Theology of the Great Stemma

Notes

Has the Great Stemma any significance in the theological controversies of Late Antiquity? Its practical purpose as a graphical depiction of history from a Christian point of view is obvious. Its rejection of a "pagan" perception of history as the story of dynasties and nations struggling for supremacy is implicit in this.

Unlike Donatist editions of the Liber Genealogus which superimpose an explicitly sectarian flavour on that work, lacing it with criticism of the "Catholic" party, we seem to find no condemnation of the views of opponents anywhere on the Great Stemma. It has however a strong and explicit bias in its reponse to a controversy in Late Antiquity over a seeming contradiction in the Four Gospels. Matthew and Luke appear to give two completely contradictory accounts of Jesus' paternal ancestry.

In the Gospel of Matthew the descent proceeds from King David, via Solomon, also a king, down to Joseph, the husband of Mary. In Luke, the descent proceeds from King David, via Solomon's brother, a man named Nathan, down to an otherwise unspecified "Joseph" [*]Matthew 1:16: And Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary; of her was born Jesus who is called Christ. Luke 3:23: When he started to teach, Jesus was about thirty years old, being the son, as it was thought, of Joseph, son of Heli ... . Pagan critics would have readily seized on the impossibility of Joseph having two separate all-male ancestries.

There is a fairly succinct summary of this issue with useful notes in the Wikipedia article on the topic. The principal solutions proposed for this problem were:

In a loose interpretation, which does not treat scripture as literal truth but rather as poetic truth, the dual tradition is taken to be a symbolic way of saying that Jesus was a person deeply rooted in Jewish society. This loose view is not a modern phenomenon: it has been advocated from the very earliest days of Christianity. Supporters would say that fatherhood is not so much a biological connection as a social relationship between generations. Joseph could have been simultaneously affiliated with two different families, having a biological father Jacob, as well as a kind of mentor, Heli. Anti-fundamentalists would say the exact explanation does not matter and the issue is ultimately irrelevant. Julius Africanus scornfully paraphrases this view while attacking it in the Letter to Aristides (Translation), saying it begs the question of how Heli is somehow "in a different way" the father of Joseph. Africanus appears to say that contemporary proponents of this view also regarded Nathan as a priestly figure (perhaps through confusion between Nathan the child and Nathan the prophet in David's court).
The levirate-marriage genealogy, presented in the Lesser Stemma, proposes that both lines repeatedly intermingle because of a custom known as levirate marriage, in which a widow would marry her late husband's brother and the new couple's child could be attributed to both men. This is the argument adopted by Julius Africanus in the Letter to Aristides. He contends that Joseph thus claimed two fathers, Jacob and Heli, who were brothers. Jacob was his biological father and Heli his "legal" father. Their respective fathers had emerged from two different families, allowing Joseph a dual claim to both Solomon and Nathan as ancestors, says Julius Africanus.
The Joachim-and-Anne genealogy, as set out in the Great Stemma, argues that the "Joseph" mentioned by Luke is not Mary's husband at all, but another man altogether: Mary's grandfather. Luke's account is therefore understood as setting out Christ's maternal ancestry, not his paternal kinship. A non-canonical figure, Joachim, introduced by a 2nd century text known as the Proto-Evangelion of James, is inserted into the line as Mary's father. This solution is still regarded as the doctrinally sound one in the eastern churches.

The Great Stemma's author explains this in a gloss: Luke the evangelist's line, from Nathan, in fact leads to Mary, whereas that by Matthew the evangelist shows a descent from Solomon to Joseph, who belongs to the tribe of Judah. The lines emerge from the one tribe to be reincarnated in Christ. This is made clear where it is written in scripture (Revelations 5:5): "The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed." The lion denotes that which comes from Solomon, the root that which comes from Nathan. [*]Sicut Lucas evangelista per Natan ad Mariam originem ducit, ita et Matheus euvangelista per Salomonem ad Ioseph originem demonstrabit id est ex tribu Iuda, ut apparet eos de una tribu exire et sic ad Christum secundum carnem pervenire. Ut compleatur quod scriptum est, "Ecce vicit leo de tribu Iuda radix David," leo ex Salomone et radix ex Natan. As Ayuso: Extrabiblicos and Zaluska: Liminaires (p 241) note, the text in the Liber Genealogus is almost identical: ... cuius Lucas evangelista ad Mariam originem demonstravit, similiter etiam et Salomonis Matheus evangelista ad Ioseph originem demonstrat, ut appareat eos de una tribu exire et sic ad Christum venire (pervenire), ut compleatur quod scriptum est: ecce vicit leo de tribu Iuda radix David: leo ex Salomone ex radix ex Nathan (Mommsen no. 543).

The central thrust of the Great Stemma (and of the Liber Genealogus) is therefore an attack on the views of Julius Africanus, while approving many other details of Julius Africanus' scholarship. Indeed one wonders if these two books could not have been the work of a couple of dissident students of Julius Africanus. Elevating Christ's maternal ancestry in this way also helped to underpin the cult of Mary, which was growing in importance in some schools of Christianity at this time. It would be interesting to consider how the cult was viewed by the two great intellectual rivals of the period, Augustine and Jerome, and where the Great Stemma/Liber Genealogus authors would have situated themselves.

There are one or two other glosses on theologically sensitive topics in the Great Stemma and Liber Genealogus which seem to indicate a certain sympathy in the theological disputes of the day.

One of these is a prominent panel found in the Alpha, Beta and Delta recensions which explores the issue of sin and intention. The focus is Genesis 19: 30-38, which had been intensely discussed by Augustine, Jerome, the Pelagians and the Manicheans. This is the story of the virtuous man Lot's sojourn with his two daughters in a cave: they ply him with wine until he forgets himself and has sex with them. The gloss explains: They talked Lot, whose will was to avoid sin, over to the side of wrong, with the outcome that Lot, alcoholized to a state of utter drunkenness, made his first misstep, committing incest with his own daughters. [*]Loth cui voluntas non fuit peccare et error appellantur in crimine; responso Loth cum filias suas primum incestum per vini nimiam potationem fecit.

The passage is particularly interesting because the choice of words does seems to echo Jerome, who says of Lot in a letter dated 384 that Lot in fact did not know what he was doing, so his sin was not wilful [*]Denique, quid fecerit, ignoravit: et - quamquam voluntas non sit in crimine, error in culpa est - inde nascuntur Moabitae et Ammanitae, inimici Israhel (Epistulae Cl. 0620, epist.: 22, vol.: 54, par.: 8, pag.: 155, linea: 17). The translation by Schaff/Wace continues: Still his error was a grave one, for it made him the father of Moab and Ammon, Israel's enemies..

The gloss indicates a certain sympathy with Lot, at least compared to the harsher view of Augustine, who both defends Lot and finds fault with him, declaring that his guilt is not that of incest, but of drunkenness. [*]... quapropter culpandus est quidem, non tamen quantum ille incestus, sed quantum illa meretur ebrietas (Contra Faustum Cl. 0321, lib.: 22, par.: 44, pag.: 636, linea: 3).

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