are the two children, one on each side of Maybe Bathsheba? I think one is a boy, and one is a girl. I’m not saying anything specific, but the similarity is intriguing…

…Card 15 of Tarot…the Devil card. And know taking the similarity into the very depths of human history…

…the Devil Card flanked by a male and a female child, woman flanked by a male and a female child; and Cybele, the Ancient Mother…Magna Mater, flanked by two lions. It’s rather fascinating. Ah! I can make it even more fascinating!

How cool is that? Here I show the Tarot Devil card, the painting of Bathsheba, Magna Mother Cybele. I have added, on the far right, a fascinating carving that was found in a well in the temple of the god Ashur (see below) in the city of Asshur, the ancient Assyrian capital city. The central figure in the far right image is the god Ashur. The two animals…lions flanking Cybele, and goats flanking Ashur, suggests another image…

Here is the Tarot Devil card; the Bathsheba painting; Magna Matter Cybele; Ashur; and the age-old nemesis of Pazuzu…Lamashtu. She is frequently depicted as flanked by two animals. In this case, a pig and a dog, which suckles. I have written extensively about Pazuzu and Lamashtu in my essays on The Exorcist. Pazuzu appears in the film as a protective spirit, with Lamashtu’s presence being implied in my interpretation of the film.

And, of course, I love an old, lecherous King David more concerned with things other than running the kingdom. What a fun game it is! In the illuminated manuscripts…finding King David lurking in the background. Of course, all these shenanigans resulted in David’s first son dying, which Nathan the prophet argued was God’s punishment for David’s killing of Uriah the Hittite and stealing his wife…Bathsheba. I will say that I most ardently object to this…God kills the innocent to punish the father? I suppose it depends on what God you believe in. It is strange Solomon is also said to have a second name…

Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. Yahweh loved him; and because Yahweh loved him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah.

At the same time, David was set-up, Bathsheba shares some of the guilt with David. While bathing, she appears to have made sure that David could see her from his palace. Don’t fall through the lattice or we’ll have go talk to Baal-zabub again! I don’t know if this opinion is objectionable. Lately, some have claimed that David raped Bathsheba. That is nonsense. How many times did Bathsheba take a bath? Is this the very first time? Surely not…yet she was only in David’s line of sight in this particular instance. What happened was clearly not rape. It makes far more sense that Bathsheba had a habit of bathing in her courtyard, but in such a way that she was not visible from David’s palace. But this time, she made sure of it. But to pull this off, David would have had to have been looking out a particular window and at a particular time. This would suggest that Bathsheba had, before displaying herself to David, observed David’s behavior of looking out a particular window at the particular time of day. I am not the only one to take this opinion…I will show a page from an illuminated manuscript that I showed earlier…

 …if you look closely at Bathsheba’s face, you will see that she appears to be gazing into the fountain. But if you back up a little, it looks like she gazing behind her…at David. This is quite the optical illusion. And low and behold! Bathsheba’s son Solomon seized the throne upon the death of David, which Bathsheba planned all along.

However, another son of David had declared himself king while David was not yet dead. His name was Adonijah, and his mother was Haggith. Adonijah had even gone as far as demanding that David’s “nurse” Abishag…

…be given to him. What is it with Old King David? The politics of the situation are clear, given the fact that Abishag was enlisted to lie in bed with David to keep the dying king warm. Please…a nice roaring file would do just fine…and maybe an extra blanket or two. It gives the appearance of a political move at the court, whereby the supporters of Adonijah attempted to get one last son out of David. And if Abishag would be the last “queen” of David’s, then they might usurp Bathsheba and Solomon if Adonijah were to then marry Abishag. Adonijah had a better claim to the throne than Solomon, being considerably older. So Solomon had him killed.

There is a direct parallel to this in Assyrian history. King Sennacherib had alienated key people in the Neo-Assyrian empire because, having lost his temper, he sacked Babylon…the holiest of the holy places. Emboldened by this, and probably counting on support from the power-brokers in Assyria, he was assassinated by two of his sons, whom the Bible names as Adrammelek and Sharezer. Adrammelech was the name of a heathen god, who was paired with Anamelech, and was worshipped at the city named Sepharvim, where it is claimed that the inhabitants of Sepharvim burned their children to death in the names of these deities. It is no surprise that modern demonology would find something fascinating in these two deities…

Interesting? Whatever. The same claims have been made about Molech (really Melek) and Baal-Hamon. There are others. I have my doubts that the children were actually burned alive, and I suspect that the child was held in the father’s arm and quickly passed over a sacred fire, although in deep antiquity, when human sacrifice was common (cf. Abraham and Isaac), children captured from enemies in war may have suffered such a horrible fate. Let’s not get too judgmental! Our hero Joshua was not adverse to killing all the children at Jericho. But clearly, in this context, Adramelech was not the god of Sepharvim. Adramelch is the Hebrew name of Arda-Mulissu, son of Sennecharib.

Arda-Mulissu and Sharezer appear to have underestimated their base of support, seeing how they fled soon after the assassination. Originally, Sennacherib’s eldest son Ashur-nadin-shumi was the crown prince of Assyria. He ruled Babylon as king in the name of his father during the years 700-694 B.C., which followed the second reign of the usurper Marduk-appla-iddina II, who had two reigns as king of Babylon, and had been involved in two revolts, the uprising in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which was put down in 722 B.C., and then in 701 B.C., when Hezekiah revolted against Sennacherib. The latter event, as recorded in 2 Kings, is well documented. It is unclear what role the Elamite king Shutur-Nahhunte II had in Hezekiah’s rebellion, but he does appear to have been dead in 699 B.C. Finally, Sennacherib had enough of the constant trouble in Babylonia. The insurgents of the Bit-Kaldu had long been affiliated with Assyria’s greatest enemy…the Kingdom of Elam, or ancient Persia (Anshan and Susa). In 694 B.C., Assyrian forces had once again chased Bit-Kaldu rebels into Elam. The Elamite king Hallushu-Inshushinak took advantage of this and sent troops on a lighting-raid into Babylonia, captured Ashur-nadin-shumi, and took him back to the Elamite king as a souvenir and show-piece. An insurgent named Shuzbu was declared king of Babylon by the Elamites, adopting the throne name Mushezib-Marduk. This followed the defeat of Nergal-Unshezib in 700 B.C., who sought asylum in Elam. The current King of Elam, Kutir-Nahhunte III was deposed in favor of Humban-Numena III, who immediately planned an attack against Assyrian forces in Babylonia. This finally led to the Battle of Halule, during which King Humban-Numena III and his general, Humban-undasha commanded a large force of Elamites and Babylonians. The battle would seem to have been a draw, though both sides claimed victory. Still, the Assyrians withdrew, only to lay siege to the city of Babylon in 690 B.C. after Humban-Numena III became gravely ill, and there was confusion in Elam. Sennacherib took the city in 680 B.C., and as the flip-side to the capture of Ashur-nadin-shumi, Assyrian forces captured Mushezib-Marduk, the rebel king of Babylon, may have been brought him back to the Assyrian king as a trophy and souvenir. It’s also possible that his own forces killed him. This did not satisfy Sennacherib, who had grown so irate as a result of the constant turmoil in Babylonia, he committed the unthinkable…he sacked the holy city. He destroyed temples and statues, bringing back to the Assyrian capital the statue of …

…Marduk, seen on the left defeating the ancient monster Tiamat. The middle image is a reproduction of Marduk found on a seal. On the far right is Marduk with his pail of pollen and holding his pinecone. In this image, Marduk is pollinating the Tree of Life. I’ve discussed this in a previous essay. I have given the names of Assyrian royalty, many of whom have the name…Ashur…as a component.

That is Ashur, the Assyrian war god, and the winged solar disk. A palatial wall carving from an Assyrian palace…

…shows the Tree of Life flanked by Assyrian royal figures, with winged deities behind them carrying the pails of pollen and the pinecones needed to pollinate the Tree of Life. The god Ashur and the winged solar disk sit atop the Tree like an angel on the top of a Christmas tree.

With Ashur-nadin-shumi, the Assyrian crown prince, now avenged, it remained to determine who the new crown-prince would be. That turned out to be Arda-Mulissu (Adramelech), who was crown prince from 694-684 B.C. Suddenly, for apparently unknown reasons, yet for very knowable reasons, Arda-Mulissu was replaced by Esarhaddon.  Yet another son, Nergal-shumu-ibni, was given the title of King of Babylon. Other sons included Ashur-ili-muballissu, Ashur-shumu-usabshi, and Nabu-shar-usur, the latter being named in 2 Kings as Sharezer. Arad-Mulissu had strong support, and so in 681 B.C, he and his brother Nabu-shar-user assassinated their father and seized the throne. Earlier, Sennacherib grew nervous about there being any erosion of support for Arad-Mulissu, and so he sent Esarhaddon (Ashur-aha-iddina) away from the capital to protect his older brother. Esarhaddon met his brothers’ forces at the battle of Hanigalbat, where they were defeated.

So why was Arad-Mulissu, after ten years as crown prince, suddenly demoted, then replaced, by a much younger son? The exact same thing happened with Adonijah and Solomon. History is silent on this, but the silence is deafening. I would suggest that Sennacherib’s foremost wife…Tashmetu-sharrat…was the mother of Arad-Mulissu, and possibly Nabu-shar-usur as well. However, Sennacherib fell under the spell of another wife, Naqia, the mother of Esarhaddon. She most likely took advantage of the situation, and convinced the king to demote the son of Tashmetu-sharrat, and declare her son as crown prince. Behold…

…Naquia and her baby boy. And Naquia was obviously so beautiful…how could you blame Sennacherib? Naquia wielded an influence that was very rare in Assyrian history. She reached the pinnacle of her power during the reign of her son Esarhaddon. So what? The situation with Naqia and Esarhaddon, whereby a king appointed a much younger son as crown prince and successor due to the machinations of a now-favored wife, is a direct parallel to Bathsheba’s machinations to get David to bypass Adonijah in favor of his younger half-brother Solomon. As far as Biblical chronology goes, the reign of Solomon presents a problem…or does it? According to 2 Kings 11:42, Solomon reigned 40 years. However, he was only a youth at the time he became king…

 Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.

But he lived to an old age…

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 

1 Kings 11:4. And since David reigned 40 years, it is strange that David’s son would just so happen to have the exact same number of years assigned to his reign. This problem also applied to King Saul,

Saul was one years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel for two years.

1 Samuel 13:1. The problem is that the passage is obviously garbled, and many scholars believe that Saul must have reigned for more than two years, not to mention that he cannot have become king at the tender age of one. But Saul’s son did reign two years (see below), and one wonders if there wasn’t confusion between Saul and his son. The doubts about this were addressed in Acts 13:21…

“After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. 

This is, of course, impossible. The redactors of the Bible loved the number 40.

Saul…40 years
David…40 years
Solomon…40 years

I suppose there isn’t much more to say about the claim in Acts 13:21…Paul is simply filling in a gap that, as an ex-Pharisee, he would have been well aware of. The problem also dates back to the leadership of the priest Eli, Samuel’s tutor…

When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man, and he was heavy. He had led Israel forty years.

1 Samuel 4:18. Now for 2 Samuel 2:10…

Ish-bosheth Saul's son was forty years old when he began to reign over Israel, and he reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed David.

Speaking of the length of the time that Othniel governed Israel…

So the land had rest for forty years.

Judges 3:11.

Speaking of the length of time that Deborah governed Israel…

Then the land had peace for forty years.

Judges 5:31. Deborah was followed by Gideon…

Thus Midian was subdued before the Israelites and did not raise its head again. During Gideon’s lifetime, the land had peace for forty years.

Judges 8:28. Speaking of Ehud…

So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest for eighty years.

Judges 20:30. Joshua 5:6…

The Israelites had moved about in the wilderness forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the Lord. For the Lord had sworn to them that they would not see the land he had solemnly promised their ancestors to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

So:

40 years- length of time in the wilderness
40 years- Othniel
40 years- Deborah
40 years- Gideon
80 years- Ehud
40 years- Eli
40 years- Saul
40 years- David
40 years- Solomon

For Saul, the Septuagint translators did not know what to do with 1 Samuel 13:1, so they omitted it altogether. The Vulgate version:

Filius unius anni erat Saul cum regnare cœpisset: duobus autem annis regnavit super Israël.

Translated…

Saul was the son of one year when he began to reign, and he reigned over Israel for two years.

In the Greek comment to this verse in Origen’s Hexapla…

Saul was 30 years old when he began to reign over them.

The Jewish Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki suggests that the reference to “one year” indicates that Saul was like a one-year-old when he began to reign. There can be no doubt that the chronology here cannot be reconciled. This leaves the length of the reign of Saul unknown in its entirety, but as will become clear later, I believe the year of his death can be determined, as well as a good guess as to the year he became king. However, there is a firm date…

 On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
    and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
 So the sun stood still,
    and the moon stopped,
    till the nation avenged itself on its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.

The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!

Joshua 10: 12-14. This eclipse has been dated to October 30, 1207 B.C., and all this tells us is that Joshua was still alive and leading Israel in 1207 B.C. This also bespeaks the subject of missing narrative. The Egyptian king Ramesses II…

…oh, my! He has seen better days…

…better…a lie…but better. But his reign can now be dated to 1276-1210 B.C., and the reign of his son Merneptah…

Oh, my! He has seen better days…

…that’s better…a lie…but better. With the date of the eclipse, Merneptah’s reign can now be dated to 1210-1200 B.C. King Merneptah left a very important…

…stele recording a successful campaign against Canaan and Israel. Dated to his fifth year, that would place the Egyptian invasion at 1205 B.C.

The (foreign) chieftains lie prostrate, saying “Peace.” Not one lifts his head among the Nine Bows. Libya is captured, while Hatti is pacified. Canaan is plundered, Ashkelon is carried off, and Gezer is captured. Yenoam is made into non-existence; Israel is wasted, its seed is not; and Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt. All lands united themselves in peace. Those who went about are subdued by the king of Upper and Lower Egypt … Merneptah.

The Book of Joshua is completely silent as to an Egyptian incursion during the time of Joshua, though it has to be said that the Book of Joshua is clearly focused on victories, and not defeats. As pertains to Solomon, the original topic, a firm date is possible…he died in 930 B.C. This is known because the 5th of the reign of his son Rehoboam equates with an Egyptian invasion of Judah by the Egyptian king…

…Sheshonq I. And the interesting thing about this is that the date of 925 B.C. is a date that, following the date of the eclipse, and tracing down through the reigns of 21 Egyptian kings following Merneptah, the date of the invasion of Judah by Sheshonq matches with a difference three years, though it should be said that the Egyptian chronology from Merneptah to Sheshonq I has room for different time-frames.  But a difference of three years for such ancient history is amazing, to say the least. On the subject of Solomon, Josephus perceived a conflict between Solomon taking the throne at a rather young age, and the image of Solomon living to an old age…

Solomon died when he was already an old man, having reigned eighty years and lived ninety-four.

It’s obvious what Josephus has done, and the reasons why he did it. And I must admit that in the evaluation of the dates for David and Solomon, where there clearly is an issue, I too believed it was in the reign of Solomon that presented the problem. However, another thought occurred to me. David’s forty years are actually divided into two parts…

David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years.

And there is the solution. If David reigned in Hebron over one tribe, i.e. Judah, who reigned over all the others? The conclusion is clear…Saul, then his son Ish-Baal…no doubt not his real name. So read in light of the reign in Hebron, David was king of all Israel for 33 years…and that is the length of his reign. The seven years he ruled in Hebron, must be assigned to Ish-Baal (2 years) and Saul (5 years). The Chronological issue is not with Solomon, who actually reigned for 40 years, but rather with David, who should be credited with a reign of 33 years.

Saul…1026-1004 B.C.
Ish-Baal…1004-1003 B.C.
David…1003-970 B.C.
Solomon…970-930

But this does not determine the length of Saul’s reign. I suggest that 1 Samuel 13:1 became so corrupt because redactors knew there was a chronology problem, and attempted to adjust 1 Samuel 13:1 in light of an attempted readjustment of the reign of Saul. Unfortunately, I see no way to determine the length of Saul’s reign for certain, seeing that are no external factors available. But it is clearly not…two years. So the options available are, as I see it, twenty-two or thirty-two. Forty-two seems like too large a number. I opt for twenty-two. Solomon married an Egyptian princess as part of an agreement with an Egyptian king. Based on what happened in the fifth year of Rehoboam, the relationship was probably lop-sided, with Solomon paying tribute to Egypt. The Egyptian king sacked the city of Gezer, and gave it to Solomon as a dowry. If it is fair to assume that the alliance with Egypt took place at the beginning of Solomon’s reign, then there can be no question that the Egyptian king in question is…

…King Siamun (976-957 B.C.). Even if it was a bit later, it wouldn’t change the fact that the Egyptian princess married off to Solomon was a daughter of Siamun. When Rehoboam became king in 930 B.C., he stopped paying tribute to Egypt. Alternatively, Solomon stopped paying tribute at the end of his reign. Jeroboam I, who would become the first king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, began as an insurgent backed by Egypt. In 925 B.C., the new King of Egypt, Sheshonq I (933-912 B.C.), invaded Judah and demanded to be paid the back tribute, which Rehoboam gave him. Then Sheshonq left Judah. This also jives with the reign of King Hiram I (Ahiram) of Tyre, who was a friend to both David and Solomon. If his reign is dated to 980-947 B.C., then his reign overlaps with the reigns of both David and Solomon. Hiram is also important in modern freemasonry as Hiram-Abiff. Hiram II and his father Itobaal II paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser in 738 B.C. Hiram II would later join Pekah and Rezin in their rebellion against the Assyrian overlord in 734-732 B.C. The Assyrians ultimately replaced him in 729 B.C. with Elulaios (Luli). He would eventually revolt in the year 701 B.C. when Hezekiah refused to pay Sennacherib the tribute he owed him, spurred on by Marduk-appla-iddina II of Babylonia. The Assyrians eventually re-took Tyre and set Abd-Melqart on the throne (694–680 B.C.), who was followed by Baal I (680-660 B.C.). During the collapse of the Assyrian empire, there was chaos in Tyre. When the last vestiges of Assyrian might were crushed in 609 B.C., the chaos continued. Eventually Itobaal III took the throne, reigning 591-573 B.C., with the Tyrian colony of Carthage breaking free from Tyre in 574 B.C. Tyre passed to Babylonian control with the reign of Baal II (573-564 B.C.).

986-967 B.C.  Siamun
980-947 B.C.  Reign of Hiram I
967-943 B.C.  Psuennes II
943-922 B.C.  Sheshonq I
947 B.C. Death of Hiram I; Accession of Baal-Eser I of Tyre
930 B.C.  Death of Solomon; Accession of Rehoboam
930 B.C.  Death of Baal-Eser I of Tyre
925 B.C. Fifth year of Rehoboam; Sheshonq’s invasion of Judah

So much for the chronology that puts Solomon into context. What about Nathan? Well, the name is the shortened form of…Jonathan, who was a son of Saul, a bold military figure, and one of David’s closest friends. But the name…Nathan…was also the name of David’s court prophet, the one brave enough to chastise David about Uriah’s wife. He was also the one who told David that the first born son of Bathsheba would die. The name Nathan is also the shortened form of the name…Nathaniel. The difference is fascinating. The name Jonathan is…Yahweh gives. The name Nathaniel is…El gives. I think it is clear that the name Nathan is a shortened form of the real name, in this case, I believe it is the shortened form of Jonathan. Amnon was David’s first born son. However, David’s third son, Absalom, killed Amnon as vengeance for the latter’s…

…rape of Tamar…Absalom’s sister. The name of David’s second son is disputed. In one instance he is named…Chileab, whereas the second son of David is Daniel. It seems as though two different sons of David have been confused, one with the other. At any rate, nothing is said of Daniel/Chileab, perhaps suggesting that he died at a relatively young age. Absalom died during a revolt against his father. This left Adonijah as David’s eldest son, which in the ancient world, meant he was the next king. Earlier, two high-profile exceptions to this were discussed…Solomon and Esarhaddon. Both were the result of an old king being taken under the influence of a later wife. Of course, Adonijah should have been David’s successor. Even so, David’s fifth son, Shephatiah, whose mother was Abital, and Ithream, whose mother was Eglah, also had better claims to the throne than Solomon. Solomon had three older blood-brothers…Shammua, Shobab, and Nathan. All of these sons had better claims to the throne than did David’s very last known son…Solomon. It is not known whether Abishag, the woman who lived in David’s bed with him, had any children by him. And so, Nathan had the better claim to the Davidic kingship than Solomon.

In part 1, I noted that Matthew traces the lineage of Joseph, Jesus’s step-father, back to Solomon, whereas Luke traces the lineage back to Nathan. St. John of Damascus, a through-the-hoops-jumper, offered a bizarre way to reconcile the two different lineages. He fell back on the institution of Levirate Marriage, whereby a brother of a childless man was to take his brother’s widow and have a son by her. John maintains that Mary’s father Joachim was descended from Nathan, that upon the death of Matthan his widow married Heli, thus making Jacob and Heli brothers. Then Heli died without issue, so his brother Jacob married Heli’s wife. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter XIV). There is no evidence for any of this, and it is purely a cringe-worthy attempt to have two different genealogies without having two different genealogies, with St. John of Damascus, as an introduction to his manifest fiction, noting that genealogies were not maintained for women. That part St. John got right. Mary’s parents…Anne and Joachim appear in the Gospel of James, regarded as an apocryphal work, which I have discussed before, so St. John appears to ultimately fall back on that gospel. However, James does not provide the names of the parents of Anne or Joachim. The Golden Legend, the contents of which are indeed legends, but make for great reading, follows a tradition that gets a very important fact right. However, as for Joachim, the Legend states that he was the first husband of Anne, and father of the Virgin Mary. Mary had a sister named Hismeria, who had two daughters…Elizabeth and Eliud. Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist, and Eliud, the mother of…

…no, wait…Eminen. I never thought that I could work a rapper into one of these essays. After Joachim died, Anne married, Cleophas, brother of Joseph, who had another daughter named Mary…you can’t get enough of a good name. This Mary was married to Alpheus, and had sons James the Less, Joseph the Just, Simon, and Jude. After Cleophas died, Anne married Salome (usually a woman’s name), and had another daughter…yes…named Mary, who married Zebedee, and had James the Greater (apostle) and the Apostle John as sons. Is anyone else’s head spinning yet? What these gymnastics do is to connect the Biblical James, son of Alpheus, John and James, the sons of Zebedee, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist with Mary’s family…making everyone related to Mary and Jesus. This Legend has also sought to address the identities of the different Marys…with three of them being daughters of Anne…that appear at the end of the gospels, when a group of women are involved with the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Mark 15:47…

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.

Mark 16:1…

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.

Mary Magdalene is the only woman who consistently appears in this context in all four gospels. Luke 24:10…

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.

I have discussed in a previous essay that I do not believe that Joanna was at the tomb. None of the other three gospels name her, and it is well known that she was not only the widow of an official of Herod’s named Chuza, and, according to legend, she also found the head of John the Baptist and gave it a proper burial, she was also the granddaughter of Theophilus, who, along with his brothers, had shared the office of high priest. It was also a family that was rich many times over. Only Luke places her at the tomb, and the Book of Acts has an introductory acknowledgement of the patron who helped fund the production of the book…

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.

In the ancient world, the production of books was a very costly thing, so the financial backing of a wealthy patron went a long way. Luke is also the only gospel to list the three rich women who financially supported Christ’s ministry…Mary Magdalene, Susannah, and Joanna. So Joanna was connected with the gospel story only in Luke, and her grandfather Theophilus was the one who funded the writing of Acts, which bolsters the theory that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts go together. But Luke agrees as to the presence of a Mary, mother of James. The Gospel of John…

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 

This is actually very important, as I will discuss in the final episode of this serial essay. However, the wife of Clopas, Clopas himself probably deceased, and the Virgin Mary were sisters. So Jesus’s mother was named Mary, and his aunt was named Mary. However, according to the Golden Legend, Mary was the daughter of Anne by Joachim, and then had a half-sister also, named Mary, by her second husband…Clopas. Matthew 27: 55-56…

Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

So now we have a Mary, mother of James and Joseph. I will add that I do not believe that the wife of Zebedee, named in the Golden Legend as yet another Mary, was present. I think that the reference to the wife of Zebedee was added to Matthew after the Gospel of John claimed that the Apostle John was present at the cross and became the Virgin Mary’s honorary son…which he wasn’t. I have discussed that elsewhere. The Golden Legend? It sought to fill a gap created by Matthew 28:1…

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

So…Matthew is straight on the fact that you couldn’t keep all the Marys straight. Later tradition held that Anne was one of three sisters who resided in Bethlehem, the other, though older, sisters were Mary and Sobe, and that it was Sobe who was the mother of John the Baptist. A tradition also exists that Anne’s mother, and thus Jesus’s grandmother, was named…

…Emerentia. Yet another tradition states that Anne’s mother was Ismeria (i.e. Hismeria, see above), and that Emerentia was Ismeria’s sister, and thus Anne’s aunt. A statement appeared in 1579 claiming that Emerentia, St. Anne’s mother, was married to a man named Stollanus.

The four generations…Emerentia, Anne, Mary, and Jesus. It is clear that Christianity has wrestled with the fact that there are two different genealogies, and apparently, it’s been important for 2,000 years that the two be reconciled. It seems clear from simply reading the texts that they are two separate genealogies. The one in Matthew stands where one might expect it to…the very beginning of the gospel. Luke’s genealogy does not, and one is tempted to believe that the Narrative of Luke, i.e. the introduction added after the genealogy found in Matthew was added to the then-existing Gospel of Matthew, did not include the genealogy tracing Christ back to Nathan, son of David and brother of Solomon, but rather that was added later. This in turn raises the question as to whether the Gospel of the Young Jesus did not originally include the genealogy of chapter 1, but was added to it, prompting an “updating” of the Narrative of Luke with a different genealogy. In later tradition, Joanna’s husband Chuza, an official in the government of Herod Antipas, has been identified as the royal official whose son, dying in Capernaum, begged Jesus to save him.

So there can be no doubt that it isn’t always easy to keep families straight, be it Jesus’s family, or David’s family. And there is a lot of chronology involved…to say the least. But to finish the Head-on Collision Episode of The Search for the Panther Part 7, there is still a bit more of the story to cover. It’s far less chronology, seeing how you might be able to produce a working chronology all the way back to Ramesses the Great, no small feat, nonetheless, you can’t produce a chronology that goes all the way back to the Great Beginning. Fortunately, as far as a Head-on Collision goes, you don’t need to. So who is the one headed toward this high-impact collision? None other than Mary, the Mother of God. But to do so, she must jump through time across the eons and over thousands of years before reaching Event One.

 End Part Two