Counted from Adam in the critical Greek text, Luke’s list puts Jesus seventy-seventh.
Seventy-seven, or seventy-six
Counting Adam as the first, the critical Greek text of Luke (which reads Admin and Arni where the WEB has Aram) makes Enoch the 7th, Abraham the 21st, David the 35th and Jesus the 77th: eleven sevens. The WEB’s Majority Text makes Jesus the 76th, and the pattern slips by one after Hezron. Irenaeus counted seventy-two; Augustine counted seventy-seven and read it as forgiveness; Bauckham reads it through 1 Enoch 10:12 and the Apocalypse of Weeks as eleven weeks of generations, with Jesus in the last. Use “Count Luke in sevens” above the chart to see it.
Cainan
Luke’s second Cainan, between Arphaxad and Shelah, comes from the Greek Genesis, not the Hebrew.
The texts
36the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,
37the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan,
38the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
12Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and became the father of Shelah.
13Arpachshad lived four hundred three years after he became the father of Shelah, and became the father of more sons and daughters.
14About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones,
21Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?”
22Jesus said to him, “I don’t tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven.
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.
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.
Jude and the Relatives of Jesus; Gospel Women
Luke’s seventy-seven names follow 1 Enoch 10:12 (seventy generations from the binding of the Watchers to the judgment), laid out, on the model of the Apocalypse of Weeks, as eleven weeks of generations, so that Jesus belongs to the last generation. The list may come from Jesus’ own family circle, where Enoch mattered (Jude 14). Separately, with others before him, Bauckham argues the common factor among Matthew’s four women is that each was, or was held to be, a Gentile — Tamar and Rahab Canaanites, Ruth a Moabite, Bathsheba married to a Hittite.
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
Enoch · Scholarship Richard Bauckham (Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, 1990, ch. 7) reads Luke’s 77 names through 1 Enoch 10:12, where the Watchers are bound ‘for seventy generations’ after Enoch’s time until the judgment: seven generations to Enoch, seventy after, so that Jesus stands in the last generation of history. The ten weeks of the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93; 91) are the model for Luke’s eleven; he suggests the list came from the circle of Jesus’ own relatives, among whom Jude’s letter cites Enoch.
Cainan · Jewish Jubilees 8:1–4 (2nd c. BCE) knows a Kainam son of Arpachshad who found the Watchers’ astrological lore carved on a rock and sinned by copying it.