5/15/2014

Day 53: Why is the destruction of the Temple important?

the New Testament confirmed Jesus' geneology from the records stored in the Temple before it was destroyed in 70 A.D. These records were needed to verify Jesus matched the Messiah's Old Testament ancestors. After the Temple was destroyed, the records were gone. Now, if someone claims to be the Messiah we do not have any record to verify it. This is just one more confirmation Jesus is the only one who can be the Messiah. Hope you enjoy the article,  Carol

... faith is putting ourselves quietly in God's hands for Him to do His work.  ~Andrew Murray

Smith's Bible Dictionary
Genealogy:
In Hebrew the term for genealogy or pedigree is "the book of the generations;" and because the oldest histories were usually drawn up on a genealogical basis, the expression often extended to the whole history, as is the case with the Gospel of St. Matthew, where "the book of the generation of Jesus Christ" includes the whole history contained in that Gospel. The promise of the land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob successively, and the separation of the Israelites from the Gentile world; the expectation of Messiah as to spring from the tribe of Judah; the exclusively hereditary priesthood of Aaron with its dignity and emoluments; the long succession of kings in the line of David; and the whole division and occupations of the land upon genealogical principles by the tribes, occupation of the land upon genealogical principles by the tribes, families and houses of fathers, gave a deeper importance to the science of genealogy among the Jews than perhaps any other nation. When Zerubbabel brought back the captivity from Babylon, one of his first cares seems to have been to take a census of those that returned, and to settle them according to their genealogies. Passing on to the time of the birth of Christ, we have a striking incidental proof of the continuance of the Jewish genealogical economy in the fact that when Augustus ordered the census of the empire to be taken, the Jews in the province of Syria immediately went each one to his own city. The Jewish genealogical records continued to be kept till near the destruction of Jerusalem. But there can be little doubt that the registers of the Jewish tribes and families perished at the destruction of Jerusalem, and not before. It remains to be said that just notions of the nature of the Jewish genealogical records are of great importance with a view to the right interpretation of Scripture. Let it only be remembered that these records have respect to political and territorial divisions as much as to strictly genealogical descent, and it will at once be seen how erroneous a conclusion it may be that all who are called "sons" of such or such a patriarch or chief father must necessarily be his very children. Of any one family or house became extinct, some other would succeed to its place, called after its own chief father. Hence of course a census of any tribe drawn up at a later period would exhibit different divisions from one drawn up at an earlier. The same principle must be borne in mind in interpreting any particular genealogy Again, when a pedigree was abbreviated, it would naturally specify such generations as would indicates from what chief houses the person descended. Females are named in genealogies when there is anything remarkable about them, or when any right or property is transmitted through them (see Genesis 11:2922:2325:1-435:22-26Exodus 6:23Numbers 26:33).

Link for the following article: http://topicalbible.org/g/genealogy.htm

American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Genealogy

A record of one's ancestors, either the line of natural descent from father to son, or the line in which, by the laws, the inheritance descended, or that preserved in the public records. Never was a nation more careful to preserve their genealogies than the Hebrews, for on them rested the distinction of tribes, the ownership of lands, and the right to the highest offices and privileges, 
1 Chronicles 5:1,17 9:1 2Ch 12:15 Ezra 2:62. Hence their public tables of genealogies were kept secure amid all vicissitudes. We find in the Bible a record carried on for more than 3,500 years, 
1 Chronicles 1:1-54
 3:1-24 6:1-81; and thus were guarded the proofs that Christ was born according to prophecy of the seed of Abraham, and heir to the throne of his father David, Luke 1:32 2 Timothy 2:8 Hebrews 7:14. In the evangelists we have the genealogy of Christ for 4,000 years. 
 
The two accounts in Mt 1...1-25 and Luke 3:1-38, differ from each other; one giving probably the genealogy of Christ's reputed father Joseph, and the other that of his mother Mary. The two lines descend from Solomon and Nathan, David's sons; they unite in Salathiel, and again in Christ. Joseph was the legal father of Christ, and of the same family connections with Mary; so that the Messiah was a descendant of David both by law and "according to the flesh." The discrepancies between the various genealogies may be reconciled in accordance with peculiar Jewish laws. The public records, which Josephus says were scrupulously kept down to his day, perished with the ruin of the Jews as a nation. It is now, therefore, impossible for any pretended Messiah to prove his descent from David. 

Melchizedek was "without descent," 
Hebrews 7:3, as regards the Jewish race. No sacred records proved his right to be numbered among that people of God. His priesthood was of a different kind from that of Aaron and his sons. Compare Ezra 2:62.

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