EssaysVolume8

  

Divine or Mortal?

Richard Alexander

Copyright 2026

CONTENTS

     Introduction       
       1. Ancestry Research
       2. As Far Back as Possible

Part I. The Ancient Israelites
       3. The Sons of Abraham
       4. The Grandsons of Lot
       5. The Descendants of Levi
       6. Boaz and Ruth
       7. The House of David
       8. David and Uriah

Part II. Jesus and his Family
       9. The Father of Jesus
       10. The Mother of Jesus
     11. Sarah Damaris

Part III. The Dilemma
     12. An Eligible Messiah?
     13. Messianic Secret or Quest?
     14. And Then?
     15. Divine or Mortal?

Appendices
     A. The Big Picture
     B. The Mary Magdalene Conundrum

<Blog Post Essays>

Note: An ancestry trace from current parties back in time to ancient parties was first completed to enable this lineage presentation from ancient parties forward in time to current parties. The ancestry trace may be viewed by clicking HERE.

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Introduction

This book began as an essay that described using the tools of ancestry research to trace lineage in the Bible from the Patriarchs forward in time to Yeshua ("Jesus") and on to myself in the 21st century. As the essay developed, it morphed into a study of the central tenant of Christianity: the presumed divinity of Yeshua, either by virgin birth or by having been exalted by God to divine status after death on a cross and resurrection. The alternative to the presumption of divinity is that Yeshua was a great teacher and prophet who was mortal.

At the Council of Nicaea that was attended by 318 bishops of Christian churches in 325 C.E., the orthodox perception of Jesus was hammered out through much debate. The resulting Nicene Creed was amended in subsequent ecumenical councils to deny numerous heretical notions.

One of the reputed heresies that was rejected at the Council of Nicea was advanced by an Alexandrian presbyter, Arius (256-336). Arius argued that Jesus was not divine but was entirely mortal and nothing more than an inspired teacher. Further, Arius asserted that God was a single omnipotent deity (not a trinity) who had not incarnated into human flesh.

While the Arius position was rejected at Nicea, it has persisted through the ages as a nagging possibility. In this book I have applied the tools of ancestry research to the question of whether to worship Jesus as a divine entity or to revere him as an inspired teacher, a mortal who taught that the "Kingdom of God" is near and who advocated love of and care for fellow humans.

 

1. Ancestry Research

Ancestry research systems such as Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, and MyHeritage.com use powerful search engines to access hundreds of data bases. I use MyHeritage.com, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. MyHeritage.com has access to 12.5 billion historical records. Starting with myself, I can add records for parents, grandparents, great grands, and so on, displaying them in a “family tree” that can be viewed on my computer screen.

When I research a particular name, MyHeritage lists all of the records that the search engine finds with that name or names with similar spellings or in different languages. Some of the records are repeated in family trees (so-called "smart matches"), but typically there are several records from different database sources ("record matches") that attest to the existence of a person of that name and vintage. The records may exhibit variations in birth and death dates and places, and identities of parents, spouses, siblings, and children, but I usually can compose a consensus profile of that named person.

As I have used the MyHeritage technology, I have gained confidence in what it reveals about my own ancestry. MyHeritage has enabled me to trace one of my ancestry lines to Antenor IV (24-67 CE), king of the Sicambrian Franks on the eastern bank of the Rhine River. Antenor's wife is recorded as Sarah Damaris. There are multiple stories about how a Jewish girl named Sarah got to Gaul to meet and marry a Germanic tribal chieftain.

An ancestry tree and accompanying commentary is a form of story telling. It is the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and whence we came. An ancestry story can be revealing, or it can be told to hide essential truths. An ancestry story can amuse and entertain, or it can be terminally boring. It can reveal national heroes or horse thieves among the relatives. It can surprise, and it may even shock to discover who is up one’s family tree. Ancestry research educates with respect to language, culture, history, geography, economics, mathematics, and even theology. Ancestry research is factual, but it may become fiction if the researcher is tempted to extend the story beyond what can be confirmed. All of these possibilities surface in the telling of the Stanford Family ancestry story.

Lineage "descends" through time which progresses linearly from earlier dates toward the present, but ancestry tracing necessarily "ascends" from the present back in time. An ancestry trace usually must be conducted first to enable a lineage trace. An ancestry line search is conducted record-by-record by identifying a subject's parents and then checking the information in the parents' records to confirm that the subject indeed is their child. The parents then become the subjects in the next step.

This process may continue stepwise until a dead-end is reached, i.e., when neither parent of a subject is identified. When a dead-end is reached in one subject's ancestry line, it often is possible to shift to the spouse's ancestry line to continue tracing ancestry. In this way, I have been able to trace my ancestry back to the patriarchs of ancient Israel. A horizontal arrow that points up at the end (---^) in any of the ancestry listings or display charts in this book indicates a shift to the ancestry of a spouse.

Although ancestry research typically is conducted by tracing paternal ancestry lines, maternal ancestry lines often are crucial to family ancestry research.

Rather than proceeding in the ascending order of an ancestry trace, I have chosen to organize the chapters in this book as a lineage trace in descending order from the ancient patriarchs down to the present. A lineage trace facilitates the telling of stories chronologically as they unfold. For those who might prefer a chapter organization from the present back to the patriarchs, an alternate version of this book may be viewed at https://dickstanfordlegacy.blogspot.com/2025/12/biblebackintime.html.

As we proceed chapter-wise ever farther toward the present, we will encounter five dynasties: Judahite, Levite, Davidian, Hasmonean, and Herodian. The central question that encompasses the entire project is the eligibility of Jesus to be an authentic Jewish messiah and whether Jesus is divine or was mortal.

MyHeritage ancestry trees are presented in this book in charts that are composites of screen shots of MyHeritage displays. All charts pertaining to the ancestry of Jesus were derived from a single large chart that is too big to display in these pages. It has been divided into two parts that are presented in the Appendix. Ancestry records displayed in these charts are consensus profiles of the MyHeritage ancestry records for each named person. Birth and death dates of ancient entities should be understood to be approximations (circa). The “boxed” names and dates presented in the ancestry charts in subsequent chapters have been retyped with larger fonts to improve legibility.

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2. As Far Back as Possible

During my retirement I have taken up ancestry research as a hobby. A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to identify anyone in my ancestry earlier than my grandfathers and grandmothers. Once I got into the ancestry research process with MyHeritage.com, the compelling challenge became how far into the past I could trace my ancestry. I was surprised to discover that I could trace my ancestry lines back into the BCE era. I now know that I have ancestors who were Vikings, Barbarians, Romans, Greeks, Trojans, Israelites, and Jews, and they include Scottish, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Habsburg kings and queens. 

An ancestry sequence search can continue back in time until a record is reached that does not identify either parent. But it is often possible then to shift to the spouse’s ancestry line and continue tracing the ancestry. Such spousal line shifts may occur numerous times in extending the trace ever farther back in time.

Chart 1 shows one of my maternal ancestry sequences generated by the MyHeritage search engine from available databases. It is much too long to display in a tree. It covers the range from Richard Alexander (born 1943) to Akim Ben Zadoc (born circa 274 BCE), and it actually extends much farther back in time beyond that shown in Chart 1. The reader should start at the bottom of the left-hand column, read upward to the top, follow the arrow to the bottom of the right-hand column, and read upward to Akim Ben Zadoc. An arrow (---^) indicates a shift to the ancestry of a spouse or partner. Entries denoted by (f) are females. Names above Antenor Iv des Francs (24-67) in the right-hand column of Chart 1 are Hebrew names.

Imagine my surprise (and shock) when I noticed that Akim Ben Zadoc’s fifth great grandson is Yeshua Ben Yossef (born circa 6-4 BCE) whom we know by his Greek name, Jesus. The names above Yeshua Ben Yossef track perfectly with the genealogy listed in the first chapter of the biblical book of Matthew which serves as a de facto ancestry database. The name in square brackets, Myriam bat Heli, is the spouse of Yossef ben Jacob and the mother of Yeshua ben Yossef. Yossef ben Jacob is the adoptive father of Yeshua ben Yossef.

It should not be possible with data taken only from authentic data bases to start with myself and deliberately trace to a particular ancient. Nor should it be possible to start with an ancient character and work forward in time, intending to link the ancestry line to myself or some other current party. The ancestry tracing procedure requires starting with a known party, oneself or some other living party, and then working back in time to add information for parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. In tracing this ancestry sequence, I arrived at the record for Yeshua Ben Yossef quite unintentionally and by following only standard ancestry tracing procedures.

When a new parent record is added to a MyHeritage ancestry tree, the MyHeritage search engine does an automatic search of the databases to which it has access, and very soon it may identify one or more record matches to that party. Record matches are found in the data bases to which MyHeritage has access. I can choose whether to add a record match to my ancestry tree. It is also possible to add records to my ancestry tree from external sources to which I am privy (e.g., family Bibles, family histories, etc.). 

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Part I. The Ancient Israelites

3. The Sons of Abraham

The ancestry exploration begins with some of the earliest ancestry records that can be identified. The biblical story of the Israelite tribe of Judah begins in Ur of Mesopotamia with Terah ben Nahor. His son, Abram ben Terah was renamed Abraham by God. MyHeritage ancestry records indicate that Abraham married Sarah bat Haran who was his niece, the daughter of his brother, Haran ben Terah. These relationships are shown in Chart 2A with ancestry information from MyHeritage databases.

Ishmael, Abraham's first son, was born to Abraham and Sarah's Egyptian handmaiden Hagar when Sarah could not conceive. Islamic tradition considers Ishmael to be the ancestor of the Arabians. According to Muslim tradition, the Islamic patriarch Ishmael and his mother Hagar are buried next to the Kaaba at the Great Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

In her old age, Sarah finally did conceive a son whom they named Isaac. As described in Genesis 22, God tested Abraham's faith, telling him to sacrifice Isaac, but God intervened at the last minute to avert the sacrifice. Isaac married Rebekah bat Ethuel who bore two sons, Esau and Jacob, as depicted in Chart 2A. Descendants of Esau, the first-born, settled south of the Dead Sea in Edom and became known as Edomites or Idumeans.

After Sarah's death, Abraham took another wife, Keturah. As noted in Genesis 25, Keturah bore him six sons, including Midian from whom the Midianites descended. The Midianites settled south of the Dead Sea in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula to the east of the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula as depicted in Map 1.

 Jacob, with two wives and their handmaids, had twelve sons who fathered the twelve tribes of Israel that settled in Canaan after a period of exile in Egypt. Jacob’s sons are depicted in Chart 2B with information from the MyHeritage databases.  

Genesis 29 relates that in order to marry Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter, Jacob had to work for Laban for seven years. Laban insisted as a matter of custom that Jacob first had to marry his older daughter Leah and then work another seven years to marry younger sister Rachel. Rachel's son Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers (Genesis 37) but eventually became an Egyptian official who saved Jacob’s family from famine.

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4. The Grandsons of Lot

Before we explore the lineages of Jacob’s sons, we need to take a brief side-trip to Sodom and Gomorrah.

As described in Genesis 18 and 19, after God revealed to Abraham that he intended to destroy those wicked cities, he sent two angels who met a righteous man named Lot at the Sodom city gate. Lot insisted that they spend the night at his home. During the night, men of Sodom demanded that Lot make his guests available to have sex with them. Lot refused but offered his two virgin daughters (unnamed) in their stead, but they were refused by the men of Sodom.

That night the two angels revealed to Lot that they had been sent by God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. At dawn they told Lot to take his wife and daughters and flee, and never to look back. As they were fleeing, the wife did look back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Lot and the two daughters fled to the mountains above the burning Sodom and Gomorrah.

Since all of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah had been killed in the destruction and none were available to give the daughters children to preserve the family line, they conspired to get their father drunk on wine and have intercourse with him while he slept. Both became pregnant, and when their children were born the older daughter named her child Moab; the younger daughter named her child ben-Ammi.

Genesis 19 does not identify the ancestry of Lot, but a couple of MyHeritage ancestry records indicate that Lot may have been the son of Haran who was the son of Terah ben Nahor, the king of Agade. Since Abraham is also identified as a son of Terah, this would make Lot’s grandfather the brother of Abraham. And as related in Genesis 19, Lot became both the father and grandfather of Moab and ben-Ammi. Although Lot’s ancestors are identified in a few ancestry records, these identifications are tenuous at best since they are not identified in Genesis 19. Assuming these identities to be valid, a mockup of these relationships is depicted in Chart 4A. Lot ben Haran appears three times in this chart.

The descendants of Moab and ben-Ammi became the Moabites who settled to the east of the Dead Sea, and the Ammonites who settled to the north of the Moabites and to the east of the River Jordan as depicted in Map 1. 

These peoples were descendants of Haran, Abraham’s brother, so they were not descendants of Abraham’s son Jacob, the father of the Israelite tribes. Since Moab and ben-Ammi appear to share a common first-great grandfather and second-great grandfather with Jacob’s sons, they would be second or third cousins of Jacob’s sons. Their importance to the Israelite story will be revealed in the next chapters.

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5. The Descendants of Levi

Levi was a son of Jacob and Leah. His grandson, Aaron ben Amram, was appointed by his brother Moses to become the first High Priest of Israel (Exodus 28). A passage from the Wikipedia entry explains Aaron's role and describes the functions of the high priest and the subordinate priests of the Levi tribe:

The books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers maintain that Aaron received from God a monopoly over the priesthood for himself and his male descendants (Exodus 28:1). The family of Aaron had the exclusive right and responsibility to make offerings on the altar to Yahweh. The rest of his tribe, the Levites, were given subordinate responsibilities within the sanctuary (Numbers 3). Moses anointed and consecrated Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, and arrayed them in the robes of office (Leviticus 8; cf. Exodus 28-29). He also related to them God's detailed instructions for performing their duties while the rest of the Israelites listened (Leviticus 1–7, 11-27). Aaron and his successors as high priest were given control over the Urim and Thummim by which the will of God could be determined (Exodus 28:30). God commissioned the Aaronide priests to distinguish the holy from the common and the clean from the unclean, and to teach the divine laws (the Torah) to the Israelites (Leviticus 10:10-11). The priests were also commissioned to bless the people (Numbers 6:22-27). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron)

When the Israelites finally arrived in the "Promised Land" after wandering for 40 years in the wilderness, the land was apportioned among eleven of the twelve tribes, but none was allocated to the Levi tribe because Levites served as priests who would be supported by the eleven landed tribes. Map 2 depicts the allocation of the territories to eleven Israelite tribes.

High priests of Israel were appointed and removed by kings, but most high priests came from the ancestry line of Aaron. The Tanakh names most of Israel's high priests, but there are gaps in the sequence due to missing information, and upon occasion the office was unfilled. A few high priests came from other tribes. 

Because high priests were appointed by kings who occasionally chose non-Levites, it is not possible to trace a continuous Levite high priest ancestry from Aaron to the time of Jesus.

Levi's daughter Jochebed married her brother's son Amram ben Kohath and gave birth to Miriam, Aaron, and Moses as related in Exodus 2 and depicted in Chart 4B with information from the MyHeritage databases. Aaron's elder sister was Miriam bat Amram who as a child watched over her baby brother Moses who had been set adrift on the River Nile to be found by the Pharaoh's daughter. 

Moses grew up to become the great Israelite "law-giver" who led the Israelites out of exile in Egypt. Aaron became spokesman for Moses, and Myriam and Aaron served as Moses advisors during the Israelite's time in the wilderness enroute to the "Promised Land."

As related in Exodus 2:11-22, after Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, Pharaoh tried to kill Moses. Moses escaped to the land of Midian where he stayed with Reuel, a Midian priest, who had seven daughters. Reuel gave one of the daughters, Zipporah, to Moses in marriage. Zipporah birthed two sons whom they named Gershom and Eliezer. 

In Exodus 3, Moses' father-in-law is identified as Jethro, the priest of Midian. As Moses was tending Jethro's flock of sheep in the Midian wilderness, an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush and told him to go to Pharaoh and demand to take the Israelites out of Egypt.

The tribe of Levi is important to the eligibility of an Israelite to become an authentic messiah. The expectation of the first century CE was that a messiah must have descended from the House of David of the Judah tribe. Jesus would qualify if his biological father was Joachim Heli ben Matthat. However, as noted in Chapter 8, Joseph Raymond contends that Joachim was Myriam's adoptive father, and that Myriam's biological father was Herod's son Antipater, descended from Isaacs' elder son Esau, and Myriam bat Antigonus, a Hasmonean descended from the Levi tribe. 

With information from the MyHeritage databases, Chart 3 shows the lineage from Terrah ben Nahor to Judah ben Jacob, and the tribes that descended from Abraham.
 

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6. Boaz and Ruth

Boaz ben Salmon descended from the Israelite tribe of Judah. The story of Boaz and Ruth should be familiar to any Christian or Jewish child who has been to Sunday School or Hebrew School. Boaz, the son of Salmon ben Nahshon and Rahab bat Bezale'el, was a wealthy landowner in Bethlehem. He was a relative of Elimelech, the late husband of Naomi. The biblical narration in the book of Ruth is unclear about the relationship, but it appears from MyHeritage ancestry records that Elimelech was a great uncle of Boaz.

In the biblical narration, Boaz notices Ruth, the widowed Moabite daughter-in-law of Naomi, gleaning grain in his fields. He learns of the difficulties suffered by Naomi's family and Ruth's loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi. Boaz instructs his workers to leave grain at the margins of the fields for Ruth to glean. Ruth approaches Boaz and asks him to exercise his right of kinship to marry her. In marrying Ruth, Boaz restores Elimelech's lineage and preserves his assets for Naomi's family.

The importance of the Boaz and Ruth story is that their son, Obed ben Boaz, was the father of Jesse ben Obed and grandfather of David ben Jesse. 

Some dispersion occasionally is cast upon Boaz’s marriage to a Moabite woman, but Ruth adopted the god of her mother-in-law Naomi, implying that she converted to Judaism. Under Talmud law, male Moabites were not allowed to marry born female Jews or legitimate converts, but female Moabites who converted to Judaism were permitted to marry male Jews. This application of the law legitimized the marriage of Boaz and Ruth so that the House of David was not tainted by the Moabite identity of his paternal great grandmother. Moabites and Israelites are cousins because they share a common ancestor, Terah ben Nahor, the father of Abraham and Haran. Ancestry records in the MyHeritage databases identify seven generations from Judah ben Jacob to Boaz ben Salmon as displayed in Chart 5.

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7. The House of David

With information taken from the MyHeritage databases, Chart 6 depicts the lineage from Boaz ben Salmon to David ben Jesse. 

Around 1065 BCE, at God's direction the prophet Samuel anointed a shepherd boy named David of the tribe of Judah to be the second King of Israel (following King Saul). In 2 Samuel 7:16, God promised that David's throne would be established forever. But as recorded in Jeremiah 33:20-21 and affirmed in Psalm 132:11-12, God stipulated a proviso, i.e., that if Israel broke the covenant with God, the throne would no longer be occupied by a member of the House of David. 

Over the course of the next four centuries, Israel's covenant with God was broken as reported in Jeremiah 22:24-30. When Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel in 597 BCE, the Jerusalem royalty was packed off to exile in Babylon, never again to occupy the throne of David.

King Jeconiah (616-597 BCE) was the last nominal occupant of David's throne. The lineage from David to Jeconiah is depicted in Chart 7A with information taken from the MyHeritage databases.

Some Israelites and their descendants did return to Judea fifty years later when the Persians conquered Babylon and Cyrus the Great released them, but many chose to remain in Babylon. The returnees may have included descendants of David, but none of them or their descendants occupied the throne of David. Chart 7B lists the generations from Jeconiah to Yossef.

The tribe of Judah is important to the eligibility of Jesus to be an authentic messiah because the conventional wisdom of the first century CE was that a messiah must descend from the House of David of the Judah tribe. Jesus would qualify if the ancestry of his adoptive father Joseph would count and if Solomon was the biological son of King David of the Judah tribe. 

With information taken from MyHeritage databases, Chart 8 lists the generations from David ben Jesse to Yossef ben Jacob.

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8. David and Uriah

Joel Baden is professor of Old Testament in the Yale Divinity School. In his book, The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (HarperCollins, 2013), Baden applies the tools of historical analysis to the story of David as recounted in the Hebrew Tanakh (rearranged as the Christian Old Testament), in the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, and the two books of Chronicles.

Baden says that the goal of historical analysis of biblical literature is "to penetrate the legend and reveal the true nature of the flesh-and-blood character."  Applying tools of historical analysis to the biblical narratives of David, Baden cuts through the mystique of the David legend to reveal a gritty historical figure.

Baden argues that David usurped Saul's throne and disposed of all of Saul's children to end Saul's ancestry line. Although David already had several wives, he desired the beautiful Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of David's elite soldiers. Hittites were present in Canaan ("the Promised Land") prior to the arrival of the Israelites, so an ethnic Hittite was not an Israelite.

David "lay with" Bathsheba. When he learned that Bathsheba was pregnant, David schemed to have Uriah sent to the Ammonite battle front to be killed so that David could marry Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). After Uriah's death, the pregnant Bathsheba delivered a child, but there was uncertainty about the paternity of the child. As it was the mother's right to name a child, Bathsheba chose the name Solomon, meaning in English "his replacement." But this was an ambiguous and politically inconvenient name that required explanation.

Baden says that in order to assure the dynastic continuance of the House of David, Samuel needed to convince readers that the child was David's son, not Uriah's. Baden argues that Samuel contrived a story (a "literary creation") about the child dying after seven days to assure that a second child conceived after David and Bathsheba's marriage, i.e., the "replacement," was indeed David's child. Baden doubts the veracity of the second-child story and argues that Bathsheba birthed only one child. "His replacement" referred to Uriah himself, not to a fictional first child who died. This leads Baden to conclude that Solomon was Uriah's son, not David's, and it puts the lineage of the "House of David" in dispute. The mockup of the ambiguity concerning the paternity of Solomon is depicted in Chart 9.

Although David's eldest surviving son Adonijah was crown price, Solomon was anointed king when Bathsheba lied to the aged and infirm David that he had promised the throne to Solomon. Baden says that after David's death, Solomon eliminated David's children to end David's ancestry line. This implies that subsequent Israelite kings descended not from David, but rather from Solomon, the son of Uriah the Hittite.

Baden says that, "The legendary David is more a marble statue than a living personality, more a symbol than a man. The historical David, by contrast, is ambitious and clever, persuasive and threatening, not always in power but almost always in control. He is not someone we might want to emulate, but he is someone that we might recognize" (p. 13).

The consequential conclusion that Baden draws in regard to the David narratives is that Solomon is more likely to have been the son of Uriah the Hittite than David the son of Jesse of the Judah tribe. If true, the twenty-nine generations from Solomon to Yossef ben Jacob descend from Uriah the Hittite, not from the House of David.

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Part II. Jesus and his Family

9. The Father of Jesus

I have thought the virgin birth narrative in the early chapters of Matthew's and Luke's Gospels to be incredible in the sense that a virgin birth would violate all known scientific knowledge about procreation. 

Stephen Mitchell suggests in his book The Gospel According to Jesus (Harper Perennial, 1993) that  Mary either may have been a harlot, any of whose clients may have impregnated her, or she may have been raped by a Roman soldier.  In either case, Jesus would have been illegitimate, a condition abhorrent in first-century Jewish society. Mitchell argues that this fact, widely known by the local Jewish society of the day, haunted Jesus throughout his lifetime. Mitchell finds hints of this likelihood in challenges to Jesus, in a number of Jesus' harsher pronouncements about his mother, his family, and women, and in the fact that Jesus never mentions an earthly father.

Aside from Mitchell's suggestions and in the belief that a human must have been involved in impregnating Mary, the mother of Jesus, I have explored alternate explanations. This exploration is not to deny the possibility that God may have initiated Mary's pregnancy through a human. There appear to be four possibilities: Yossef ben Jacob, Joachim Heli ben Matthat, Joseph ben Matthat, and Herod Antipater.

Matthew's genealogy of Jesus that stretches back to King David (Chart 8 in Chapter 7) implies that Jesus' father was Yossef ben Jacob. But if the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, Yossef is only the adoptive father of Jesus. The Matthew genealogy may well be that of Yossef ben Jacob, but the fact that biological ancestry cannot be established by adoption renders the Matthew genealogy irrelevant to Jesus' ancestry unless Yossef ben Jacob was in fact the biological father of Jesus.

The genealogy of Jesus in Luke's Chapter 3 begins with the rather uncertain statement, "He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph the son of Heli." (NIV) This statement may refer to Joachim Heli ben Matthat who was Mary's father. Or, Luke simply may have picked the wrong Joseph, Joseph ben Matthat (of Arimathea) to identify as Jesus' father. This Joseph was the brother of Joachim Heli ben Matthat and thus was Mary's uncle. The Luke genealogy may be that of Jesus' mother rather than his father, and it avoids the ambiguity of Solomon’s paternity because it stretches back to Nathan ben David, the third son of David and Bathsheba. This ancestry is further explored in the next chapter.

In his book, Herodian Messiah: Case for Jesus as Grandson of Herod (https://www.amazon.com/Herodian-Messiah-Jesus-Grandson-Herod/dp/0615355080), Joseph Raymond makes a case that the actual father of Jesus was Herod Antipater. Raymond, a lawyer, conducted meticulous research into ancient sources as if preparing a legal brief. Raymond refers to Jesus by his Hebrew name, Yeshua. Raymond takes up the story in the fourth century BCE.

By the middle of the fourth century BCE, the Macedonian Philip II and his son Alexander had conquered Greece, Egypt, and territories to the east as far as the Indus River. After Alexander ("the Great") died in 323 BCE, the ensuing war between his generals divided the Macedonian Empire. General Ptolemy took Egypt and north Africa, and General Seleucus Nicator established the Seleucid Empire spanning Alexander's eastern territories, including Israel. The Selucid overlords imposed Hellenistic culture and religious practices in Israel. But by the second century BCE the Seleucid Empire was experiencing pressures from the Romans to the west and the Parthians to the East.

Hasmonean brothers Judas and Simon Maccabeus were Levite tribe descendants who led a Jewish revolt against the Seleucids in 142 BCE. Judas was killed in battle, but the revolt liberated Israel from Selucid control. Simon then ruled as high priest and ethnarch of Judea and was succeeded by Hasmonean priest-kings over the course of a century as depicted in Chart 10 with information from the MyHeritage databases.

In 63 BCE Judea was conquered by Roman forces under General Gnaeus Pompey "the Great." But by 39 BCE the Parthians had pushed the Romans out of Judea and appointed Hasmonean Antigonus Mattathias as their puppet king of Judea. Antigonus ruled for three years during which he led the Jewish struggle for independence against the Romans.

Antipater, an Edomite descendant of Esau, was governor of Idumea to the south of the Dead Sea. He had converted to Judaism, but this did not render him or his offspring Israelites. His son Herod had been a mercenary client of the Romans in purging the Judean hills of bands of thieves. In 38 BCE, Herod's forces recaptured Jerusalem and he was appointed Roman client king of Judea.* 

According to Raymond, Herod may have bribed Roman general Marc Antony to end a hundred years of Hasmonean rule of Judea by executing all known high royals of the Hasmonean dynasty who might pose threats to Herod's rule. Some lower-ranking Hasmonean priests may have escaped the massacre.

Herod divorced his first wife Doris and banished her so that he could marry a Hasmonean princess, Mariamne bat Alexander. The Edomite Herodian king may have sought a Hasmonean princess for a wife to convey an appearance of legitimacy to his reign. But when his sister Salome intimated that Mariamne was plotting to poison him, Herod had Mariamne and her sons Aristobulus and Alexander executed. He then recalled Doris and remarried her, after which they had a son whom they named Antipater after his grandfather. Antipater then became first in royal succession. These relationships are depicted in Chart 11 with information from the MyHeritage databases.

Around 4 BCE, Antipater married a Hasmonean princess, Myriam bat Antigonus, and she soon became pregnant. But Herod suspected Antipater of plotting to kill him and so had Antipater executed just five days before the very ill Herod himself died. Raymond speculates that a Temple priest rescued Myriam from Herod's palace to avert her assassination and negotiated the betrothal of Myriam to an unmarried Temple priest named Yossef ben Jacob.

Betrothal contracts often were negotiated without the parties ever having met or even seen each other. Yossef may not have been aware of Myriam's condition, but with some reluctance he accepted the betrothal contract. After their marriage and flight to Bethlehem to escape threats by Herod's sons, Myriam delivered a male child whom they named Yeshua ben Yossef.

Upon the death of Herod "the Great" (a term identifying the procreator of a dynasty), sons Herod Archelaus and Herod Antipas sailed to Rome to participate in the adjudication of Herod's will by Caesar Augustus, leaving the kingdom in charge of brother Herod Philip.

Herod Philip, suspecting that his father's Hasmonean daughter-in-law had escaped execution and may have birthed a child by his half-brother Antipater, decreed that all male children recently born in Bethlehem should be killed. Raymond speculates that Yossef and Myriam fled with baby Yeshua to the Therapeudae commune near Alexandria in Egypt, thus enabling application to Yeshua the prophesy in Hosea 1:1 that God called his son out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15).

Rather than appointing one of Herod's sons the new king of Judea, Caesar divided the kingdom among them. Herod Philip was appointed the tetrarch of Jordan, Herod Antipas the tetrarch of Galilee, and Herod Archelaus the ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. The sons of Herod the Great are depicted in Chart 12 with information from the MyHeritage databases.

Raymond argues that Yeshua ben Yossef thus was the son of Antipater and the grandson of two kings, Herod the Great whose father was an Edomite, and Antigonus Mattathias, a Hasmonean of the Levi tribe. Jesus’ Edomite ancestry might qualify him to become a Herodian king of Judea, but it would not qualify him to become a Jewish King of Israel. Levi was a son of Jacob and thereby an Israelite, so Jesus' Levite ancestry would qualify him to become a king of Israel. This is depicted in Chart 11.

*Norman Kotker, in his book When Rome Ruled Palestine (Horizon, New York, 2016), provides an excellent description of the transition of Judean rule from Antigonus to Herod.

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10. The Mother of Jesus

The New Testament books of Matthew and Luke identify the mother of Jesus as a peasant girl named Mary who became impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Ancestry records identify her as Myriam bat Heli.

The name "Heli" is pertinent because the lineage of Jesus traced in Luke's Chapter 3 begins, "He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph the son of Heli." (NIV) This statement may refer to Joachim Heli ben Matthat who MyHeritage ancestry records indicate was Myriam's father. As noted in Chapter 8, Luke may have picked the wrong Joseph, Joseph ben Matthat, to identify as Jesus' father. This Joseph was the brother of Joachim Heli ben Matthat and thus was Myriam's uncle.

So Luke, a Greek (i.e., not a Jew) who was researching the life of Jesus (a Jew) more than 50 years after Jesus' death, may have landed on the wrong Joseph, Joseph ben Matthat (a.k.a. Joseph of Arimathea), to identify as Jesus' father. The Luke lineage stretches from Nathan ben David of the Judah tribe to Myriam's grandfather, Matthat Nasi ben Levi, father of Joseph ben Matthat, Joachim Heli ben Matthat, and Zachariah ben Matthat. This fact would render Jesus an authentic candidate to become a Jewish messiah. This genealogy is depicted in Charts 13 and 14 with information taken from MyHeritage databases.

Another of Myriam's uncles was a temple priest, Zachariah ben Matthat, "the Zadok." Zachariah's wife was Elisabeth bat Sobe. Luke's Chapter 1 relates the story of how the elderly Zachariah and Elisabeth were informed by an angel that she would become pregnant and birth a child that they should name Joanan. The pregnant Myriam visited her aunt Elisabeth in Elisabeth's sixth month of pregnancy and stayed with her for three months until the birth of Elisabeth's child.

Although it was thought that the child should be named after his father, Zachariah affirmed that the child would be named Joanan. Joanan grew up to become the character that we know as "John the Baptist." John the Baptist, though Jesus' first cousin removed by one generation, was only about six months older than Jesus.

But Myriam bat Heli may not have been the biological daughter of Joachim Heli ben Matthat. As described in Chapter 8, Joseph Raymond makes a case that Myriam was a Hasmonean princess who had been adopted by Joachim Heli ben Matthat. Raymond notes that in Antiquities (XVII 5:2), Jewish historian Josephus referred to an unnamed daughter of Antigonus who survived the massacre. Raymond speculates that this daughter was rescued from Herod's palace by a Temple priest, Joachim Heli ben Matthat, and that Joachim and his wife Anna raised her in the Temple precincts. Her birth name would have been Myriam bat Antigonus. Her adoptive name became Myriam bat Heli, the mother of Yeshua. This is depicted in Chart 15 with information from the MyHeritage databases.

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11. Sarah Damaris

Chart 1 (repeated from Chapter 2) lists the ancestry trace from Richard Alexander (1943-) in the lower-left corner to Akim ben Zadoc (274-? BCE) in the upper-right corner. Information for this list is taken from MyHeritage databases.

A lineage from Yossef ben Jacob and Myriam bat Heli to any living person turns upon the existence of a relationship between a Jewish peasant, Sarah Damaris bat Yeshua, and a Frankish tribal chieftain, Antenor IV. Chart 16 depicts this relationship with information from MyHeritage databases. The Franken lineage listing may be viewed in Alternate Views #6.

When several years ago I first read the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (Random House, 1982), I dismissed their hypothesis as pure speculation and maybe some wishful thinking. But given my ancestry research, I now am not so sure. In their research, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln (BLL) stumbled onto a possibility that they had not been looking for.

On the basis of their research findings, BLL shifted the focus of their research to a new hypothesis, i.e., that Jesus fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, that she and daughter along with a number of other believers escaped persecution by fleeing in a boat across the Mediterranean Sea to land on the south coast of France, and that the daughter married into the Frankish dynasty to promulgate a sacred bloodline that persists to this day.

The corollary of the BLL hypothesis is that the "Holy Grail" is not a vessel that may have contained Jesus' blood or from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, but rather it is the sacred bloodline itself. The BLL hypothesis became a central theme in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code.

If Sarah Damaris indeed accompanied her mother Mary Magdalene to Gaul and married Antenor IV, does my ancestry line stretch to Jesus? This depends on the reliability of available ancestry records and the verity of the legend that Yeshua survived the crucifixion and married his most faithful female follower.

I assumed the reliability of records found in MyHeritage databases (including biblical genealogies as de facto databases). I was very careful to match each party's individual ancestry record in an ancestry line to its parent's records, and parents to their children, so I am confident that the ancestry trace from Richard Alexander to Antenor IV is credible.

Whether my ancestry line stretches to Yeshua as depicted in Chart 16 depends upon whether Yeshua ben Jacob and Marie bat Syrus married and had a daughter that they named Sarah Damaris. This possibility is dismissed by most Bible scholars.

The Sarah Damaris story is explored more fully in the Appendix.

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Part III. The Dilemma

12. An Eligible Messiah?

The first century CE expectation was that a Jewish messiah must be a descendant of King David of the Judah tribe. The apostle Paul, in letters written to churches in the Jewish diaspora of Asia Minor, insisted that Jesus was a descendant of David which qualified him to be an authentic Jewish messiah who could occupy the throne of David. Today, religious Jews who dismiss the Christian claim that Jesus was the long-expected messiah still await the “real” messiah.

If Solomon was David’s biological son and Ruth was David’s paternal great grandmother, then both Israelite and Moabite blood flowed in Jesus’ veins. If, as Baden contends, Solomon was not David's son, then Yeshua descended from the son of a Hittite whose blood flowed in Yeshua's veins. If Yeshua indeed was the grandson of Herod the Great, then Edomite blood flowed in his veins.

Solomon's paternity may be uncertain, but there is no question that Nathan, the third of four sons born to David and Bathsheba, was a biololgical son of David. This means that if Myriam bat Heli was daughter of Joachim ben Matthat, Yeshua would be an authentic descendant of David through his mother's ancestry that stretched to Nathan. But if Myriam bat Heli actually was the daughter of Antigonus ben Mattathias as argued by Joseph Raymond, Jesus' ancestry is of the Levi tribe rather than of the House of David of the Judah tribe.

Raymond makes the case that even if Yeshua was not descended from David, his Hasmonean Levite ancestry qualified him to be an authentic Jewish messiah.

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13. Messianic Secret or Quest?

By the time he reached adulthood, Yeshua may have become aware of his identity as grandson of two Judean kings. Yeshua began to follow his cousin John "the baptizer," an itinerant preacher who was attracting a large rural following. John alienated Herod Antipas by criticizing as incestuous his marriage to Herodias, his brother's wife and also his niece.

After Antipas had John executed, Yeshua took up John's ministry preaching a gospel of universal love and care for fellow humans, and that the Kingdom of God was near at hand, a message that made the Roman authorities nervous. But Raymond asks why the Romans took seriously the rantings of an itinerant preacher.

When he began his "ministry" around the age of 30, Jesus took his principal mission to be preaching that the "Kingdom of God is near at hand" and advocating love of and care for fellow humans. He is portrayed in the Gospels as somewhat of an unintentional Jewish "messiah" who admonished his disciples to keep his incipient messiahood a secret. A "messianic quest" seems incidental to his preaching ministry, at least until he decided to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, a signal of the arrival of a messiah as predicted in ancient scriptures. 

In Raymond's telling, Yeshua's preaching ministry seems secondary to his deliberate quest to fulfill the role of a Jewish messiah who would precipitate popular uprising to overthrow the Roman occupation of Judea. It is not clear that Yeshua himself was a so-called "zealot," but some of his followers can be so identified. As his preaching ministry continued to attract an ever-growing following, Yeshua attracted the attention of the Roman authorities.

Raymond contends that the Romans took Yeshua's preaching seriously because of his known identity as a dynastic Jewish royal. His preaching about the coming Kingdom of God was taken by Rome to be seditious.

During his preaching ministry, Yeshua criticized the Jewish Temple authorities for engaging in corrupt practices. As the possible long-expected Jewish messiah, Yeshua threatened the authority of the Sanhedrin, the Jerusalem Temple governing body. Sanhedrin head Caiaphas appealed to the Roman authorities to have Jesus executed.

Raymond explains that the appeal to Roman authority was necessary because as a member of a Jewish royal dynasty, Yeshua was a Roman citizen who could be executed only on the authority of the emperor. Raymond speculates that the Sanhedrin may have bribed Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, to authorize the execution even without approval from Rome.

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14. And Then?

The narratives in the New Testament Gospels indicate that after his execution and burial, Jesus rose from the dead, was seen by numerous people, and after 40 days ascended to Heaven.

Jesus' time on the cross was shorter than usually required to cause death. Mark 15:44 tells that Pilate sent a centurion to see if Jesus was dead, and Pilate was surprised when told by the centurion that Jesus had already died. 

Michael Baigent conjectures that Jesus may have been drugged by the sponge which contained, not wine vinegar that would have revived him (Mark 15:36), but some combination of drugs so that he appeared to have died (The Jesus Papers, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006). He then could be removed from the cross in a sedated (perhaps even comatose) state and taken to a nearby tomb so that he could recover and his wounds could be treated. Baigent argues that this may be implied in John 19:39 which indicates that Joseph and Nicodemus took with them to the tomb a large amount of aromatic spices (myrrh and aloes) that also had healing properties. This theme is also pursued in Howard Brenton's play "Paul" that was first produced at the National Theatre in London in 2005 (Paul, NHB Books, London, 2006).

Bart Ehrman says that it is inconceivable that Jesus received a decent burial since his disciples had fled, he had no family living in Jerusalem, and no one else in Jerusalem would have been able or willing to provide proper burial for a peasant executed for sedition (How Jesus Became God, HarperCollins, 2014). In Ehrman's opinion, the story about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus likely was a later fabrication to enable a resurrection narrative. If there had been no decent burial in a grave, there also could have been no resurrection from a grave. Ehrman doubts that either burial or resurrection could have occurred as described in Matthew's and Luke's gospels. 

John Dominic Crossan says that Jesus' corpse likely was left on the cross, as was the usual Roman practice, to be eaten by dogs (The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, HarperCollins, 1992). However, Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino have published a book claiming to have found the Jesus family tomb in Jerusalem (The Jesus Family Tomb: the Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence that Could Change History, HarperCollins, 2007).

Ehrman argues that soon after his death and perceived resurrection, Jesus' followers presumed that he had been exalted by God to divine status since he was no longer present and his body was missing.

After the reputed resurrection, Jesus was "seen" on the road to Emmaus and by various disciples and disciple groups. This might have been possible if Jesus had survived the crucifixion and recovered as hypothesized by Baigent. Ehrman says that Jesus probably did die in the crucifixion, and that the "appearances" of Jesus after his crucifixion more likely were visions experienced by the various parties. Jim Vincent says that "The most convincing interpretation of the resurrection accounts is that they describe, in figurative form, the dawning of a gradual realisation on the part of the disciples of the significance of Jesus and of his continuing existence" (Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018).

So we have five identifiable theories of how Jesus may have been seen by people after the crucifixion:

1. Jesus actually was God (or God’s Son, a version of God himself) who contrived a death-by-crucifixion charade, and thus by divine prerogative could appear to humans after the crucifixion.

2. Jesus was a human who actually died in the crucifixion but was resurrected by God and exalted to divine status, and who then could appear as a living human until his ascension to heaven.

3. Jesus was a human who actually died in the crucifixion but whose “appearances” after the crucifixion were visions experienced by various parties.

4. Jesus was a human who actually died in the crucifixion so that his “appearances” after the crucifixion were a figurative description of a gradual realization by disciples of his significance.

5. Jesus was a human who was crucified but who survived the crucifixion and recovered enough to actually be seen by other humans.

These are theories that can be neither proved nor disproved by  historical or scientific evidence, so the question boils down to which seems more credible. Orthodox theology believers may choose theory (1) or theory (2). The most credible alternative may be theory (5). If Baigent's, Ehrman's, or Vincent’s takes on these stories are true, then the biblical birth, death, and resurrection narratives are myths.

Patrick Goggins asserts that even if the resurrection narrative is a myth, Jesus' message does not depend on his resurrection from the dead for its truth. Goggins says that "Islam teaches that Mohammad died and was buried, yet his earthly message lives on. Perhaps Jesus's words can likewise survive the death of his earthly body" (A Reader's Guide to Reza Aslan's "Zealot," Kindle e-book).

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15. Divine or Mortal?

By his Davidian or Levite ancestry, Jesus may have met the first-century requisite to become a Jewish messiah. With respect to local Jewish expectations at the time, his messianic quest appeared to fail. Latter-day Christians may argue that his prophetic and teaching ministry succeeded. But twenty-first-century Christians face a dilemma: to worship Jesus as a divine, or to revere him as a mortal who was a great teacher and prophet.

In the New Testament Gospel accounts, Jesus' life and ministry occur primarily among the Jewish peasantry but with intervention by God to effect a virgin birth that rendered Jesus the divine Son of God. In contrast, Joseph Raymond's account of the life of Yeshua is a matter of palace and Temple intrigue among Jewish royals and high-ranking priests. If indeed he was conceived by two human mortals, Yeshua himself was a mortal. He may have been tapped by God to serve as a prophet, but Old Testament prophets were mortals who were not considered divine.

Raymond's research does not address the resurrection issue, likely because from a legal standpoint its nature is essentially a matter of hearsay and belief with no substantive historical evidence for a lawyer to research. Even so, the implication in the Gospels that God raised Yeshua from the dead and exalted him to divine status cannot be ruled out.

So, which variant of the Jesus story seems more credible, the New Testament narratives about the virgin birth that rendered Jesus the Son of God, or the Raymond story about palace and temple intrigue that produced a mortal, Antigonus ben Antipater, i.e., the adopted Yeshua ben Yossef?

There is a dearth of extra-biblical historical matter to authenticate the New Testament narratives. The early part of the Raymond variant is attested only by the Hebrew Tanakh, i.e., the Christian "Old Testament," from patriarchs Abraham and Isaac through the Babylonian exile in 597 BCE. Historical information of the story from Alexander the Great's death in 323 BCE through Herod's execution of Antipater in 4 BCE is reliably attested in historical documents.

But the identification of Antipater ben Herod as Yeshua ben Yossef's actual father, and Antipater's wife Myriam Bat Heli as Yeshua's birth mother, is Raymond's speculation and inference based on his research of ancient documents. Much of the rest of the story encompassing John the Baptizer's execution, Yeshua's ministry and messianic pursuit, and his execution by the Romans is attested or alluded to by Josephus and other writers of first and second century CE.

Aside from the speculative nature of the linkage of Yeshua to Antipater and Myriam, the Raymond story avoids an unscientific virgin birth narrative that rendered Yeshua divine, and it provides an explanation of why the Romans took seriously the ministry and messianic pursuit of an itinerant Jewish preacher that led to his execution.

Does it matter that the New Testament Gospels portray Jesus as a peasant who was divine by virgin birth and who preached a message of universal love, but the Raymond story portrays Yeshua as a royal mortal on a messianic quest? Modern Christianity seems to obsess on the "bookends" of Jesus' life, i.e., the circumstances of his birth and death, rather than what's between the bookends, the example of his life and the content of his teachings. In the long run, even into the twenty-first century, the details of Jesus'/Yeshua's birth and death may be of lesser significance than his message of universal love and care for fellow humans.

But, yes, it does matter whether Jesus was/is the divine Son of God or Yeshua was the mortal son of Antipater and Myriam. It matters as to whether humans should worship Jesus as divine or revere him as a mortal, possibly as a prophet whom God commissioned to bring a message to humanity. If the latter, then the concept of "trinity" is a myth, but only one among many that humans have relied upon in their efforts to understand the nature of divinity.

It cannot be ruled-out that God may have exalted the human Yeshua to divine status after his execution. But without historical facts or scientific data to authenticate this possibility, it must remain a matter of belief. Worship Jesus or revere Yeshua as you wish and as you believe.

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Appendix A: The Big Picture

It might be helpful to be able to see how the charts pertaining to Jesus’ ancestry are connected. The charts in this book that depict Jesus’ ancestry were derived from a single large chart that is too big to present here. It has been divided into two parts, Chart 41 Left and Chart 41 Right.

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Appendix B. The Mary Magdalene Conundrum

MyHeritage ancestry records indicate Yeshua ben Yossef’s wife to be one Marie bat Syrus (born about 2 AD) whom we know as Mary Magdalene. As to whether I or any other living person might be descended from Yeshua and Marie bat Syrus, and begging the question of the divinity/humanity of Yeshua, there are at least four questions, none of which can be answered definitively.

1. Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene and father a child with her? If Jesus was born between 6 and 4 BCE, he was nearly 40 years old when he was crucified in 32 or 33 CE. Life expectancy in Palestine during the first century CE probably was no more than 50 years, so Yeshua was past early manhood and heading toward old age. By that age, most Jewish men would have married and fathered most of their children. Assuming that Jesus was at least partially human and reasonably virile, it is not unreasonable to presume that he may have experienced normal human urges, engaged in typical male human activity, married his most devoted female follower, and fathered a child with her. Legends suggest the possibility, but there is no incontrovertible evidence that he did so. So, we just don't know.

2. Did Mary Magdalene and daughter make their way to the south of Gaul to escape persecution in Jerusalem? There are two competing traditions about where Mary Magdalene went after the crucifixion of Jesus, but there is no documentary evidence that supports either tradition.

In what I shall refer to as the “Ephesus tradition,” while on the cross Jesus said to the disciple “whom he loved,” presumably John, “Here is your mother.” The passage continues, “From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (John 19:27). Tradition has it that John took Mary with him to Ephesus and built a stone house for her on a hillside overlooking Ephesus. A house in that region was identified as Mary’s in 1881 by Abbé Gouyet, a French priest, following directions in a vision by Anne Catherine Emmerich, a bedridden Augustinian nun in Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_the_Virgin_Mary). The tradition also maintains either that Mary Magdalene accompanied Mary to Ephesus (no mention of a daughter) or that Mary Magdalene retired to Ephesus to live in Mary’s house after Mary died. In either case, according to tradition, Mary Magdalene lived out her years and died there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene#Speculations). Locals in Ephesus have venerated the site through the ages.

In the “Marsella tradition,” Jesus' followers were persecuted for several years following the crucifixion. After the execution of James (the son of Zebedee) in Jerusalem, Mary Magdalene (conflated by some with Mary of Bethany), Mary of Bethany, her sister Martha, her brother Lazarus, Maximin (one of the 72 disciples appointed by Jesus in Luke 10:1), and others escaped persecution in a boat on Mare Nostrum (the Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea). A version of this story is that Pagans towed them out to sea in a rudderless boat without sail, oars, or supplies to die at sea (http://www.magdalenepublishing.org/about/). By some means the boat made its way westward across the Mediterranean and eventually landed on the south coast of Gaul near Marsella, the Roman name of the modern city of Marseille.

A version of the story is that Yeshua appeared to have died after a relatively brief time on a cross (only six hours). Because Jewish custom was to bury a deceased body before sunset on the day of death, tin merchant Joseph of Arimathea claimed Yeshua's apparently dead body for burial. Joseph, Yeshua's mother's uncle and a Sanhedrin member who opposed the execution, then took the still-living Yeshua to a yet-empty tomb where his wounds could be treated. This may be implied in John 19:39 which indicates that Joseph and Nicodemus took with them to the tomb a large amount of aromatic spices (myrrh and aloes) that also had healing properties. Yeshua recovered enough that Joseph could facilitate escape from Judea to Marcella in Gaul by transporting Yeshua, Maria bat Syrus, daughter Sarah, Maximin, and other persecuted followers of Yeshua in a tin-ore ship as it made its way westward across Mare Nostrum toward Bretagne or Cornwall to pick up a load of tin ore.

According to French tradition, Mary Magdalene preached the gospel and lived an ascetic lifestyle in a limestone cave in the Languedoc region of the south of Gaul until she died. Maximin began the evangelization of Aix-en-Provence together with Mary Magdalene and became the first bishop of Aix-en-Provence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_of_Aix). Locals have venerated various sites associated with Mary Magdalene, and today there are numerous religious sites in the south of France dedicated to Mary Magdalene.

Tradition has it that Mary Magdalene was accompanied by her daughter who was named Sarah Damaris. “Sarah,” a Hebrew name, means "Princess" in English. In Latin, “maris,” the genitive case of “mare,” translates into English as "belonging to the sea." In French, “de Marie” translates into English as “of Mary.” Either might fit the name “Damaris.”

Biblical scholars generally favor the Ephesus tradition, probably because it meshes with the John 19:27 passage. They reject the Marsella tradition for lack of any scriptural or early church history references to it. While locals in the south of France may have venerated purported Magdalene sites for centuries, the tradition came to prominence only around the middle of the eleventh century when two monks at Vézelay in Burgundy claimed to have discovered Mary’s skeleton (https:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene). How the boat got from Palestine to Marsella is unknown, and the story about the group being towed out to sea in a rudderless boat without sail or oars, and somehow making it to the south coast of Gaul is suspect. The “St. Mary Magdalene” entry in the on-line edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says that “French tradition spuriously claims that she evangelized Provence (now southeastern France) and spent her last 30 years in an Alpine cavern.” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Mary-Magdalene).

Today, Magdalene veneration and religious sites dedicated to her in the south of France are extensive. And ancestry records indicating that a “Sarah Damaris” married a member of the Frank nobility would seem to support the Marsella tradition. An old adage may apply: “where there’s smoke there must be fire,” or a variation, “there are too many cinders for there to have been no fire.” Did Mary Magdalene die at Ephesus (in modern Turkey) or bring a daughter with her to Gaul? Again, we just don't know on either count.

3. If a daughter accompanied Mary Magdalene to the south of Gaul, did she marry into a Frankish dynasty? Several MyHeritage ancestry records indicate that Antenor IV, King of the Franks in the Sicambri region of western Germany, married a Sarah Damaris of Nazareth. How Antenor IV, king of a tribe on the east bank of the Rhine River, might have encountered Sarah Damaris whose mother evangelized a region in the south of Gaul is unknown. (https://www.myheritage.com/names/antenor_france). “Sarah” is a Hebrew name; “Damaris” may be either Latin or French. "Marsella" is the Roman name of today's French port Marseille. Jugeals-Nazareth today is a commune in the Corrèze department in central France (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugeals-Nazareth), but we don't know if it existed prior to Sarah Damaris' birth, or if it came into existence in response to Mary Magdalene's presence and activities. We simply can't know for certain where Sarah Damaris was born or whether she was the daughter of Mary Magdalene.

4. If Sarah Damaris indeed was the daughter of Mary Magdalene and Yeshua (Jesus), and if she indeed married Antenor IV, does Antenor IV's ancestry line stretch to me? When I have mentioned to other people that I have traced my ancestry to Mary Magdaline, and through her possibly to Jesus, I usually get a “Yeah, right!” or “So you think you are related to Jesus?” Some roll their eyes, laugh, and think that I am either delusional or suffering visions of grandeur (or maybe divinity). The most skeptical, of course, are my minister friends and theology colleagues because the idea of an ancestry connection to a human Yeshua lies outside the orthodox perception of a divine Jesus.

Edgar McKnight, in his book Jesus Christ Today, asserts that the reader of scripture can be an active participant in the interpretation of the meaning of scriptural texts. McKnight concludes that Jesus can mean whatever the reader of scripture needs for him to mean (within limits of course). The skeptics seem to prefer the perception of a detached, mystical Christ Jesus who is remote in time, space, and divinity rather than a Yeshua Jesus with whom humans today may have ancestry connection.

It cannot be ruled out that I may be related to Mary Magdalene and Yeshua ben Yossef, but there is no way to confirm this with confidence. But even if I could be confident that I am so related, does that mean that the bloodline from Yeshua to me is sacred as implied in Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln's book Holy Blood, Holy Grail? This turns entirely on belief in the divinity of Yeshua ben Yossef.

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