Wermuth's GREEKBOOK

Aug 9, 2006

Matthew 1:1-16: The Genealogy and the Virgin Birth of Christ

You all know the New Testament passage. The one that possibly only gets read (or skipped through) in many churches around Christmas time. The one most of us tend to get bogged down in like many similar ones from the Old Testament. You know the passage: the "begat" passage, the genealogy of Jesus Christ through the line of King David, beginning with the patriarch Abraham (Abram). Not exactly the kind of bible reading for family devotions for most folks either, right?

But wait! As a discerning New Testament Greek student, one can find a startling "jewel" near the end of this potentially "ho-hum" biblical census of begaters and begatees. Remembering, of course, what my New Testament seminary professor once reminded me, that, "We don't get our theology from Greek grammar; we get our theology from the whole teaching of scripture," I still find it exciting and encouraging to discover what the last verse of this text reveals.

Within this verse the Greek grammar demonstrates and certifies what the bible teaches repeatedly about the uniqueness of Christ's entry into this world via his birth from a virgin, Mary. Getting to the point of things: eventually the male ancestral lineage of Christ winds its way right into Bethlehem, where "Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus was begotten" (v. 16). So, what's the big deal, you say? Parents have children all the time, right? That's how we all got here, you say. True enough.

But, notice two things: (1) the lineage of Christ, appropriately, is traced through the male "side of the family," the living line of what was promised to his multi-great grandfather, Abraham in Genesis; and (2) since we know from the numerous scriptural passages (that I won't list here) that Christ would come into this world, by the Holy Spirit, and through a virgin birth, we see the first (and last) woman mentioned in the whole process: Jesus' mother, Mary. The startling aspect of Matthew 1:16 is found in a single word, a feminine, ablative, singular Relative Pronoun: ἧς = "from whom…" We already know from the whole teaching of Scripture that Jesus would have no human father. And, here, we have reaffirmed in the Greek that same truth. The relative pronoun is very precisely referring back to a single, feminine individual as the source of Jesus' human nature, his mother Mary. Something that's not observable from English translations that the New Testament Greek student may relish in as just one "fruit" of your language studies.

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Posted by Robert Wermuth at 20:32:43 | Article Path: Home: Greek Gleanings: Matthew 1:1-16: The Genealogy and the Virgin Birth of Christ