Finally formatted! (mostly)

 Hello!  I'm so glad you are reading this.  

No, really, I am.  

As I write I have just finished formatting the layout of this blog for the first time.

I had a horrible time sleeping last night and really didn't feel like doing anything today.  However, after completing my quiet time with the Lord and speaking with a trusted counselor I felt like I should work on this again.  I began last month, but got frustrated trying to get the formatting the way I wanted it and stopped not knowing when, or even if, I would come back to it.

But with the encouragement I got after a word from God I felt I needed to work on this today.  

I read Matthew 1 today and in thinking about the genealogy of Christ Jesus and the circumstances of his conception I looked into one person I had forgotten about.  Tamar, mother of Perez.  She bore Perez by Judah, who was actually her father-in-law.  She had tricked him into "sleeping" with her by posing as a prostitute after he had broke a promise to have her redeemed by Judah's third son.  Both of his elder sons were killed by God for some of their sins.  It was Jewish custom at the time for the next eldest brother to marry his deceased brother's wife so that the "name" of his brother could continue through him.  As such I believe that generally the children would actually legally be the child of the original familial husband, not their biological father in that case.  However, Matthew chose to show that Perez's biological father was highly unusual.  Also, it is worth noting that this legal exception only applied within the same family.

There are a few other oddities in the genealogy relating to women that are mentioned, but really the big one is, of course, Christ Jesus' mother, Mary.  She became pregnant with Jesus without having sex with anyone.  She had already been promised to Joseph at the time and Joseph wanted to quietly break off the marriage, but an angel came to Joseph and told him to take Mary as his wife, that she hadn't been unfaithful and the name that the child should bear.  Jesus' birth is also different because he is "of the lineage of David", but this only in a legal sense of course since He had no biological father.  The legalities of the lineage didn't change in any of the "odd" cases mentioned in the lineage of Christ Jesus.

I believe that Joseph chose to hide that Jesus wasn't biologically his child because it would have been very hard to explain the nature of the virgin birth.  However, as far as I know, none of the Gospels actually say why he did it.  Most people probably wouldn't have believed Joseph even if he did tell them the truth.  It would be akin to us telling a friend we were dining with that the donut on their plate just disappeared.  Surely they would think we, or at least someone else at the table ate it.

Anyway, that's all I have for now.