When you sit down to read the New Testament, you probably expect a straightforward answer to a simple question like: who is the father of Jesus' father? It’s a basic genealogy question. But if you’ve actually cracked open the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, you've likely noticed something that has kept theologians and historians up at night for about two thousand years.
There are two different names.
If you follow the line in the Gospel of Matthew, the grandfather of Jesus is a man named Jacob. However, if you flip over to the Gospel of Luke, the text identifies the father of Joseph as Heli.
It’s confusing. Honestly, it feels like a typo at first glance, but these two lineages are the foundation of the Messianic claim in Christian tradition. To understand who the father of Jesus’ father really was, we have to look at ancient Jewish legal customs, the difference between biological and legal ancestry, and why these two specific lists exist in the first place.
The Matthew Version: Jacob and the Royal Line
Matthew starts his entire book with a bang. He’s writing primarily to a Jewish audience, so his goal is crystal clear: prove that Jesus is the legitimate heir to the throne of David. To do that, he traces the line through the kings.
According to Matthew 1:16, "Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary."
This list is structured in three sets of fourteen generations. It’s a literary device called gematria, where the numerical value of the name "David" (D-V-D) in Hebrew adds up to fourteen. Matthew isn't just giving a DNA report; he’s making a theological argument. He wants you to see that Joseph comes from the royal line of Solomon.
In this view, Jacob is the biological father. He is the man who physically fathered Joseph. This line establishes the "legal right" to the Davidic throne. In the ancient Near East, legal lineage was everything. If you weren't in the book, you weren't the King.
The Luke Version: Heli and the Biological Reality?
Now, things get tricky. Luke was a doctor. He was a Gentile writing for a broader, more Greek-influenced audience. His genealogy in Luke 3:23 goes backward. It starts with Jesus and goes all the way to Adam.
📖 Related: Coach Bag Animal Print: Why These Wild Patterns Actually Work as Neutrals
Luke says Jesus was "the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli."
Wait. Jacob or Heli?
For centuries, scholars like Eusebius and Jerome have wrestled with this. One of the most common explanations—and one that many modern scholars like Dr. Darrell Bock discuss—is that Luke is actually recording the genealogy of Mary, not Joseph.
Think about it this way. In ancient Greek, there wasn't a specific word for "son-in-law" used in these types of formal lists. If Joseph married Mary, he became the legal heir to her father, Heli. Since Jesus had no biological father in the Christian tradition, tracing the bloodline through Mary was the only way to prove Jesus was a physical "descendant of David according to the flesh," as Paul puts it in Romans.
So, under this theory:
- Jacob was Joseph’s biological father.
- Heli was Mary’s father (Joseph’s father-in-law).
By including both, the New Testament covers all the bases. Jesus gets the legal right to the throne through his adoptive father Joseph (Jacob’s line) and the physical bloodline of David through his mother Mary (Heli’s line).
The Levirate Marriage Theory: A Legal Loophole
There is another way to look at this that doesn't involve Mary’s genealogy at all. It’s a bit more "lawyerly," but it fits perfectly with 1st-century Jewish life. This comes from an early Christian historian named Africanus.
He suggested that Jacob and Heli were actually half-brothers. They had the same mother (a woman named Estha) but different fathers.
👉 See also: Bed and Breakfast Wedding Venues: Why Smaller Might Actually Be Better
Here is how the drama allegedly unfolded:
- Heli married a woman but died without having any children.
- Under Jewish Levirate Law (Deuteronomy 25:5-6), his brother Jacob was required to marry the widow to carry on Heli’s name.
- Jacob and the widow had a son named Joseph.
In this scenario, Jacob is the biological father, but Heli is the legal father. When a child was born from a Levirate marriage, he was legally considered the son of the deceased brother. This explains why one Gospel writer would list the biological parent while the other lists the legal parent. It’s a classic case of "it depends on which paperwork you're looking at."
Why Does This Distinction Even Matter?
You might be wondering why anyone cares about two old guys named Jacob and Heli.
Accuracy.
To the writers of the New Testament, if Jesus wasn't a descendant of David, he couldn't be the Messiah. Period. The "father of Jesus' father" had to be a descendant of David for the whole system to work.
If Matthew and Luke had provided the exact same list, skeptics might have accused them of copying each other. The fact that the lists are different suggests they were drawing from different family records. These records were likely kept in the Temple in Jerusalem until it was destroyed in 70 AD.
It’s also about the "Curse of Jeconiah." In the book of Jeremiah, God essentially blacklisted King Jeconiah, saying none of his descendants would sit on the throne. Matthew’s line (the royal one) includes Jeconiah. If Jesus were the biological son of Joseph, he might have been disqualified by that curse. But because he is the legal son of Joseph and the biological son of Mary (who comes from David’s son Nathan, not Solomon), the curse is bypassed.
It’s a brilliant bit of legal maneuvering if you look at it through the lens of ancient Judean law.
✨ Don't miss: Virgo Love Horoscope for Today and Tomorrow: Why You Need to Stop Fixing People
Historical Sources and Expert Perspectives
Most modern historians agree that we can't definitively "prove" which man was the grandfather using 21st-century forensics. We are relying on texts written decades after the events.
However, we can look at the Talmud. There are ancient Jewish writings that refer to Mary as the "daughter of Heli." This lends a huge amount of weight to the idea that Luke was tracing the maternal line. When your "rivals" or critics use a specific name for a family member, it usually means that name was well-recognized in the community at the time.
Also, consider the work of Richard Bauckham, a renowned scholar on the relatives of Jesus. He points out that the early church was led by Jesus’ own family members (the Desposyni). These people would have known exactly who their grandfathers were. They wouldn't have let a glaring error in the family tree stand if it were just a mistake.
Summary of the Search for the Grandfather
So, who is the father of Jesus' father?
If you are looking for the biological man who raised Joseph in the house of David, the answer is most likely Jacob. He is the one Matthew identifies in the direct patriarchal line.
If you are looking at the man whose name appears in the priestly and biological record of Jesus’ actual bloodline (via Mary), or the legal father under Levirate law, the answer is Heli.
It’s not a contradiction. It’s a multi-layered identity.
Actionable Steps for Further Research
If you want to dive deeper into this specific rabbit hole, don't just take a blog post's word for it. The history of 1st-century Judea is dense and fascinating.
- Read the Genealogies Side-by-Side: Open Matthew 1 and Luke 3. Highlight where they diverge (it’s right after King David).
- Study Levirate Law: Check out Deuteronomy 25 to understand how a man could have two "fathers" in the eyes of the law.
- Check the "Heli" References in the Talmud: Look up scholarly commentaries on Hagigah 77d to see the historical Jewish references to Mary’s parentage.
- Investigate the Nathan vs. Solomon Split: See how the two lines from David’s sons eventually converge back at Shealtiel and Zerubbabel before splitting again.
Understanding the ancestry of Joseph isn't just a genealogy project; it's a window into how the ancient world viewed family, inheritance, and the fulfillment of prophecy. Whether it was Jacob or Heli, the goal of the record-keepers was the same: to show that this specific family had deep, verifiable roots in the history of Israel.
Next Steps for Your Study: To get a full picture of this family tree, your next move should be investigating the "Desposyni"—the actual blood relatives of Jesus who lived in the first few centuries. Their accounts often provide the "missing links" that help reconcile the differences between the Gospel records and the oral traditions of the early Middle East. Searching for the writings of Julius Africanus on the "Genealogy of the Gospels" is the best place to find the earliest preserved explanations of the Jacob/Heli dilemma.