Introduction to Avot 1: Lists do not Make Us Listless – Chronologies are Critical

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Monday, July 10, 2006 • Modified Tuesday, September 26, 2006

When we read the Bible chapters burdened with begats, our attention is often begone. There are lists of begats in the Torah, but the longest list of begats is I Chronicles 1-8. At first glance this apparently repetitive retelling of Israelite history is one big, bad, bore, until we see that the Divine is in the details. While Kings and Deuteronomy reflect one school of ancient Israelite thinking, the Chronicler represented a later, priestly mindset that will evolve into Jewish thinking. It begins with Adam, and concludes with Cyrus's Edict and Restoration

Both chronologies reflect different points of view of telling, so that the Scripture of ancient Israel reads with a depth borne of binocularity. The next important genealogies appear in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The earliest Gospel, Mark, c.a. 60 CE, is unclear regarding Jesus' origins. The Jews and Romans, who in the first Christian century were hardly on the best of terms, both saw Jesus as the son of Panthera, a Roman soldier, and not the son of Mary, Joseph, or the Holy Ghost. Matthew's genealogy traces Jesus' origins from Abraham, the father of ancient Israel, through the line of the Messiah on the father's patrlinear side. The no longer extant earliest version of Matthew, that accepted by the Hebrew Christians called Ebionites, or Evyonim, poor one's, did not accept the doctrine of Jesus' divinity, addressed in John, or the so-called virgin birth. Luke 3:23-38 also provides a geneology, placing Jesus in a line going back to Adam

These three genealogies all make claims, based on the holy number, seven. The Chronicler traces Israelite history to teach a lesson. Israel's well being is covenant bound. When Israel acts well, it does well. The so-called eye witness, or synoptic Gospels tell the same story in different and sometimes conflicting ways. By tracing Jesus to David, the Ebionite Gospel a latter version of which was attributed to Matthew. is making a claim, that Jesus in the flesh, sired by Joseph, not God and not Panthera, in the flesh, is the Jewish Messiah in the flesh. By tracing Jesus to Adam, Luke's Gospel, like Paul in Acts, addresses a non-Jewish audience

Rabbi Jacob Neusner taught that documents must be read not only as a document, but as an instance of a genre and then in historical context. The genealogy of Pirqe Abot traces the Oral Tradition not to Abraham or Adam, but to Moses at Sinai, the revelation of which resides in the exposition or interpretation of the sages. Written 200-220 CE, Abot's chronology is focused not on great ideas and great experiences, but only holy words, obedience to which gives sanctity, holiness, and Life in the Eternity to Come. While Christianity canonizes people who is saved by the person Jesus, Judaism canonizes books which inform any and all who learn how to be part of a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Rabbi Jacob Neusner taught that for Christianity, the individual is saved by faith while the Jew is sanctified by commandments. The shape of chronologies is the shape of our time, and how we shape time determines the shape of our soul.

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