This question comes from the fact the acceptance that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary yet we only have the geneology of Joseph. If so then how can we know that Jesus is from the lineage of David?
There are actually three ways to answer this question. All of them lead to the conclusion that Jesus is in fact from the line of David. The first is that Jesus is from the line of David through adoption. The second is that Jesus is from the line of David through Mary. Last is that he is from the line of David however he wants to be. That last one may sound strange and I will come back to it, but first I want to discuss why being adopted is just as valid as being born in the line of David. To the Hebrews of the time, there was no such word as “adopted”. Either someone was from your family or they were not. There was no in between. This is validated by Julius Africanus in the early 3rd century. He states that “Names in the families of Israel were reckoned either according to nature or law: by nature in the case of genuine offspring; by law when another man fathered children in the name of a brother who died childless.”[1] In Deuteronomy 25:5-10, this law is given. It shows that even an a
