"Two Fathers for Joseph? The Bible Genealogy ‘Contradiction’ Explained" ft. Dr. Robert Carter
Two Fathers for Joseph? The Bible Genealogy ‘Contradiction’ Explained ft. Dr. Robert Carter
In this episode of The Science Dilemma, Allan CP sits down with Dr. Robert Carter (Creation Ministries International) to tackle one of the most common challenges skeptics raise about the Bible: the genealogies of Jesus.
Are Matthew and Luke really giving Joseph two different fathers? Is this a contradiction, or is there a deeper historical and theological explanation? Dr. Carter brings nearly two decades of research and ministry experience to unpack the complexity of genealogies, their importance in Scripture, and how they actually strengthen the reliability of the Bible rather than undermine it.
You’ll learn:
- Why genealogies matter for both prophecy and theology.
- How Matthew and Luke present different perspectives on Joseph’s lineage.
- Why the early church never “fixed” the genealogies, even though critics call them contradictions.
- How genealogies connect Jesus to both King David and Adam.
- Why resolving hard questions about the Bible leads to greater confidence in its truth.
This conversation is both eye-opening and faith-building, equipping families, churches, and students to see God’s Word as trustworthy in every detail.
👉 Resources
- Explore Dr. Carter’s work at creation.com
- Check out The Science Dilemma series (videos, guides, and more): thesciencedilemma.com
Transcript
Yeah, most theologians don't trust the genealogies at all.
Allan CP (:Wow. Welcome to the Science Dilemma podcast. My name is Allen and today we're joined by Dr. Robert Carter from Creation Ministries International. Dr. Carter has been doing this for about two decades where he is unpacking how science and faith fit together. Actually, he's spoken at churches worldwide, engaging and equipping Christians with the tools to understand how science points to a creator.
So in today's conversation, we're actually going to touch the genealogies, why they matter and how they strengthen the confidence and the reliability of the Bible. So I'm excited for this episode. You're going to want to listen to the whole thing. All right. Well, thank you, Dr. Robert, for joining us today on the Science Dilemma Podcast.
Dr. Robert Carter (:You're welcome Alan, I can't wait to hear what we're gonna say.
Allan CP (:Yeah, I'm excited to just learn from you. ⁓ I've seen some of your stuff over at Creation Ministries and I'm really intrigued. So I want to jump into some of the conversations, but could you really quick tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your ministry?
Dr. Robert Carter (:All right. Well, uh, I work at creation ministries international, our website is creation.com. We've been around for nearly 50 years. Uh, we have had, Oh boy, just the past year we spoken in over 1200 churches around the world. That's typically what we do is about 30. Yeah. In the past year, we have about 30 speakers on the road. And I think we have more PhD scientists than any Christian ministry in the world.
Allan CP (:in the past year.
Dr. Robert Carter (:There's about 12 or 15 PhDs plus masters and we have some theologians and then some regular people who are just excellent communicators. Yeah.
Allan CP (:That's awesome. And what's your role with the organization?
Dr. Robert Carter (:I'm a speaker, I'm a writer, I'm a movie producer, I'm an author of books. ⁓ I just have many, many roles. But mainly what I do is I travel around the country every other weekend. I've been doing this for 19 years now. Wow. I've spoken in hundreds and hundreds of churches.
Allan CP (:And ⁓ what's the why behind what you're doing? What's driving you?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Um, what we find is that there's a, a tremendous disconnect between the word of God and the scientific world and many, many, many Christians really struggle with this. Um, there's just a lot of different opinions out there even within Christianity. Some are stronger than others. Some of them are more faith challenging than others. But what we try to tell people is that the word of God is written plainly. It's easy to understand.
And the universe should reflect the word of God. And we go through all the different ways of saying, you know, maybe it's not as old as you think it is. And maybe evolution isn't as strong an argument as you think it is. And we're not necessarily just trying to bash evolution in deep time. We're actually trying to build and support a biblical worldview that's consistent.
Allan CP (:Make sure you check out our Origin of Life series if you haven't. Families, churches, homeschools, everybody that we made this for, they're enjoying it because it's not only teaching us how science points to a creator, but it's also engaging and we made it that way for a reason, because the next generation needs to be engaged. So go ahead and check that out as well. We're going to put the links in the description, let's jump back into the conversation. ⁓ Yeah, a lot of the conversations that I have in the intelligent design side of things.
is ⁓ that we have positive arguments for this. It's not that our arguments aren't a negative version of Darwinism, but rather we just have positive arguments. And so I feel the same way about creationism. And so I'm excited to dive into that. Before we go into creationism, ⁓ I did want to talk about the interesting sides of... ⁓ I saw a video that you did on genealogies. yeah.
And I think that that's so cool. ⁓ It's something that I've always been intrigued by. ⁓ Never really get to speak to experts on it. could you explain to us, I think that video was you were addressing what some people believe are contradictions with the genealogy of Joseph, is that correct? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Carter (:man, I've actually just written a book on this topic. It's called First Adam or From First Adam to Last Adam. And it will be available on creation.com. We're hoping by the end of the year, I've turned it over to the graphic artist and he is doing some amazing page layouts. I'm so happy with the way it looks. His, his cover art, I probably shouldn't say this, but it is a half eaten fruit sitting inside a crown of thorns. ⁓ he came over that and my mind was like, ⁓ this is amazing.
Allan CP (:That's so cool. I'm excited.
See,
I love this. That's so cool.
Dr. Robert Carter (:But biblical genealogy is ⁓ the great read the Bible through and a year plan killer.
Allan CP (:Yeah ⁓
Dr. Robert Carter (:When people get to the bagats or if they survive that and they get to like numbers or even, know, second Chronicles, it's, it's, hard. And so what I'm trying to explain to my audience now, cause I'm giving talks on this now is that there's actually two different types of genealogies in the Bible. One is and descendent tree, just forward looking and it's all the descendants of a person and those things spider out in all directions and they cross link and you can't hardly draw them. They're really complicated, but then there are.
The other way, trees that are written retrospectively going backwards, and those tend to be family sticks because most of the time they're only considered the male line.
Allan CP (:typically are the retroactive ones typically in the New Testament and then the Decentric are in the Old Testament or did they enter
Dr. Robert Carter (:No,
there's two classic ones in the Old Testament. In fact, in Genesis itself and Genesis five and Genesis 11. Okay. Genesis five goes from Adam to Noah, but Adam never met Noah. Yeah, that's true. didn't write his own family tree going back to Noah. didn't. No, it's Noah tracing his line backwards to Adam.
Allan CP (:Which is almost the last art, right? We don't give genealogies the same amount of weight as ⁓ ancient Israel in most of history.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Yeah, most theologians don't trust the genealogists at all.
Allan CP (:Wow.
Dr. Robert Carter (:But there's another great genealogy in Genesis chapter 11 that goes from, uh, Terra, father, Abraham's father going backwards to Noah. those two things important to help us build a chronology of world history. tell us where, um, you know, all the different nations of the world come from specific in Genesis chapter 10, which is a descendant tree starts with Noah and goes on all different directions. All these different people groups and, and countries and specific names and how they derive from Noah.
through the Babel event.
Allan CP (:Why do those theologians not believe or not trust genealogies?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Um, because, one reason is the genealogies directly challenge the view of how old the earth is. Um, you can just take Adam to Abraham and add up how old each of those men were when the sun was born. And all of a sudden. I mean, you can go from creation to Joseph in Egypt. You can build a chronology of all world history up through there, but most theologians think the earth is much older and that's going back.
Allan CP (:Gotcha.
Dr. Robert Carter (:you know, to 1800s most theologians were teaching that. But the genealogists challenged that directly.
Allan CP (:Okay.
So the biggest challenge when it comes to genealogies and people disagreeing with them would just be the... ⁓ they're filtering it through their lens of age of the earth or age of humanity.
Dr. Robert Carter (:These things can't be true because we know and then you have to add a non-biblical reference frame to that to to any conclusion after that. ⁓
Allan CP (:And that's, and that from my understanding, that's a pivotal part of creationism is the age of the earth. Okay.
Dr. Robert Carter (:But honestly, I don't care how it'll do with this. It could be a gazillion years old. I just want to follow the word of God. God as a creator, see most modern science is based on a philosophy called naturalism. Belief that nature is all there is and you can use natural processes to explain everything that has ever happened. But if there's a God, naturalism by definition is not true. God can do as he wishes. He could have created over trillion years. He could have snapped his fingers and created everything instantly.
Yeah. Or he created a few thousand years ago over six consecutive days, like the book of Genesis reads. Yeah. So.
Allan CP (:What do you typically say to... I know that I saw, think it was John Lennox has the book, is it the seven days that divide the world? And he talks about, I think he's talked about how some Hebrew scholars that he's referenced, where they believe that the message of Genesis is more so counteracting the creation accounts of most philosophies or worldviews. ⁓
whereas it wasn't necessarily a literal thing. ⁓ I'd love to hear what you have to say to rebut that.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Well, some of that depends upon when Genesis was written. If it was written like right away, then it can't be robotic. Anything that did not yet exist. If it was written much, much, much later, then yeah, you'd expect it to be, ⁓ reflecting some cultural melew or something like that. A lot of people think that it was written, ⁓ during or after the Babylonian captivity, which is 4,000 years later than it says.
But there's so much information in Genesis itself that a later author would never have known. I mean, like, even like, ⁓ you know, Joseph is thrown into prison. There are no prisons in the Old Testament law. There are no prisons in the code of Hammurabi. Why would they think prison? Well, there are prisons in Egypt. We know that, that the Brooklyn Papyrus, we've got a list of prisoners that escaped. A lot of them have very Hebrew sounding names also, but we know, and we know that prisons existed in Egypt.
period, which is right around:And it's also about the same time as they mentioned prisons too. So I can go on forever on this. So many things in Genesis, a later author wouldn't have known. had to be written contemporaneous with the events.
Allan CP (:So that's dating through...
Gotcha. So let's dive into the genealogies. ⁓ I know that there's plenty. So the one that I'm interested in, just because it's the one I saw you on, I wanted to hear you talk about it was the Joseph one and the contradictions that people believe are there, but also the reasons why people would have known like what line Jesus was under.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Okay. You can go on talk.origins today. I believe Richard Dawkins uses an example in his book, The God Delusion, where the claim is that the genealogy of Jesus and Luke and Matthew is so different. They're different people. Therefore the Bible has a giant error in it. You can't, you can't have two different fathers. in Luke and Matthew, Joseph has two different fathers. So which is it? Come on Christian. What's the answer?
How does your Bible not have a glaring error? But you know, I look at that and I said, wait a second, before the New Testament even fully compiled, the Gospels, the four Gospels that we have in our Bibles were circulating as a set. Before the close of the first century, the Gospels were combined together and circulating. And nobody seems to have tried to modify Matthew 1 or Luke 3 to make the list the same.
They didn't have a problem with it. They took these books and this is authoritative. This is real. This is true. This is the Bible. And they stuck them together. Wow. And they float around like that. So if the early church didn't have a problem with it, we should probably think that maybe there's not a problem here.
Allan CP (:So there's nobody during that stage of time in the first century that is countering.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Not that I'm aware of. I Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century was wrestling with this. He didn't know the answer. Okay. And he came up with one that a lot of people think today that Matthew is tracing Joseph's lineage, but Luke is tracing Mary's lineage. Okay. And if that's true, fine. No problem. Case closed and we can walk away. There's not a glaring contradiction in the Bible. Yeah. But that's not the most common view in church history.
Allan CP (:What's the most common view in church history?
Dr. Robert Carter (:The most common view is that Matthew is tracing the royal line. He, that the person who should be the rightful king of Judah. And then what to do with Luke. Most people probably think that Luke is tracing Joseph's biological line. Not that they would have used the word biological, but father to son descent. And at some point in time, King David, from whom God said that Messiah is going to come, had a whole bunch of sons.
Allan CP (:Gotcha.
Dr. Robert Carter (:One of the son, one son was Solomon and Solomon gave rise to all the lineage of the Kings of Judah, which we read about in the Old Testament, fascinating stories. He had another son named Nathan and Nate, the sons of Nathan are mentioned when the Babylonians come and destroy Jerusalem and capped and take a whole bunch of Israelites captive there. We know the sons of Nathan are still around, but there's no genealogy for them until the gospel of Luke.
where it goes from David to Nathan, there's very long list of people. And then it combines with the list in Matthew for two generations and they split again. And eventually generations later, you get to Joseph, Jesus' adoptive father.
Allan CP (:And at that time, the people that are living around Joseph, who would have had that information or would have known that?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Well, Herod apparently didn't know because when the wise men showed up, he said, Hey, you scribes tell me where's the Messiah. it's more, in, in, in, in Bethlehem. What do you know? Hey, Hey, why don't you guys go find him? And then I'm going to follow up and I'm eventually he killed all the babies in Bethlehem. But so the leadership didn't necessarily know. Hey, let me ask you a question. Who's the king of Hawaii?
Allan CP (:Mmm.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Did you know that there's a king of Hawaii? No. Well, he certainly knows it and his family certainly knows it, but most people outside don't know it. Yeah. I believe as the queen of Denmark today, there is a rightful ⁓ heir of Napoleon.
Allan CP (:These royal families that aren't necessarily governing but they still are rightful heirs to the thrones
Dr. Robert Carter (:Yes. And that's my thesis of Matthew. Instead of being a genealogy, Matthew seems to be tracing the scepter. He seems to be tracing who's the rightful king of Judah. But it's possible that Matthew discovered this himself when he went to the temple and started chasing names. Wait a minute, this is the oldest son over here. And oh wow, Joseph was the king of the Jews. Or it was known in Bethlehem.
Allan CP (:Gotcha.
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Either way, Matthew really does look like he's tracing non-geniology. so King lists are amazing. They're fun. They're fascinating. Consider them the Kings and Queens of England. Queen Elizabeth was not the mother of King James. The famous King James who gave us the King James Bible. was not, he was the same. Her grandfather was his great, great grandfather.
Allan CP (:Okay.
Dr. Robert Carter (:So they both descended from Henry the seventh, Henry the eighth, Elizabeth. Well, Henry the seventh, his daughter married the King of Scotland and then generations later, so they were first cousins, twice removed. I know it doesn't, that sounds complicated.
Allan CP (:Yes, so then why was he the rightful king after Elizabeth?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Because there was no one else who was descended from Henry VII. When she died, they went up the family tree, then they went down the family tree and said, ⁓ it's James. Hey, James, come on from Scotland and become the King of England.
Allan CP (:This
is a lot more complex than just father son. Yeah. okay, okay. Wow.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Okay. Well consider Elizabeth the second who just died a couple of years ago. Yeah. She was never supposed to be the queen. Her uncle was the king, but he wanted to marry Wallace Simpson. It was a divorced American woman. And they said, you can't do this. He says, fine. I abdicate. And so he left being the king. His brother, Elizabeth father became the king. And so a thousand years from now, if you're looking at the Kings and Queens of England and you didn't know this, you would say, Oh, father, son, son, father, daughter, daughter, son.
k to William the Conqueror in:Well, anytime a man dies without a son, the line's broken. So they go up the family tree, maybe up to the father, grandfather, great grandfather, come on down again. And anytime a man lives to be really, really old, they say that he dies at 90 and he never had a son or son didn't survive. Well, his brother might be dead already. His cousins might be dead already. They might have to go a couple of generations up and then, you know, the nephew's dead, the grand nephew, maybe it's a great grand nephew.
great great-grandnephew becomes the the next rightful king they just skipped over two or three generations.
Allan CP (:That's so interesting. How did you come across this in your studies?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Just, uh, I was looking at Matthew versus Luke for several months saying to myself, there's gotta be a solution to this. This is going to be something that's logical, that's probable, and that follows the old Testament law. And it can't have any contradictions in it. And I just had this eureka moment and I started drawing family trees until I, I got one that worked out and it all centered around the last or the second to last king of Judah, which a man named Jeconiah.
which people don't pay attention to because they only ring for three months. You know, at end of Judah, there's a whole bunch of Kings and their names are similar and they all have two names. And it's like, what? I can't keep track of them. Well, King Josiah was a good King and he died at the hands of a Pharaoh of Egypt. that Pharaoh, well, they appointed a King and the Pharaoh came back three months later said, no, no, no, you're not the King. He deports him to Egypt where he dies.
And his brother then becomes king for 11 years. That's Jeconiah's father. And then the Babylonians come and they captured Jeconiah after being king for only three months. And they sent him to Babylon. He's in prison for 37 years. So he gets out when he's 55 years old. And then his uncle, another king, another son of Josiah, his uncle is the last king of Judah who is blinded and led to Babylon where he dies.
Jack and I have survived Nebuchadnezzar, you know, famous King Nebuchadnezzar. Uh, Daniel and lions, then Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace who, the man who went crazy and ate grass like an ox for seven years. Well, his son, Evel Meridock, let Jack and I out of prison and gave him, uh, honor above all the other Kings and gave him a food allowance. That's what the Bible says for him and his sons. We have found the tablet.
in the ruins of Babylon that lists Jeconiah and sons and how much food they were allowed to have after they got restored. One of the coolest, it's found near a staircase in the ruins of the city with a bunch of other documents, like an old library or repository or something. That's one of the coolest little confirmations of biblical history. It's just an aside, it's like a non-important little detail, but it's like, wait a minute, they literally found
Allan CP (:Whether it was
Dr. Robert Carter (:The clay tablet with the cuneiform writing says, give Jack and I, I think it was 10 liters of olive oil a day and the sons get a half a liter olive oil a day, something like that.
Allan CP (:Cool. Can you explain to the... because there's plenty of people that probably will come across this podcast or this episode that might not understand the importance of the genealogies. ⁓ Could you explain why it's important for us to understand? ⁓
Dr. Robert Carter (:The reason it's important, well, there's multiple reasons. One is because if we can't answer it, then there's an error in the Bible. I don't think there are any errors in the Bible and everything's answerable. Some things are harder than others, but this one actually wasn't that hard. The other reason is because the genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament claim to bring him back to King David. And Luke goes all the way back to Adam.
Allan CP (:as prophecy fulfillment in the...
Dr. Robert Carter (:It's important for me because I'm not Jewish. mean, Jesus is my kinsman redeemer. I'm not his kinsman if I have to be Jewish. And the fact that Luke goes all the way back to Adam means that he's the kin of every person who's ever lived. that's, that's, mean, it's really critical that, these things be accurate and true. Even if there's some missing generations, which I don't believe, but if there are some missing generations, at least we still go back to Adam. Theological importance here.
Allan CP (:Yeah.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Importance for understanding scripture for believing scripture tons of tons of important stuff
Allan CP (:Yeah, I was so intrigued by it because it's something ⁓ for all of us to be at least looking into, regardless if people agree or disagree to understand it more, because it's so necessary to understand the lineage of Jesus. Are the scriptures contradicting? Which to your point, just because it seems like a contradiction, you dig further, you often find that it's not.
Dr. Robert Carter (:And you know what the hip homes getting ready for this? I went through every one of pastor Chad's theological books in his office. Every single one. And we're talking, and I guess a couple other pastors at the church had their kind of co-mingled a little bit, but I looked at all these different authors from, you know, 50 year time span, all these different publishing houses. And I could not find any consistent answer to the Matthew versus Luke genealogy question. Yeah.
Allan CP (:No way.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Some of them said it's not resolved. Some of them said, ⁓ it's a contradiction. Some of them like RC Spruill said, I'm going to leave it up to, ⁓ you to figure it out. It's like, come on. And so this is definitely something that people struggle with and I'm not saying that my solution is correct. I'm saying it's possibly correct. So there's another possible answer. Yeah. It might be Lucas tracing Mary's line or it might be in my solution here. They're both tracing Joseph's line.
Allan CP (:Interesting, interesting.
Dr. Robert Carter (:One is the king line and one is a biological line.
Allan CP (:Why do think that people have differed or kind of left, you know, just said like, hey, it's for you guys to figure out. Do you think that it's just out of fear of being incorrect? Is it out of reverence for the scriptures and not trying to?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Well, I'm not sure It's confusing it's hard there's no, you know specific answer And the take it took me I thought about this for two years Yeah one question well I'm off for two years then like two or three months really hard trying to figure it out Before even a potential solution came to me and then now since I found it and a couple other obscure places something very very very similar It's okay. So I'm not the only one
Because anytime you come up with a unique theological eureka moment, you're probably a heretic.
Allan CP (:Yeah,
yeah for sure and or you just have to tread really lightly and let and ask everybody for their two cents.
Dr. Robert Carter (:Yeah, because more than likely someone has already gone down the same road and you're just, you know, rehashing the same stuff.
Allan CP (:What were the reactions from your colleagues when you... Really?
Dr. Robert Carter (:Most everybody's loved it.
I've never thought of that and they bought multiple people thank me for giving them just a better understanding of scripture and a more more sure foundation for scripture. I mean again, even if it's not the solution just working through it helps you understand it better.
Allan CP (:That's so interesting. But I do appreciate the storyline that it paints for us, how there's a promise ⁓ made through King David's lineage, and that's another prophecy fulfilled, of course. I appreciate what you're doing. I thank you so much for joining us on this podcast, and ⁓ I hope that we get to do plenty more where I could even ask you even more questions along the way. Yeah, of creationism and God's design.
Dr. Robert Carter (:anytime anytime
Allan CP (:So thank you so much for joining us today, doctor. If you haven't yet, go ahead and like, subscribe, share so that we can grow this channel, not for the just the sake of growth, but for the sake of education, for the sake of impact, so that more people can know that these are conversations we need to be having.
