Matthew opens his Gospel with the list and reads down. Luke sets his after the baptism and reads up, ending “son of God.”
Where each list stands
Matthew’s list opens his Gospel, from Abraham down. Luke’s follows the baptism and precedes the temptation, where the devil’s first words are ‘If you are the Son of God.’ The list has just ended ‘son of God.’
The texts
1The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
2Abraham became the father of Isaac. Isaac became the father of Jacob. Jacob became the father of Judah and his brothers.
21Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus also had been baptized and was praying. The sky was opened,
22and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove on him; and a voice came out of the sky, saying “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.”
23Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli,
38the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
1Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness
2for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry.
3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
On the chart
Numbers count from Adam as 1, following the critical Greek text, which reads Admin and Arni where the WEB has Aram (hence 27–28). Gold numbers fall on multiples of seven: Enoch 7, Abraham 21, David 35, Jesus 77.
Readers
In order of date. Summaries are paraphrase; follow the citations for the texts themselves.
Against Heresies 3.22.3
Luke’s list, running from the Lord back to Adam, joins the end to the beginning: Christ recapitulates in himself all the nations dispersed from Adam, all languages, and the generation of men with Adam himself. Irenaeus counts seventy-two generations, the number of the nations of Genesis 10 in the Greek reckoning.
Homilies on Luke 28 (not yet checked against the text)
Matthew’s genealogy descends from Abraham because it describes Christ coming down into the world to take on our sins; Luke’s ascends, and follows the baptism, because it describes one who has been reborn going up to God.
On the Harmony of the Evangelists 2.1–4; Sermon 51; Retractations 2.16
Matthew says ‘begot’ (genuit), Luke ‘who was of’ (qui fuit): Luke may give the adoptive father. Matthew descends, bearing the sins Christ came to take; Luke ascends from the baptism, where sins are cleansed. Augustine counts forty generations in Matthew (the labor of this life) and seventy-seven in Luke (eleven sevens: eleven, the number of transgression beyond the ten commandments; seventy-seven, the number of forgiveness in Matthew 18:22). In the Retractations (2.16) he revised ‘adopted by the other’ to ‘adopted for the other’, accepting the levirate explanation.
Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, ch. 1 (pp. 6–10)
Matthew’s genealogy, running from Abraham through David, is already ‘open toward universality’ through the blessing promised to all nations; Luke’s, placed after the baptism and running back to Adam, shows humanity starting afresh in Jesus. He rejects the ‘sinners’ reading of the four women and takes them as Gentiles. Both genealogies break off at Joseph, Jesus’ legal father, because his origin is ‘from above’. He counts Luke’s names as eleven sevens.
In the tradition
Adam · Patristic Irenaeus built his doctrine of recapitulation partly on Luke’s list: the line runs back to Adam so that Christ may gather up in himself all the nations descended from Adam (Against Heresies 3.22.3).