Matthew

Matthew gives Joseph's legal line and Luke gives Mary's

held by a reading found from the fifteenth century onward and widely held since, taking Luke 3:23 to mean that Jesus was reckoned Joseph's son while the list that follows is Mary's own descent through Heli

Both are Joseph's, and the difference is a levirate marriage

held by Julius Africanus, writing in the early third century and preserved by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 1.7), who reports that Joseph's grandfathers were half-brothers by the same mother, so that one line gives the natural father and the other the legal one

Matthew traces the royal succession and Luke the physical descent

held by commentators who read Matthew's list as a throne register, which is why it runs king to king and why it can pass over names, while Luke's runs person to person

The fourteens are the point, and the counting is deliberate

held by readers who note that the Hebrew letters of David's name total fourteen, and that Matthew has arranged rather than merely recorded; on this reading 1:17 announces the arrangement openly instead of hiding it

Matthew names Jeremiah because he is blending two prophets and citing the major one

held by the most common reading among commentators ancient and modern, noting that potters and burial fields belong to Jeremiah's own oracles, where he buys an earthen bottle from a potter and speaks judgment over a burial ground (Jeremiah 19:1 and 19:11) and buys a field with weighed silver (32:9)

Citing a mixed quotation under the better-known prophet is a recognised ancient convention. Mark 1:2 does the same thing in the other direction, heading a Malachi and Isaiah blend with Isaiah's name alone.

Jeremiah headed the prophetic collection, so his name stood for the scroll

held by readers appealing to a rabbinic ordering in which Jeremiah stands first among the Latter Prophets, an order recorded in the Talmudic baraita at Bava Batra 14b, so that naming Jeremiah names the section

The name entered by a copyist

held by a minority text-critical proposal; against it stands the fact that the Greek manuscripts overwhelmingly read Jeremiah, which is the harder reading and the one a copyist would have been most tempted to correct

On 2:23, Matthew is making a word link rather than quoting a sentence

held by commentators who point to Isaiah 11:1, 'there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots', where the Hebrew for branch is netzer, the consonants behind the town name; Matthew's plural 'the prophets' and his lack of a quotation formula both fit a theme rather than a single verse

A second suggestion runs alongside it, that Nazareth was a place of no reputation and Matthew is marking the prophetic theme of a despised Messiah. The two readings are not in competition.

Two questions, two answers, and the discourse moves between them

held by the reading held across most of church history and by many today, taking 24:34 with the temple material the disciples asked about first, and the coming of the Son of man with the second question

On this reading the generation that heard him did see the temple fall, which is what 'these things' had asked about in verse 3, while the coming in glory is left without a timetable by verse 36.

'Generation' means the race or the people, kept through everything described

held by commentators who take the Greek word in the sense of kind or stock, so that the promise is preservation rather than a deadline

'This generation' is the generation that sees the signs begin

held by readers who take the demonstrative to point forward to the generation present when the events of the chapter start, rather than to the hearers on the mount

The whole discourse was accomplished in the first century

held by the preterist reading, which takes the coming language as judgment imagery for AD 70

The standing difficulty is 24:30 and 25:31, where the Son of man is seen by all the tribes of the earth and then sits to judge all the nations, which asks more of the language than a local judgment supplies.

A legal self-imprecation by that crowd, answered within a generation

held by commentators who read the formula against Old Testament oath language and take the fall of Jerusalem as the horizon Matthew's first readers would have connected it to

A line of tragic irony, since that blood is what saves

held by readers who set 27:25 beside 26:28, 'this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins', so that the crowd asks for the very thing that can cleanse them

A historical event Matthew alone recorded

held by the traditional reading, taking the two verses as narrative of the same kind as the torn veil in 27:51 and the centurion's confession in 27:54, both of which stand in the same paragraph

On this reading the silence of the other Gospels is the ordinary silence of writers who select, and the appearances were local and brief.

Matthew is using established prophetic imagery of resurrection

held by commentators who hear Ezekiel 37 and Daniel 12:2 behind the wording and read the verses as Matthew's way of saying that the death of Jesus has broken death open