II.
For1039
| 1039 Here
what is given in Eusebius begins. |
whereas in
Israel the names of their generations were enumerated either
according to
nature or according to
law,—according to
nature, indeed, by the
succession of legitimate
offspring, and according to
law whenever
another
raised up
children to the name of a
brother dying childless;
for because no clear
hope of resurrection was yet given them, they had
a representation of the future
promise in a
kind of
mortal
resurrection, with the view of perpetuating the name of one
deceased;—whereas, then, of those entered in this
genealogy, some
succeeded by legitimate descent as son to
father, while others begotten
in one
family were introduced to another in name, mention is therefore
made of both—of those who were progenitors in fact, and of those
who were so only in name. Thus neither of the
evangelists is in
error, as the one reckons by
nature and the other by
law. For the
several generations, viz., those descending from
Solomon and those from
Nathan, were so intermingled
1040
| 1040 Reading
συνεπεπλάκη.
Migne would make it equivalent to “superimplexum
est.” Rufinus renders it, “Reconjunctum namque est
sibi invicem genus, et illud per Salomonem et illud quod per Nathan
deducitur,” etc. |
by
the raising up of children to the childless,
1041
| 1041
ἀναστάσεσιν
ἀτέκνων. Rufinus and
Damascenus omit these words in their versions of the passage. |
and by second marriages, and the raising up
of seed, that the same persons are quite justly reckoned to belong at
one time to the one, and at another to the other, i.e., to their
reputed or to their actual fathers. And hence it is that both
these accounts are true, and come down to Joseph, with considerable
intricacy indeed, but yet quite accurately.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
