ANF06. Fathers of the Third Century: Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius, and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius

II.

For¹⁰³⁹

¹⁰³⁹ Here what is given in Eusebius begins.
whereas in Israel the names of their generations were enumerated either according to nature or according to law,—according to nature, indeed, by the succession of legitimate offspring, and according to law whenever another raised up children to the name of a brother dying childless; for because no clear hope of resurrection was yet given them, they had a representation of the future promise in a kind of mortal resurrection, with the view of perpetuating the name of one deceased;—whereas, then, of those entered in this genealogy, some succeeded by legitimate descent as son to father, while others begotten in one family were introduced to another in name, mention is therefore made of both—of those who were progenitors in fact, and of those who were so only in name. Thus neither of the evangelists is in error, as the one reckons by nature and the other by law. For the several generations, viz., those descending from Solomon and those from Nathan, were so intermingled¹⁰⁴⁰

¹⁰⁴⁰ Reading συνεπεπλάκη. Migne would make it equivalent to “superimplexum est.” Rufinus renders it, “Reconjunctum namque est sibi invicem genus, et illud per Salomonem et illud quod per Nathan deducitur,” etc.
by the raising up of children to the childless,¹⁰⁴¹

¹⁰⁴¹ ἀναστάσεσιν ἀτέκνων. Rufinus and Damascenus omit these words in their versions of the passage.
and by second marriages, and the raising up of seed, that the same persons are quite justly reckoned to belong at one time to the one, and at another to the other, i.e., to their reputed or to their actual fathers. And hence it is that both these accounts are true, and come down to Joseph, with considerable intricacy indeed, but yet quite accurately.
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