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185 P The Presupposition of Davidic Descent Excursus In a recent and very intriguing article, Levin explores the relationship between adoption and legal inheritance as it pertains to Jesus as both Son of David and Son of God.1 Perhaps the most important contribution of this article is that it throws serious doubt upon the notion that Jesus’ adoption by Joseph (as professed by the genealogies and infancy narratives) would have served to legitimate his claim as Davidic heir. Levin points out just how common this notion is within NT scholarship, often with little to no justification.2 He argues that the evidence occasionally used to justify Jesus’ inherited lineage3 does not speak to the legal implications of inheritance and lineage. Levin concludes that “there is nothing in Jewish law, in either the Hebrew Bible or in later Halakhah, which can be seen as the model by which Jesus, Son of God, could have been considered the legal, but not genetic, heir to the Davidic throne.”4 Rather, this concept has been taken from the Roman law 1 Y. Levin, “Jesus, ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of David,’” JSNT 28, no. 4 (2006): 424–42; cf. the observation by M. Gold (“Adoption: A New Problem for Jewish Law,” Judaism 36 [1987]: 443) that the adopted son of Priest could not inherit the lineage necessary to serve as a priest. 2 Levin gives a long bibliography of scholars who assume that legal adoption into paternal lineage (such as we see in both Matthew and Luke) was a well-known Jewish custom. This bibliography includes J. D. Kingsbury, “The Title ‘Son of David’ in Matthew’s Gospel,” JBL 95 (1976): 548; R. E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), 139, 288; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison Jr., The Gospel according to St. Matthew (3 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997 [1988]), 1:219–20; and J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (4 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 217. 3 E.g., b. Sanh. 19b: “Whoever brings up an orphan in his home is considered by Scripture as though the child had been born to him.” Cf. b. Bat. 8.6. 4 Levin, 425; cf. the similar conclusion arrived in the consideration of Paul’s adoption metaphor by F. Lydall, Slaves, Citizens, Sons: Legal Metaphors in the Epistles (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1984), 80–81. The following comment by A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (WBC 11; Dallas: Word, 1989), 122, is also appropriate, “Extra-family adoption does not seem to be attested in the OT.” 186 The Historiographical Jesus and practice that were employed in the succession of Caesars.5 From this conclusion, Levin suggests that Matthew was not a Jew writing for a JewishChristian audience. Instead, Matthew is better understood from the standpoint of Greco-Roman culture. While Levin provides a much-needed corrective to the common misconstrual of Jewish adoption and inheritance, his final suggestion concerning Matthew’s identity is unwarranted. Moreover, I find this a curious move on Levin’s part considering that he regards the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke (the texts that most emphasize Jesus’ Davidic descent) to have originated from a common oral tradition. With this in mind, there is no reason to project the inherent literary assumptions of Matthew’s genealogy onto the gospel as a whole. If Levin is correct in this regard,6 a less severe suggestion would be that Matthew has included a lineage tradition into his gospel that originated from Gentile Christianity. Indeed this solution fits well with what else we know of Davidic descent tradition in the NT. I will briefly sketch this progression in three stages. The first stage is given voice by Romans 1:3-4 (cf. 2Tim 2:8), which is generally considered to be a pre-Pauline creed taken from primitive Christianity.7 From this text we learn that Jesus “came from David’s seed according to the flesh; who was established the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.” In all likelihood, this creed originated as an early post-Easter reflection on Jesus’ “messianic” status among his first Jewish followers. In other words, Jesus was perceived within a messianic lens before his execution , and this perception had to be refracted and made intelligible through a post-Easter lens.8 One could think of this as the most dramatic occurrence of memory refraction...

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