Heli (; Eli in the New American Standard Bible) is an individual mentioned in the

Gospel of Luke The Gospel of Luke is the third of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It tells of the origins, Nativity of Jesus, birth, Ministry of Jesus, ministry, Crucifixion of Jesus, death, Resurrection of Jesus, resurrection, and Ascension of ...

as the grandfather of

Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

. In Luke's

genealogy of Jesus The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew starts with Abraham and works forwards, while Luke works back in time from Jesus to Adam. The lists of na ...

, Heli is listed as the father of Joseph (the husband of Mary), and the son of Matthat (). Heli is not mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in the

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells the story of who the author believes is Israel's messiah (Christ (title), Christ), Jesus, resurrection of Jesus, his res ...

, the only other canonical gospel to include a genealogy; that genealogy instead identifies "Jacob" as Joseph's father.

Two genealogies of Jesus

The

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the

and another in the

. Matthew starts with

Abraham Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...

, while Luke begins with

Adam Adam is the name given in Genesis 1–5 to the first human. Adam is the first human-being aware of God, and features as such in various belief systems (including Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism and Islam). According to Christianity, Adam ...

. The lists are identical between Abraham and

David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Dam ...

, but differ radically from that point. Matthew has twenty-seven generations from David to Joseph, whereas Luke has forty-two, with almost no overlap between the names on the two lists.⁠ Notably, the two accounts also disagree on who Joseph's father was: Matthew says he was Jacob, while Luke says he was Heli. Traditional Christian scholars (starting with Africanus and Eusebius) have put forward various theories that seek to explain why the lineages are so different, such as that Matthew's account follows the lineage of Joseph, while Luke's follows the lineage of Mary. Some modern critical scholars like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan state that both genealogies are inventions, intended to bring the Messianic claims into conformity with Jewish criteria.Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas (HarperCollins, 2009) page 95. Another possibility is that since both Heli and Jacob have a similar name listed as their father (Matthan in Matthew, Matthat in Luke), a discrepancy that can easily be accounted for by error, that the names Heli and Jacob refer to the same person. Matthew relied heavily on fitting existing prophecy to the narrative; in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

Jacob Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...

(the last of the biblical patriarchs) also had a son named Joseph. This explanation fits for Heli/Jacob himself, but not for the earlier genealogies.

The curse on the Solomonic line

If Matthew's genealogy is that of Mary, and Luke's of Joseph, then there is a problem with the curse on the Solomonic line, dating from the time of Jeconiah where

Jeremiah Jeremiah ( – ), also called Jeremias, was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah authored the Book of Jeremiah, book that bears his name, the Books of Kings, and the Book of Lamentations, with t ...

pronounced that no descendant of Jeconiah would again sit on the throne of David in Judah. In contrast, if Luke's genealogy is that of Mary, and Matthew's of Joseph,Robertson, A.T.
Commentary on Luke 3:23
. "Robertson's Word Pictures of the New Testament". Broadman Press 1932,33, Renewal 1960. then this creates no problem with the curse on the Solomonic line. However, Jeconiah's grandson

Zerubbabel Zerubbabel ( from ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a governor of the Achaemenid Empire's province of Yehud Medinata and the grandson of Jeconiah, penultimate king of Judah. He is not documented in extra-biblical documents, and is considered ...

is later chosen by God, and was a governor of the

Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian peoples, Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, i ...

's Yehud Medinta (Province of Judah), as appointed by

Darius the Great Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...

.Diana Edelman. ''The Origins of the 'Second' Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem''. (Oakville, CT, Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2005. 2.

Saint Joachim and Saint Anne

The apocryphal Protoevangelium of James gives the story of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne as the parents of Mary. This is largely followed in Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican tradition.

References

{{Gospel of Luke Gospel of Luke Genealogy of Jesus Judean people