Toledot HaQahal Ri’shonim — Book 1 — Chapter 7 — The Apparent Discrepancy between the Genealogies
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Eusebius addresses the differing genealogies in Mattithyahu and Luqas by preserving an explanation attributed to Julius Africanus. The argument turns on levirate marriage and the distinction between natural and legal paternity. According to Africanus, descendants of the same ancestral line intermarried after one branch lacked heirs, so that one man could be the biological son of one father yet legally reckoned to another deceased kinsman. Africanus traces this mechanism through the ancestry of Yoseph in order to explain why Mattithyahu and Luqas give different paternal sequences without necessarily contradicting one another. He also reports a tradition that Herod, embarrassed by the superior genealogical claims of older Yehudi houses, destroyed public genealogical records, while certain relatives of Yahushua preserved their lineage privately and were later called the Desposynoi, “those belonging to the Master's family.” Eusebius offers the Africanus solution as received historical explanation rather than claiming direct archival proof of every link.