Within the framework of the day of the holy maternal grandparents of Jesus, which is celebrated every July 26, the question arises: And who were the paternal grandparents of Christ? The evangelists speak of different names, while the saints and historians of the Church seek to shed light on the possible fifth grandfather of the Lord.
Although there is no official book that specifies it, by tradition it is believed that Christ’s maternal grandparents were called Saint Joachim and Saint Anne. One of the ancient texts in which they are described with these names is the Protoevangelium of Santiagoan apocryphal book that is not biblical, but is a source of Marian reference for the Church.
Receive the main news from ACI Prensa by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today:
Meanwhile, in the branch of Jesus’ paternal grandparents there is no such clarity. In reality, the Gospels differ in the name of Saint Joseph’s father. The evangelist Saint Matthew indicates that his name was jacobbut Saint Luke writes that It was Eli.
Saint Augustine (354-430) tried to explain this difference in his work The agreement of the evangelists pointing out the theory that Saint Joseph had been adopted and therefore Saint Matthew describes the line that “begat” Saint Joseph, while Luke, the adopted line.
The holy Bishop of Hippo, apparently, later learned the explanation of Julius African, a historian who lived between approximately 160 and 240 AD and who is considered the father of Christian chronography (chronology). For this reason Saint Augustine would have modified this idea of adoption in his Reviews and based on this historian.
According to Julius Africanus, “Estha married Mattan, a descendant of David through Solomon, and became the mother of Jacob. After the death of Mattan, she took Mattath, a descendant of David through Solomon, as her second husband. of Nathan, and through him she became the mother of Eli. Jacob and Eli were, therefore, uterine brothers,” indicates the Catholic Encyclopedia.
It is then described that Eli married and died without leaving any children. Then by the levirate law of the Jews, in which a brother must be related to his widowed sister-in-law in order for her to beget a son, Eli’s wife begot Joseph.
In this way Saint Joseph “was the carnal son of Jacob, but the legal son of Eli, thus combining in his persona two lineages of the descendants of David,” the Encyclopedia states.
“And this last solution is the truest. Jerome also opts for it, In Matth.; and Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastica Historia,” points out Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in his Theological Summation.
Therefore, Christ would have had 5 grandparents: Joaquín and Ana; Eli and his wife, name unknown; and Jacob.
Abel Camasca
Journalist graduated from the Communication Sciences degree at the University of Lima. He has been part of the ACI Prensa journalistic team since 2014. Between 2016 and 2022 he was in charge of the production of the television program EWTN Noticias and Más que Noticias, a World Catholic Radio program. He often writes articles about the lives of saints.