# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

[Joseph had two fathers, one by] whom he was begotten, the other by whom he was, so to speak, adopted; the former Matthew names to us, the latter Luke." Very many Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians have agreed with Luther and have followed him and Augustine. Of theologians of our Church I name only Andreas Osiander, Chemnitz, J. Gerhard, Hunnius, Hülsemann and Brochmand. With such unanimity of the Bible expositors, who belong to the most various church communions, one should think that at least all the theologians who call themselves believing, Protestant and Lutheran would assent with joy to such an explanation. That is not so, however. Two more recent German theologians, who always wished to pass as good Lutherans although they were not, Hofmann in Erlangen and Franz Delitzsch senior in Leipzig, resisted and protested as long as they lived against this fine reconciliation of the two evangelists. They declared that it did violence to their conscience; to be sure there was no contradiction between Matthew and Luke, and of course one could regard only one of the two, Jacob or Heli, as the natural father of Joseph; indeed one must, to be sure, recognize in the words "Which was the son of Heli" a figurative way of speaking; but one must also not assert that Luke gives the genealogy of Mary, because Mary was not of the house of David; she was rather of the tribe of Levi; it is expressly said that she was related to Elizabeth (the angel said to her: "Elisabeth, thy cousin [Greek: συγγενίς, as printed], is also with child"); so Mary too must have been of Levitical descent. — If one asks a theologian of this school: Do you then still allow it to stand that Jesus was a son of David? he says: Yes indeed, certainly. But how can you? Then he says: Well, see, that comes simply from this, that Jesus, as Luke expressly remarks, was held to be the son of Joseph; Joseph, however, was of the house of David, and because Joseph now took Mary, born of the tribe of Levi, as his wife at the command of the angel, Jesus too, conceived of a Levitical virgin, was received into the tribe of Judah. Naturally the gentlemen expressed all this much more learnedly, but that was their opinion to their end; they defended it with obstinacy, and it has also been taken up into a number of textbooks that are meant to serve, for example, schoolteachers in preparing for instruction in biblical history.

Remarkable Lutherans, those! Luther still thinks in 1532 that the evangelist Luke considered it unnecessary to say that Mary was of the house of David, because it was beyond doubt even without this statement. And these theologians think Mary was of the tribe of Levi, and say: "If that is right, then it matters that it be recognized; it is a matter of being rid of an evil conscience, without which one cannot establish Jesus' belonging to the house of David through Mary's descent. Born in the house of Jacob, Jesus is a member of the