According to 1 Chronicles, iii., 17, 18, Coniah, or Je-coniah had eight sons, viz: Assir, Salathiel, Malchiram, Pedaiah, Shenazar, Jecamiah, Hoshama, and Nedabiah.
Jeremiah, xxxvi., 30.
Jehovah told Jeremiah that Jehoiakim “should have none to sit on the throne of David:” but we are told (2 Chronicles xxxvi., 8) that his son succeeded him, and after his son his brother.
Ezekiel, xxx., 13.
This and the two following chapters speak of the conquest of Egypt by Babylon. The writer says that the country should be made desolate from north to south, and that there should be “no more a prince of Egypt.”
Not one word of this corresponds with the known history of Egypt. Herodotus does not give the slightest hint of such a calamity. Merchants frequented the country without interruption long after that, and if the people had been scattered, the cities utterly wasted for 40 years, and “no king had succeeded to the throne,” it must have been known. The silence of historians on this point is a most conclusive proof that the logic of fact did not accord with the word of prophecy.
The same may be said of the Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea. No history confirms this tale, and no king of Egypt can be made to tally with the catastrophe. But Egypt was not an insignificant kingdom like Judah, which no one knew about; it was the foremost kingdom of the world, and if one of its kings had been drowned in the sea with all his host, some mention must have been made thereof.
GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST.
Take another example. Both Matthew and Luke labour to prove the genealogy of Christ from David. Luke traces Joseph to Adam, through David (iii., 23–36), and Matthew gives the descendants of David down to “Joseph, the husband of Mary.” The object of both is to show that Jesus, through Joseph, came in the direct line, and was therefore of the lineage of David.
The interpolated miraculous conception, abandoned by biblical scholars, [53] utterly stultifies the purpose of these pedigrees. Matthew and Luke “prove” that Jesus was of the lineage of David because Joseph, the husband of Mary, was in the direct line. The miraculous conception goes to show that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, and consequently that Jesus was not of the line of David at all. Here, then, is a dilemma:—if Jesus was the son of Joseph his divinity must be given up; if he was not the son of Joseph, he was not of the line of David, and his Messiahship must be given up.