The answer as to why Luke includes (who was regarded as the son of Joseph) in his account of the physical descent of Jesus from David’s son Nathan is fairly simple and obvious. Because Luke was a Greek writing for Greeks. Luke does make mention of other accounts of the life of Jesus in his dedication to Theophilus in Luke 1:1. And those other accounts would naturally include the two Greek-language gospels by Matthew and Mark – two writers who met the requirement of Jewish readers for two Jewish eye-witnesses as required by the Law of Moses. But, Luke, under the guidance of Paul, states that he set out to provide a version based on interviews of other witnesses which would provide a record more appropriate to Gentile readers. One of the most obvious examples of Luke’s approach is the replacement of the legal adoption genealogy from Solomon to Joseph in Matthew 1 – which would be required by Jewish readers, but make little sense to Gentile readers who did not have so much interest in the royal line from Solomon, nor in the implications for Jewish readers of the genealogy of the adoptive father, when Joseph was not truly Jesus’ parent.
Luke 1 and Luke 2 pay great emphasis to the role of Mary. The first two chapters of Luke’s gospel could easily be thought of as the story of Mary, with Joseph being an incidental character. So Luke’s readers already expect the following to continue to focus on Mary. But Luke does give mention to Joseph by an ellipsis in the Luke 3 genealogy which inserts the comment “Being regarded as the son of Joseph” (Greek: hos enomizeto uios Iosef) before the family line of Heli back to David, via the non-royal line of Nathan:
3:23 Καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα ἀρχόμενος ὢν (ὡς ἐνομίζετο υἱός Ἰωσὴφ) τοῦ Ἠλὶ…
The one thing that is 100% certain from this narrative is that Luke did not regard Joseph as the father of Jesus. The very words “regarded as” emphasize that Joseph was not the father. If Joseph was the father, and if this is Joseph’s family tree, then the last thing that Luke should add would be “regarded as”. The meaning of “regarded as” can be read as “was not the father”.
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A misreading
However it is understandable that confusions have arisen from the mention of Joseph. A common early misreading of Luke 3 read the “being regarded” related to the entire family tree from Heli back to Adam – despite the obvious problem that Joseph would then have a different father, grandfather etc. right the way back to David than recorded for the adoptive, legal, royal line in Matthew 1. This misreading would also would raise an additional problem to explain why a Greek physician, writing for another Gentile convert Theophilus, would think it worthwhile to give a (contradictory) alternative Jewish legal adoptive descent for Jesus from Joseph when Luke’s birth narrative centres so firmly on Mary. We would then have two adoptive genealogies of Joseph, and no record at all of Jesus’ physical descent or anything about the family of Mary. But as Luke records in Luke 1:1, his account is based on eye-witness interviews. So Luke would have had plentiful opportunity during his stay with Paul as Caesarea to interview people who had known Mary, but Joseph was evidently already dead when Jesus’ public activities commenced.
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Mistranslation
The confusion about Luke’s passing comment (who was regarded as the son of Joseph) has been compounded by translation errors, and – more seriously – by the addition of the word “son” into many Bibles throughout the Luke 3 genealogy. This creates two particular false readings. The first is “Joseph son of Heli” (which is not in the Greek text) and secondly “Adam son of God” (also not in the Greek text).
This mistranslation does not originate from the Latin Vulgate which correctly restricts the word “son” (Latin filius) to only one use.
23 Et ipse Jesus erat incipiens quasi annorum triginta, ut putabatur, filius Joseph, qui fuit Heli, qui fuit Mathat,
The earliest major English Bible, that of Wycliffe in 1384, also does not add “son” before Heli.
23 And Jesus himself was beginning as of thirty years, that he was guessed the son of Joseph, which was of Heli,
So the practice for adding the word ‘son’ before Heli appears to largely be due to the influence of Luther’s German translation in 1545
23 Und Jesus war, da er anfing, ungefähr dreißig Jahre alt, und ward gehalten für einen Sohn Josephs, welcher war ein Sohn Eli’s,
Today Luther’s addition of ‘son’ before Heli has multiplied the confusion about Luke 3:23 through Bible translations in hundreds of languages.
But this addition of “son” before Heli’s name makes Luke contradict Matthew, and removes the physical descent of Jesus and the family of Jesus’ mother from the Bible entirely.
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