It is a fact related that, then, and even after that battle, there was not a lance, not even a single sword, among the whole Hebrew people; that the Philistines prevented the Hebrews from manufacturing swords and lances; that the Hebrews were obliged to have recourse to the Philistines for sharpening and repairing their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and pruning-hooks.
This acknowledgment seems to prove that the Hebrews consisted of only a very small number, and that the Philistines were a powerful and victorious nation, who kept the Israelites under the yoke, and treated them as slaves; in short, that it was impossible for Saul to collect three hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, etc.
The reverend Father Calmet says it is probable "that there is a little exaggeration in what is stated about Saul and Jonathan"; but that learned man forgets that the other commentators ascribe the first victories of Saul and Jonathan to one of those decided miracles which God so often condescended to perform in favor of his miserable people. Jonathan, with his armor-bearer only, at the very beginning, slew twenty of the enemy; and the Philistines, utterly confounded, turned their arms against each other. The author of the Book of Kings positively declares that it was a miracle of God: "Accidit quasi miraculum a Deo." There is, therefore, no contradiction.
The enemies of the Christian religion, the Celsuses, the Porphyrys, and the Julians, have exhausted the sagacity of their understandings upon this subject. The Jewish writers have availed themselves of all the advantages they derived from their superior knowledge of the Hebrew language to explain these apparent contradictions. They have been followed even by Christians, such as Lord Herbert, Wollaston, Tindal, Toland, Collins, Shaftesbury, Woolston, Gordon, Bolingbroke, and many others of different nations. Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres in France, the learned Le Clerc himself, and Simon of the Oratory thought they perceived some contradictions which might be ascribed to the copyists. An immense number of other critics have endeavored to remove or correct contradictions which appeared to them inexplicable.
We read in a dangerous little book, composed with much art: "St. Matthew and St. Luke give each a genealogy of Christ different from the other; and lest it should be thought that the differences are only slight, such as might be imputed to neglect or oversight, the contrary may easily be shown by reading the first chapter of Matthew and the third of Luke. We shall then see that fifteen generations more are enumerated in the one than in the other; that, from David, they completely separate; that they join again at Salathiel; but that, after his son, they again separate, and do not reunite again but in Joseph.
"In the same genealogy, St. Matthew again falls into a manifest contradiction, for he says that Uzziah was the father of Jotham; and in the "Paralipomena," book I, chap. iii., v. II, 12, we find three generations between them—Joas, Amazias, and Azarias—of whom Luke, as well as Matthew, make no mention. Further, this genealogy has nothing to do with that of Jesus, since, according to our creed, Joseph had had no intercourse with Mary."
In order to reply to this objection, urged from the time of Origen, and renewed from age to age, we must read Julius Africanus. See the two genealogies reconciled in the following table, as we find it in the repository of ecclesiastical writers:
DAVID.
Solomon and his Nathan and his
descendants, enumerated descendants, enumerated
by Saint by Saint
Matthew. Luke.
ESTHER.
Mathan, her first Melchi, or rather
husband. Mathat, her second
husband.
The wife of these two
persons successively,
Jacob, son of married first to Heli, Heli.
Mathan, the by whom she had no
first husband. child, and afterwards
to Jacob, his brother.
Joseph, natural Legitimate son of
son of Jacob. Heli.
There is another method to reconcile the two genealogies, by St. Epiphanius. According to him, Jacob Panther, descended from Solomon, is the father of Joseph and of Cleophas. Joseph has six children by his first wife—James, Joshua, Simeon, Jude, Mary, and Salome. He then espouses the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the daughter of Joachim and Anne.
There are many other methods of explaining these two genealogies. See the "Dissertation" of Father Calmet, in which he endeavors to reconcile St. Matthew with St. Luke, on the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The same learned skeptics, who make it their business to compare dates, to explore books and medals, to collate ancient authors, and to seek for truth by human skill and study, and who lose in their knowledge the simplicity of their faith, reproach St. Luke with contradicting the other evangelists, and in being mistaken in what he advances on the subject of our Lord's birth. The author of the "Analysis of the Christian Religion" thus rashly expresses himself on the subject (p. 23):