Luke 3 Footnotes

3:23-38 Luke and Matthew differed considerably in their recording of Jesus’s genealogy. Some have suggested that Luke gave Jesus’s descent through Mary, but this solution has not been accepted by the majority of scholars. Perhaps Matthew gave the legal line of descent, while Luke gave the physical line of descent (i.e., of Joseph, but not literally of Jesus—see note on vv. 23-24), both with allowances for adoptions, levirate marriages, or transference of inheritance rights from one parallel line to another in the absence of children. Though all harmonizing solutions are conjectural, they demonstrate that the two genealogies are not inherently incompatible.

3:23-24 Though Jesus was not the physical descendant of Joseph, he was the legal heir through adoption. Luke lists Heli as the father of Joseph, but Mt 1:16 lists Jacob. Jacob and Heli may have been near relatives, with Heli’s son Joseph becoming Jacob’s heir when the latter died childless. Or, if Heli was the father of Mary and if she was his sole heir, then Joseph, his son-in-law, could have been considered his heir.

3:23 The dates of Jesus’s birth and initial ministry are disputed. They depend on the date of Herod the Great’s death (1:5; Mt 2:1) and the date of the fifteenth year of Tiberius (Lk 3:1). Herod’s death is accepted by most as 4 BC, but some evidence may better fit a date in 1 BC. Similarly, on a normal Roman reckoning, the fifteenth year of Tiberius was AD 28–29. It is possible, however, to date his fifteenth year as early as AD 26. The various alternatives allow that Jesus was anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-three years old, within range of Luke’s “about thirty years old.”