If God can, why do you not believe He did? Which miracles do you believe Jesus performed?
I don't think it matters. Whether Jesus did miracles or not really matters little to me, and thus I don't really care. I never said that G-d doesn't do miracles, I said historically, one can not verify such. And being a historian, I can't verify any miracle by Jesus, and thus my beliefs on the matter are inconsequential.
Because Nathan and Solomon were both descended from David. That keeps the line of Jesus to David intact. That is really the main purpose of establishing Jesus as the Messiah, the rightful heir to the throne.
That's not how a genealogy works. Either Jesus descended from Nathan, or from Solomon. He had to descend from one. He can't descend from both.
If there was no need Nathan, God would not have included it. I told you yesterday that Jesus was descended from David naturally through Nathan and legally through Solomon. Both are necessary to establish His right to the trhone of David.
No, no they aren't. Being descended from either would have been enough. He would, nevertheless, be a descendant of King David. Now, your argument here is based on faith, not by actual evidence. Neither Matthew or Luke said that they were trying to establish anything, and that the other could establish something else. No, both stated that they were making a genealogy of Jesus. As in, Jesus was the son of Joseph, who was the son of ... the son of .... etc. Not once does it state that he was the son of ... but instead we will go through someone else to make a different argument.
What you're doing here is adding to the Gospels.
This is my last comment o a leverite marriage. In a leveite marriage the first son born was not given the name of the biological father. It was given then name of the dead brother. If you don't understand that difference, you will never understand how that does not make a contradiction in the genealogy.
I fully understand that. You don't seem to be understanding what I'm saying though.
The levarite marriage doesn't change a genealogy. Lets say that Joseph died and his brother married and had a child with Mary instead. That first son, lets assume its Jesus, would still be given the name of Joseph. So the genealogy would still go through Joseph regardless.
Now, we can go back to say the father of Joseph. Lets assume, because Matthew and Luke name a different father for Joseph, that we have a case of a levarite marriage here, and that Jacob and Heli are brothers. They both are said to have the same father, Matthan, but their grandfather is different. One says Eleazar and the other says Levi.
In a levarite marriage, wouldn't the grandfather of those two men still be the same figure? After all, they are brothers. And lets say it is a levarite marriage. Why don't the two Gospels then still name the same figure, because after all, in a levarite marriage, the first son would be given the name of the dead brother. It wouldn't change the genealogy.
That's the problem you face with the claim that a levarite marriage explains it. In fact, it doesn't. Because if nothing else, the grandfather of Jacob and Heli, even if there is a levarite marriage there, should still be the same person. They shouldn't have two different grandfathers.
