ce of known Kings; in Luke, through an unknown collateral
branch, coinciding only with respect to Salathiel and Zorobabel, whilst
they still differ in the names of the father of Salathiel and the son of
Zorobabel.... A consideration of the insurmountable difficulties, which
unavoidably embarrass every attempt to bring these two genealogies into
harmony with one another, will lead us to despair of reconciling them,
and will incline us to acknowledge, with the more free-thinking class of
critics, that they are mutually contradictory. Consequently, they cannot
both be true.... In fact, then, neither table has any advantage over the
other. If the one is unhistorical, so also is the other, since it is
very improbable that the genealogy of an obscure family like that of
Joseph, extending through so long a series of generations, should have
been preserved during all the confusion of the exile, and the disturbed
period that followed.... According to the prophecies, the Messiah could
only spring from David. When, therefore, a Galilean, whose lineage was
utterly unknown, and of whom consequently no one could prove that he was
not descended from David, had acquired the reputation of being the
Messiah; what more natural than that tradition should, under different
forms, have early ascribed to him a Davidical descent, and that
genealogical tables, corresponding with this tradition, should have been
formed? which, however, as they were constructed upon no certain data,
would necessarily exhibit such differences and contradictions as we find
actually existing between the genealogies in Matthew and in Luke" ("Life
of Jesus," by Strauss, vol. i., pp. 130, 131, and 137-139).

The accounts of the several angelic warnings to Mary and to Joseph
appear to be mutually exclusive. Most theologians, says Strauss,
"maintaining, and justly, that the silence of one Evangelist concerning
an event which is narrated by the other, is not a negation of the event,
they blend the two accounts together in the following manner: 1, the
angel makes known to Mary her approaching pregnancy (Luke); 2, she then
journeys to Elizabeth (the same Gospel); 3, after her return, her
situation being discovered, Joseph takes offence (Matthew); whereupon,
4, he likewise is visited by an angelic apparition (the same Gospel).
But this arrangement of the incidents is, as Schliermacher has already
remarked, full of difficulty; and it seems that what is related by one
Evangelist