@waxeagle I do not think so. The suspension is punishment enough. Now they're saying that they want actions on one site to drastically affect usability on another. It's completely inequitable, especially since moderator elections are not annual.

But like I said in my answer. This doesn't seem to solve a real problem, except easing CM's burden a little of having to listen to whiners.

@Nathaniel The OP has removed the offending line in response to my further comments (which are also now gone).

It's still a far-fetched answer, with scant biblical support. But it's a more popular answer than mine, so it's getting more positive votes. At least mine is there to provide an alternate view, for those interested.

For anyone interested, I've written more on this subject (whether and how Jesus was the seed of David) in Polemics and Apologetics in response to questions from @Pam starting here.

The question is about an interesting topic, but it's very poorly phrased. And it mixes together several distinct topics: Jesus being a descendant of David, and the Father and the Son both being God.

@curiousdannii Perhaps it could be worded better. And yet, those topics are interlinked with one another. Once again, it seems to me that it's basically the same question Jesus himself was dealing with in Matthew 22:41-46.

I don't think the other answers adequately deal with Jesus' own general repudiation of his human, genetic sonship, or with the Gospels' general lack of any statements making Jesus genetically or hereditarily (as we understand that today) the son of David.

For instance, Jesus never calls Mary his mother. He instead refers to her as "woman." And in the instance when his (biological) mother and brothers were seeking him, he did not recognize them as his mother and brothers.

@LeeWoofenden Good points, but that question is too confused. I don't think it would be worth writing more to deal with such topics

It is striking how little support there is in the Gospels for the idea that Jesus is in the genetic hereditary line of David. I really doubt that's coincidental. It seems to me that both Matthew and Luke were intent to make the connection in the minds of their readers, but to pull the reader away from the idea that this was some sort of human, genetic, and worldly connection.

@curiousdannii One of them was mine! :-)

I happen to think it's a very good question, even if not worded as well as it could be.

@LeeWoofenden Really? But... it's the kind of question which someone who hadn't heard of the incarnation might ask, but the OP is aware of the incarnation

To my mind, if the question is followed out solidly, it leads to a major weakness in Christian doctrines that emphasize Jesus' right to the throne of David in a worldly sense. As I read them, the Gospels make a pretty good stab at repudiating that notion.

@LeeWoofenden Oh, actually that was your edit

A bad edit IMO

And the popular Maternal ancestry in Luke theory is a fine example of Christians trying to sidestep that repudiation, and read the Gospels in worldly, human fashion rather than seeing the spiritual message that both the Gospel writers and Jesus himself intended listeners and readers to receive.

It seems pretty late to do this now, but I'd prefer to rollback to revision 5 and then close the question

@LeeWoofenden Oh stop it with your insulting dismissal of anyone who disagrees with you as being "materialistic" or insufficiently "spiritual"

@curiousdannii The original question had no scoping at all. And my recollection is that the OP didn't intend to limit it to traditional Trinitarian thought, but wanted a broader scope of those who see Jesus as God. Unfortunately, I don't think all of the OP's comments survived, since at least one of the revisions (#4) appears to refer to a comment by the OP that no longer exists.

@LeeWoofenden Did the OP ever mention the incarnation?

@curiousdannii It's not "anyone who disagrees with me." It's anyone who focuses on the letter and not on the spirit. Which, I think, also entails twisting the text of the Bible itself into something it is not and was never intended to be.

The Maternal ancestry in Luke theory really has no scriptural support whatsoever. But it has become popular precisely because it allows Christians who desire to do so to think of the Gospels as speaking of worldly and human things rather than of spiritual and divine things.

@curiousdannii I don't see the word "incarnation" used explicitly in his original question or in his comments. However, he speaks of Jesus as being the Son of God, which, I think, certainly implies that he's talking about the incarnation. Why do you ask?

@curiousdannii At any rate, the OP's surviving comments were posted after all revisions (aside from your current tags edit) were made, and all current answers were given, and he expresses general appreciation for the answers. So it appears that neither the revisions nor any of the existing answers were contrary to the OP's intent.

IOW, I don't think there's warrant to roll back the revisions, since the OP tacitly accepted them, along with the answers given based on those revisions.

@LeeWoofenden Because the original revision doesn't seem to be aware of any change of state. The OP was confused, and the answer was "There was a change of state/nature at the incarnation". But now the question acknowledges the incarnation, so the question is much more convoluted

@curiousdannii Do you think the OP was not referring to the Incarnation in his original question? It seems to me that the very use of the word "Jesus" implies the incarnation. Even in Trinitarian theology, as I understand it, the Son was not Jesus before the Incarnation.

@curiousdannii I don't think the OP is living in the clouds somewhere such that he "hadn't heard of the incarnation." Clearly he has some awareness of Christian theology, and the Incarnation is pretty basic to that.

@curiousdannii And incidentally, I can't think off-hand of any instance in the OT in which a lineage, let alone a dynastic kingly lineage, was traced to predecessors through the matrilinear side. Can you? Given that genealogies in the OT are always patriliniear, the idea that Luke was trying to establish Jesus' bonafides as a legitimate claimant to the throne of David by tracing his matrilinear genealogy to David seems entirely unlikely and far-fetched.

It is far more likely that both Matthew and Luke intended to provide a patrilinear genealogy for Jesus, which would be respectable culturally and scripturally, but then knowingly broke the genetic chain by explicitly denying that Jesus was Joseph's biological offspring.

@LeeWoofenden I think the OP was very confused, and it looked to me like they may have thought that the Son of God only started existing when Jesus did

@LeeWoofenden It would be very easy to hear a lot about Christianity and not understand at all the doctrine of the incarnation. Just hearing about Jesus does not mean you understand the idea that there was a pre-existing (eternal) spirit being who was transformed and became a human at a point in history

@LeeWoofenden I don't disagree, but that's almost irrelevant for the question. It's a side issue which you've made the main thing.

The question is the same if you take David out of it. Jesus is a descendent of Adam, but Adam was made by God, but Jesus is God.

Does it feel to anyone else like we've had a string of really bad questions by new users these last few days?

@curiousdannii I'm reminded of these immortal words:

> How can it be a spike when it happens constantly? :P – curiousdannii Jan 10 at 12:30

(source)

@Nathaniel But that's ELU :P C.SE is (or was) different!

@curiousdannii Hopefully I'm wrong, but after poking around I don't think good data is available for this. Bad closed questions are quickly deleted, and the Data Explorer doesn't give us the User IDs that created deleted questions.

We can get the number of deleted questions per month pretty easily, but that includes deletions of old closed questions as well. We can also get non-deleted closed questions per month by low-rep users, but that's only going to count ones that were either answered or upvoted, since otherwise they are deleted quickly.

@curiousdannii The OP stated that he was trying to figure things out. Whether he was "confused" or not is beside the point. The question is essentially the same one Jesus himself brought up in Matthew 22:41-46. How could it be a bad question?

@curiousdannii I haven't "made it the main thing." I've focused on it in chat and in the comments because it is a weak link in the other answers. My own answer deals with much more than this issue—which forms only one link in a much broader answer.

@curiousdannii True enough. But the conflicting genealogies are, I think, quite relevant to the question. They go to the heart of the issue of whether or not the Gospels intended to trace a biological link back to Jesus' ancestors. My conclusion, in contrariety to the other answers, is that they do not, because both trace Jesus' genealogy to Joseph, while denying that Joseph was Jesus' biological father.

It's true that either way, Jesus did have a human biological ancestry through Mary. But if neither of the genealogies is invoking that biological ancestry, that in itself says something about what the Gospels were saying, and why, with regard to Jesus as the seed of Adam, the seed of the woman, and the seed of David.

Short version: the Gospels never intended to invoke a literal human chain of ancestry for Jesus. That, if true, is very significant to the question. And on that issue, I believe my answer comes down on the same side as Jesus himself does, and as the Gospels generally do.

@LeeWoofenden It would have been more accurate to say that the Gospels never intended to invoke a biological human chain of ancestry for Jesus.