Is Joseph the son of Jacob or Heli?
Some have claimed that the Bible contradicts itself by claiming that Joseph is both the son of Jacob (Matthew 1:16) and the son of Heli (Luke 3:23). However, like all other alleged biblical contradictions, this one is also without merit. Matthew primarily wrote his account of the life of Christ for a Jewish audience to show that Jesus was their long-awaited promised Messiah. Thus, Matthew traces the genealogy from Abraham to Jesus, demonstrating that Jesus was the seed of Abraham and David. Instead of giving the complete list of names, Matthew deliberately used three groups of fourteen generations (Matthew 1:17; the missing names are found in 1 Chronicles 3:11–12, 2 Kings 23:24, 2 Kings 24:6), as an apparent memory aid to his readers, or perhaps because the Hebrew letters in the name David add up to fourteen. Matthew also shows that, as the adopted son of Joseph (Matthew 1:16), Jesus was a descendant of David through Solomon, and thus had the legal right to sit on David’s throne. Accor
