Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek and Latin
Our Lord and Savior, who was far better than Melchizedek—whose genealogy scripture did not record—is now described as born according to the order of the fathers; and although his divinity is not subject to a human beginning, for your sake, since you were born in the flesh, he willed to be born. Yet the order of his birth is not narrated in the same way by the evangelists, a matter that has troubled a good many people. For Matthew, beginning to weave
the sequence of his genealogy from Abraham, arrives at the point of saying: ‘Now the birth of Christ was thus,’ and he describes not the one who was baptized, but the one who came into the world; but Luke, in setting out his birth, does not lead from the higher down to the lower, but having first said that he was baptized, proceeds all the way up to God himself. Nor are the same
persons present in his genealogy when he is said to descend and when to ascend. For the one who makes him descend from the heavens also introduces women—not just any women, but sinners, women whom scripture had censured; but the one who narrates him as baptized makes mention of no woman at all. In Matthew, then, as we have said, Tamar is named, who by deceit lay with her father-in-law, and Ruth the Moabite, who was not even of
the race of Israel, and Rahab, of whose origin I am unable to say, and the wife of Uriah, who violated her husband’s marriage bed. For since our Lord and Savior had come for this purpose, to take upon himself the sins of men, and God ‘made him who had done no sin to be sin for us,’ therefore, in descending into the world, he assumed the person of sinful and corrupt men, and willed to be born
from the line of Solomon, whose sins are recorded in writing, and of Rehoboam, whose offenses are related, and of the rest, many of whom ‘did evil in the sight of the Lord.’ But when he ascends from the washing and is described as born a second time, he is born not through Solomon but through Nathan, who rebuked his father over the death of Uriah and the birth of Solomon. But in Matthew the word ‘begot’ is always added;
here, however, it is passed over entirely in silence. For it is written there: ‘Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar,’ and ‘begot’ is added right through to the end. But in Luke, where Jesus ascends from the washing, he is called ‘son,’ ‘as was supposed, of Joseph’;
and throughout so long a series of names, never—except where it says ‘he was reckoned a son of Joseph’—is the word ‘begetting’ written. In Matthew it is not written ‘was beginning’; but here, because he was about to ascend from baptism, we read ‘was beginning,’ the scripture stating: ‘and Jesus himself was beginning.’ For when he was baptized and took up the mystery of the second
birth, so that you too might set aside your former birth and be born in a second regeneration, then he is said ‘to have begun.’ And just as the people of the Jews, while they were in Egypt, had no beginning of months, but when they went out of Egypt, then it was said to them, ‘this month shall be for you the beginning of months, the first of the months of the year’—so too, one who has not yet
...he was baptized, and it is not narrated that he “began.” For let us not think it added for nothing, in what is said, “he himself was Jesus,” what follows: “beginning.” But this too should be considered, what it says: “about thirty years old.” “Joseph was thirty years old” when he was released from his chains and had interpreted the dream of Pharaoh of Egypt
he was made ruler, and in the time of abundance gathered wheat, so that in time of famine he might have something to distribute. I think that Joseph's thirty years, as a type, preceded the thirty years of the Savior. For this Joseph did not gather wheat such as that Joseph gathered in Egypt, but true and heavenly wheat, so that with wheat gathered in the time of abundance he might have something to distribute when famine was sent into
Egypt — “not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of God.” He therefore gathers from the prophets, from the law, from the apostles, words of abundance, so that when books are no longer being written, and no new testament is being composed, and apostles are no longer being sent, those things which had been carried by Jesus into the granaries of the apostles — that is, into their souls and the souls of all the saints — then
he may distribute and nourish Egypt, imperiled by famine, and especially his own brothers. Of these it is written: “I will declare your name to my brothers, in the midst of the church I will sing.” Other men, too, have words of patience and words of justice and words of the rest of the virtues; this is the wheat that Joseph distributed to the Egyptians. But it is a different grain that he gives to his brothers, that is, to his disciples, from
the land of Goshen, the land that faces toward the east: evangelical wheat, apostolic wheat. From this wheat we ought to make loaves, yet in such a way that they are not mixed with the “old,” and that we may have new bread ground from the wheat and flour of the Scriptures, in Christ Jesus, to whom belongs glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.