Troublesome Topic: A Missionary Story About Why Genealogies Are Important.

I read a missionary story once that gave a good example of how important genealogies can be in certain cultures. I cannot find this story now, so I must resort to a short summary from memory.

A missionary was translating the Bible for an indigenous tribe and was working with her language helper (an older gentleman) on the Gospel of Matthew or Luke. She wanted to skip the genealogy of Jesus, but the language helper insisted strongly that they needed to translate that part. After much going back and forth about the matter, the missionary reluctantly agreed and tried to hurriedly translate the genealogy so she could get to the “important stuff.”

 When they finished with the last verse of the genealogy, she thought she could now finally get on to translating the “good stuff.” But her language helper had another request. He wanted her to write out the genealogy in great big letters on a very long roll of paper. Once again she resisted the idea because she could not understand the benefit of doing so, and once again the language helper insisted resolutely until she gave in.

As soon as she had finished writing it out, he took it from her and ran down the “street” of their village shouting at everyone who was nearby. He wanted them to see this amazing information about Jesus that the missionary had failed to tell them until now. He said things like, “Look at the genealogy of Jesus! It goes back many generations. No one in our tribe can recite his genealogy back more than just a few generations. This proves how important Jesus was! Such an important person must be very powerful. The other things the missionary has been telling us about Jesus must be true, and the genealogy proves it!”

Genealogies were very important to many ancient peoples. Even if we don’t enjoy reading them today, we should at least understand that they held great value for the people of that day. 

This is the last lesson in this set of topical lessons about Genealogies. Thank you for reading.