The Genealogy of Jesus.
“Matthew ([1 : 17]) says, ‘So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.’
“Luke ([3 : 23–38]) relates Christ’s genealogy, and gives forty-three generations between David and Christ, these two persons being included. Here then in the genealogy of the same person is an utterly irreconcilable discrepancy of fifteen generations. This is truly a bad beginning. Although these two accounts may both be false they cannot possibly both be true. If ‘all the generations,’ from David to Jesus, were only ‘twenty-eight,’ as given by Matthew, there could not possibly have been at the same time, ‘forty-three’ of them as given by Luke. The case becomes much worse, however, when we discover that, with the exception of Jesus, Joseph, and David, these two authors give entirely different sets of men. Since it is utterly impossible for the same individual to have descended through both of these lines of ancestors, it is equally impossible for both of these accounts to be true.” (J. R. Kelso’s “Bible Analyzed.”)
“On the first glance these genealogies, as given by Matthew and Luke, are so evidently different that it has been the ordinary, if not invariable practice of Christian harmonists and commentators to represent the former Evangelist as recording the descent of Joseph, while the latter Evangelist is said to have given the pedigree of Mary. We will say nothing of the plausibility of this explanation, which acknowledges the genealogies to be wholly different, and supposes they belong to two persons. Our questions must rather effect the truthfulness of this mode of explaining away the difficulty. Let the reader bear in mind how Matthew states that ‘Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary,’ and how Luke’s words are ‘Joseph which was the son of Heli,’ and then let the reader say whether it is truthful to allege that these different genealogies belong to different individuals. Is it not plain that each of them professes to trace the lineal descent of one and the same man, Joseph? If we are still to be told that when Matthew professes to give the descent of Joseph, he is to be understood as giving the descent of Mary, then we simply rejoin that such an explanation is nothing more nor less than an abandonment of the idea of inspirational infallibility; for it represents the Bible as saying one thing and meaning another.” (McNaught, “Doctrine of Inspiration.”)