[159:6] See Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. ii. p. 31.
The biographers of Jesus, although they have placed him in a position the most humiliating in his infancy, and although they have given him poor and humble parents, have notwithstanding made him to be of _royal descent_. The reasons for doing this were twofold. First, because, according to the Old Testament, the expected Messiah was to be of the seed of Abraham,[160:1] and second, because the Angel-Messiahs who had previously been on earth to redeem and save mankind had been of _royal descent_, therefore Christ Jesus must be so.
The following story, taken from Colebrooke's "_Miscellaneous Essays_,"[160:2] clearly shows that this idea was general:
"The last of the Jinas, Vardhamâna, was _at first_ conceived by Devanandā, a Brahmānā. The conception was announced to her by a dream. Sekra, being apprised of his incarnation, prostrated himself and worshiped the future saint (who was in the womb of Devanandā); but reflecting that _no great saint was ever born in an indigent or mendicant family_, as that of a Brahmānā, Sekra commanded his chief attendant to remove the child from the womb of Devanandā to that of Trisala, wife of Siddhartha, _a prince of the race of Jeswaca_, of the Kasyapa family."
In their attempts to accomplish their object, the biographers of Jesus have made such poor work of it, that all the ingenuity Christianity has yet produced, has not been able to repair their blunders.
The genealogies are contained in the first and third Gospels, and although they do not agree, yet, if either is right, then Jesus was _not_ the son of God, engendered by the "Holy Ghost," but the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary. In any other sense they amount to nothing. That Jesus can be of royal descent, and yet be the Son of God, in the sense in which these words are used, is a conclusion which can be acceptable to those only who believe in _alleged_ historical narratives on no other ground than that they wish them to be true, and dare not call them into question.
The _Matthew_ narrator states that _all_ the generations from Abraham to David are _fourteen_, from David until the carrying away into Babylon are _fourteen_, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Jesus are _fourteen_ generations.[161:1] Surely nothing can have a more _mythological_ appearance than this. But, when we confine our attention to the genealogy itself, we find that the generations in the third stage, including Jesus himself, amount to only _thirteen_. All attempts to get over this difficulty have been without success; the genealogies are, and have always been, hard nuts for theologians to crack. Some of the early Christian fathers saw this, and they very wisely put an _allegorical_ interpretation to them.