# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 35

[Jesus] has become a member of the house of David; he belongs, although not by begetting or conception, yet by birth, to a family which traced its descent back to David." ("Erl. Zeitſchr. f. Prot. u. Kirche" [Erlangen Journal for Protestantism and Church], 1851, vol. XXII, pp. 114, 115; presumably by Hofmann.) So only legally, only juridically considered, Jesus belongs to the house of David; he has not a drop of Davidic blood in him.

Rightly did Keim, who himself does not believe that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, and who therefore quite simply holds Jesus to be a natural, bodily son of Joseph, say against this little discovery, in his book "Geſchichte Jeſu von Nazara" [History of Jesus of Nazara]: "It is plain even for our way of looking at things, which has grown somewhat cooler toward family trees and pure, genuine blood, that a foster-sonship could share in the glory of the blood of the nominal father only in a most precarious way. For the Jewish way of looking at things, from which those family trees sprang, the lack of the blood, of the seed, destroys, by all that we know, every trace of these claims." ("Zeitſchr. f. Prot. u. Kirche", 1868, vol. LVI, p. 356; certainly by Hofmann.)

How wholly untenable this learned discovery is we see also from this: If Joseph had refused to take Mary to himself as his wife, if, say, in spite of the angel's direction he had persisted in his resolve to leave Mary secretly, then according to this theory Jesus would in no sense of the word have been a son of David. Now we find, however, not merely that Scripture promises David the Messiah as the seed that should come from his body, but we find also that Peter in his Pentecost sermon expressly emphasizes that Jesus is a fruit of the loins of David; we know that he comes from him κατὰ σάρκα [according to the flesh], not according to a piece of paper that juridically admits him into the family of David.

We also find nowhere in the New Testament that Jesus, however often he himself bore witness to himself as the son of David, ran into any contradiction on that account. "Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me" — so he was addressed by people who had no further personal acquaintance with him than that they desired his help. Would the Jews, on the one hand, given the hatred which some of them had against Jesus, and on the other given their knowledge of his family circumstances (for they say: The carpenter's son, whose father and mother we know) — would they, if Mary had not been of the house of David, if she had rather been known to them as of Levitical origin, have failed to ask Jesus: On what, then, do you actually base your claims that one should hold you to be the son of David? Your mother does not descend from him, and as for your father, you always say that God is your Father.