Full Luke 3:23–38. Greek of 3:23: hōs enomizeto — "as was supposed." Luke is marking the Joseph link as conventional, not biological. Ancient Jewish convention regularly used sonship language for sons-in-law; "son of Heli" is plausibly Joseph-as-husband-of-Heli's-daughter Mary. The genealogy runs back to "the son of Adam, which was the son of God" (Luke 3:38), rooting Jesus in universal humanity.
Luke's Natural Line — The Biological Son
Jesus back to Adam, with a careful parenthetical flagging Joseph as "as was supposed".
Primary passage:Luke 3:38 →
Commentary
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John Calvin
Commentaries
1. And in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the country of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, 2. While Annas and Caiaphas were…
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