Heli (biblical figure)


Heli is an individual mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as the grandfather of Jesus. In Luke's account of the genealogy of Jesus from David through David's son Nathan, Heli is listed as the father of Joseph, husband of Mary and the son of Matthat.
Heli is not mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus from David through David's son Solomon in the Gospel of Matthew, the only other canonical gospel to include a genealogy; that genealogy instead identifies Jacob as Joseph's putative father.

Two genealogies of Jesus

Since Joseph cannot be both "begotten of Jacob", descended from Solomon, and also "of Heli", descended from another of David's sons, Nathan various explanations have been proposed for the Luke genealogy actually to be that of Mary. The view is relatively late; advocates of this view include John of Damascus, Annius, Luther, Bengel and Lightfoot. Harry A. Ironside considered that it was simply preference to drop women's names out of the genealogy, hence Joseph was son in law of Heli.
Prior to the explanation above, the explanation of Sextus Julius Africanus that there had been a levirate marriage and that Joseph's grandfather Mattan had had a wife called "Esther" with whom he fathered Jacob, but Matthan died and Esther married Heli's father Melchi. Then when Heli died childless Joseph's father Jacob took Heli's wife to raise up children for Heli and left Joseph adopted in Heli's widow's house.
Another possibility is that since both Heli and Jacob have a similar name listed as their father, a discrepancy that can easily be accounted for by error, that the names Heli and Jacob refer to the same person. Matthew relied heavily on fitting existing prophecy to the narrative; in the Old Testament, Jacob also had a son named Joseph. This explanation fits for Heli/Jacob himself, but not for the earlier genealogies.

The curse on the Solomonic line

If Matthew's genealogy is that of Mary, and Luke's of Joseph, then there is a problem with the curse on the Solomonic line, dating from the time of Jeconiah where Jeremiah pronounced that no descendant of Jeconiah would again sit on the throne of Israel.
Although Israel had at least one Solomonic descendant, Zerubbabel, as governor under the Achaemenid Empire, he was neither crowned king nor related by blood to Jeconiah.

Saint Joachim and Saint Anne

The apocryphal Protoevangelium of James gives the story of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne as the parents of Mary. This is largely followed in Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican tradition.