Jesus Inherited Mortality from 

His Mother & Immortality from His Father

One of my friends on Facebook, John Hajicek, a self-named “Mormon Historian” and Curator, had posted the other day about the scriptural accounts of prophecies of the Messiah being a descendant of King David. He explained how Jesus’ genealogy could be traced through his step-father, Joseph, back to David.

I posted in reply how I had learned as a boy that Joseph and Mary were cousins and that both were descended from David. John wrote back with a number of scriptural references, mostly from the New Testament, where it suggests Mary was a Levite by birth (not descended from David) and that when she married Joseph, both she and her son, Jesus, were counted as being of Joseph’s lineage.

I was intrigued by this and wanted to learn more about the genealogy of Jesus Christ. It didn’t make sense to me that the prophets would say the Messiah will be a descendant of David, he will be born in Bethlehem (the City of David), and will sit on David’s throne, and then he has to be adopted into Joseph’s line to claim David as his ancestor! I looked up the scriptures John recommended and then branched out to investigate further. I was surprised by what I read.

There were so many different theories from notable Bible Scholars (from ancient and modern times), each with his own take on the subject, that I was reminded of the confusion, disruption and mishaps I’ve always speculated must have occurred on the construction site of the Tower of Babel.

Theories were variously based on taking into account Jewish tradition and customs, levirate marriages, names being changed over the centuries, two reports in the New Testament on Christ’s genealogy with some significant differences between them, differing translations from Aramaic to Greek and Latin where word meaning can change only slightly and dramatically alter the course of history, and then how some experts feel both the Matthew and Luke accounts of the genealogy of Jesus (through Joseph or Mary) were fabrications to make Jesus' profile a better fit for being the Messiah!

Just a word about levirate marriages which I found interesting. If a man (A) marries a woman (B) and they don’t have any children, and man (A) dies without posterity, his brother (C) is expected to marry the widow (B). The firstborn male (D) of that union (C&B) becomes the legal son of the first husband (A) so he will have posterity. Subsequent children of the second brother (C) are considered his legal children. But when it comes to writing down the genealogy of these families, sometimes they’ll report that the first brother (A) was the father of son (D), sometimes they’ll report the second brother (C) as the father of son (D) and other times they’ll name both husbands of woman (B) as the father of son (D). Then, later on, when son (D) gets married and has sons, they might show up in the lineage of husband (A) or of husband (C) or both. How would you like to be researching families where you had several consecutive generations of levirate marriages?

Of course, the connection between King David and the Messiah is of tremendous significance to the Jewish people (the Chosen & Covenant People) as we are talking about one of the greatest Jewish kings, about the words and deeds of Jewish prophets, about the history of the Jews, and about the most precious of prophesies and promises made between Jehovah and the Jews. This is also of great importance to Christians and other students of the Bible as studying the prophets and witnessing the fulfillment of prophecy helps us learn more of Christ, helps us follow him and helps us work towards becoming more like him.

While I don’t want to minimize the link to King David, I believe that of much greater importance and impact to all of God’s children (all of mankind) is the fact that Jesus is a direct descendant, the Only Begotten, and the literal Son of God. Before the earth’s creation, God the Father promised to send a Savior. That Savior, a perfect and pure vessel, would take upon himself the sins of the world, voluntarily give up his own life and then take it up again to bring about the atonement and the resurrection. Mortal man could not accomplish this task, having no power over death. An immortal likewise could not accomplish this, having no power to lay down his life.

Only one has walked the earth having the innate ability and power to be that Savior, and that is Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ, a being who inherited mortality from his mother and immortality from his father, could give up his life and then take it up again fulfilling his role in providing the Atonement and opening the gates of Resurrection for all mankind.

John Hajicek In the Bible, Jesus Christ was a carpenter’s son (Matthew 13:55) or the son of Joseph (Matthew 1: 23, 45); and his genealogy was consequently recorded as the lineal son of David (Matthew 1: 1, 1:20, 12:23, 21:9, 22:42, Luke 3: 23, 31), the seed of David according to the flesh (John 7:42, Romans 1:3, 2 Timothy 2:8), and the root and offspring of David (Revelation 5:5, 22:16); and therefore of the tribe of Judah (Hebrews 7:14); whilst his mother Mary was evidently of the tribe of Levi, since her uncle was a Levite priest (Luke 1: 5, 8, 36, 55). Thus, he alone fulfilled prophecies concerning the Messiah inheriting the throne of David (1 Kings 2:45, Isaiah 9:7, Jeremiah 17:25).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_Jesus