Joseph the Son of Jacob and also the Son of Heli

The Emperor Julian, the Apostate, blasphemously declared that in tracing the genealogy of Joseph the Evangelists had shown themselves either dolts or liars. Rather it is he who was both dolt and liar, who denied the faith, turned back to an inane idolatry, and persecuted the Church of Christ. The Evangelists, inspired by the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of wisdom, of truth, and of unity, could neither err, nor lie, nor contradict each other. It is, therefore, impossible that there should be a shadow of disagreement between them. Moreover, since St. Luke wrote considerably later than St. Matthew, and had therefore seen his Gospel, which was already circulated among the Christian converts, how is it conceivable that he should make contradictory statements in his own Gospel? The contradiction can only be apparent; it is impossible that it should be real, and equally impossible that Joseph could have had two genealogies and two natural fathers, Jacob and Heli. It remains to see in what sense each of the Evangelists wrote.

By generation, of course, Joseph could have but one true and natural father, and this father, according to St. Matthew, was Jacob: “Mathan,” he says, “begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Joseph,” thus asserting that Jacob was his father in the strict sense of the term. But St. Luke expresses himself in a different manner; he says, “Joseph was of Heli,” not that Heli begat Joseph, even as at the close of the genealogy he says, “Adam was of God”; and we know that, although God was the father of Adam, it was not by generation. We conclude, then, that when the Evangelist places Heli in the position of Joseph’s progenitor, he is understanding the parentage in a wider sense, and must mean that Heli was his legal father, his father by appellation, by affinity, by affection, as we shall see that he really was. Thus there is no contradiction between the two Evangelists: the true and legitimate father of St. Joseph was Jacob, according to St. Matthew’s Gospel, and his father legally and by affinity was Heli, according to St. Luke. And in this all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are agreed. But what was the object of bringing Heli forward? What was St. Luke’s purpose in informing us that Joseph had, besides his true father, a father according to law, particularly as the Evangelist does not explain the nature of this legal relationship? God does nothing without a purpose, and whatever we find in Holy Scripture has its just object and aim, and is written for our instruction. If, therefore, God inspired St. Luke to state the genealogy of Joseph in this wise, we may rest assured that it was with a view to His own glory and to our profit. As it was needful that St. Matthew should give us the natural genealogy of Joseph, so it was also needful, perhaps more needful, that St. Luke should give us his legal genealogy; and if he has not explained in what manner Joseph was legally the son of Heli, this was because the principal object of the Evangelists was, not to write the life of Joseph, but to manifest the Life and Character of the Messias; and of Him, indeed, they did not write everything, and what they did write was very brief, omitting much; for, as St. John says, if all had been written, the whole world, he thought, could not have contained the books which must have been written.¹ The remainder was left to tradition, that is, to the teaching of those Churches where the Gospel was preached, and to the Fathers and Doctors, who should explain, according to the sense of the Church, what is wanting in Holy Scripture.

To understand, therefore, in what manner Joseph is the son of Heli let us refer to the Doctors of Holy Church. We find them expressing two chief opinions on this subject. The first is that of Julius Africanus, according to whom Heli, of whom St. Luke speaks, took a wife and died, leaving no children. Now, the law provided that in such a case the widow could oblige the brother of her deceased husband to marry her, in order to raise up children to him. The widow of Heli, therefore, according to those who maintain this opinion, would have appealed to Jacob, whom they suppose to be Heli’s brother, to take her in marriage, and thus Joseph, their child, was naturally the son of Jacob, but legally the son of Heli. This opinion had followers even among the Fathers; and it cannot be denied that it was the most commonly adopted.² Nevertheless, be it said with all respect for those who professed it, this opinion, while on the one hand it involves no slight difficulties, on the other appears to add nothing of importance to the genealogy of Joseph, or to that of Mary and Jesus.

As regards the difficulties, it is well to quote the words of Scripture upon which this view is grounded. “When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother: and the first son he shall have of her he shall call by his [brother’s] name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel.”³ It is question, then, of brethren dwelling together; and it is prescribed that the first son that shall be born shall receive the name of the deceased brother. But nothing of all this do we meet with in the case before us. Jacob and Heli could not be brethren by birth, seeing that, according to the Gospel, they had neither the same father nor the same grandfather; for we learn from St. Matthew that the father of Jacob was Mathan, the son of Eleazar, and from St. Luke that Heli was of Mathat, who was of Levi. Neither are we told that they lived together; on the contrary, it appears that, although they were of the same tribe and race, their families were distinct, since Jacob descended from David by Solomon, and Heli by Nathan. What possible obligation, therefore, could bind Jacob to marry Heli’s widow?

However, setting aside this difficulty and supposing that he had married her, he was bound, according to the law, to give his first-born son the name of his deceased brother. But we find, on the contrary, that Jacob called his son Joseph, not Heli. For these reasons, the above-mentioned opinion seems to want a sufficiently solid basis.

Let us now consider what importance it would add to the genealogy of Mary and Jesus, which is precisely what the Evangelists desired to place in a clear light by tracing the genealogy of Joseph. As it was known that women could not, ordinarily, be married to any save men of their own tribe and race, it was sufficient that St. Matthew alone should have informed us that Joseph, born of Jacob, was of the tribe of Juda and house of David for us to have drawn the conclusion that Mary, his wife, was also of the same tribe and race. What need was there that St. Luke should afterwards tell us that he was also legally the son of Heli? Of what interest was this fact as regarded Mary’s genealogy, or what fresh light did it throw on the genealogy of Jesus? If Heli had no relationship with Mary, and was not in a direct line of descent with her, of whom alone was to be born Jesus of the tribe of Juda and race of David, what did it matter to us to know that he was legally Joseph’s father? This being the case, we readily adhere to the second opinion, which confers a new and great importance on the genealogy of Joseph as traced by St. Luke.⁴

Now, according to this second view, the Heli mentioned by St. Luke is no other than the glorious St. Joachim, the happy father of the august Queen of Heaven and earth, Mary. This opinion is alluded to by St. Augustine;⁵ it was held by the author of the Sermon on the Nativity of the Virgin attributed to St. Jerome; and it was entertained and discussed by the celebrated Melchior Cano,⁶ by Calmet, by Cornelius à Lapide, and various others. The reasons alleged in favor of this view are the following. All interpreters are agreed in reckoning the three names Heli, Eliachim, and Joachim as synonymous, and as being so used in Scripture. Thus in the fourth Book of Kings we read that the king of Egypt changed the name of Eliachim, the son of Josias, into Joakim; and we find the same statement in the second Book of Paralipomenon.⁷ Philo Anianus also (quoted by Melchior Cano) informs us that with the Syrians and Egyptians the names Joachim, Eliachim, and Heli were synonymous. Heli was but an abbreviation of Eliachim. If, then, the Heli of St. Luke be in fact Joachim, the father of Mary, the Evangelist had every right to say that Joseph was of Heli, that is, not his son by nature, but his son by affinity, his son-in-law, being the husband of Joachim’s daughter, since it is usual thus to express this relationship, and in this way he would have traced for us Mary’s genealogy without departing from the custom of the Hebrews, which was never to give genealogies on the woman’s side. Melchior Cano observes, indeed, that those words, “who was of Heli,” may refer rather to Jesus than to Joseph, and then the sense would run thus: Jesus, who was reputed the son of Joseph, was not of him, but of Heli, since, being born, without man’s intervention, of His Virgin Mother alone, there was no one on earth of whom He could naturally be said to be the son except Heli, or Joachim, who was His grandfather according to the flesh. And, in order to create no surprise by passing straight from the grandson to the grandfather, the Evangelist at once assigns the reason, in that Joseph was not truly the father of Jesus, but only his putative father.

Thus, then, we learn that Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, the daughter of Heli or Joachim, was truly of the tribe of Juda and descended in a direct line from David through his son Nathan, as Joseph, his reputed father, had the same descent through Solomon. Moreover, we have reason to believe that it was not through Joseph’s genealogy alone that Jesus was the descendant of Solomon, for Benedict XIII., in one of his Sermons on the Life of Mary,⁸ following in this opinion Cornelius à Lapide, Menochius, and others, maintains that St. Anne, wife of St. Joachim and the happy mother of Mary, was sister to Jacob, the father of St. Joseph: whence it follows that Mary was Joseph’s cousin, and on her maternal side had the same regal descent from David through Solomon as Joseph had.

From all that has been said we must conclude that Joseph’s genealogy is singularly glorious, not merely as illustrated by an uninterrupted series of patriarchs, kings, and renowned princes, but because it served to form and include the genealogy of the Mother of God and of the Divine Redeemer Himself. Well may the crowned monarchs of earth bow their heads before St. Joseph, who for nobility of birth and ancestral glory far surpasses them all. His hand is more than worthy to grasp a regal scepter and his head to be encircled with an imperial diadem. Call him no longer a plebeian, a common artisan. In him God has been pleased both to exalt nobility and to ennoble the labor of the artisan. St. Joseph is the glory of nobles and the consolation of workmen; he is the condemnation of those modern sectaries who, born of ignoble blood, desire to reduce all to one vulgar level, destroying every distinction of name, rank, or property, by which process society itself would soon be entirely destroyed. Let us fervently beg our exalted Patron, St. Joseph, by his powerful intercession to save the Church, the family, and society from such pernicious foes.