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Author Norris combines his considerable skill as a scholar of theology with his secular interest in genealogy to present this examination of the extended family lineage of Jesus. The detailed narrative appears to leave no source or facet of previous scholarship unexamined. Norris meticulously reexamines and organizes well-known sources of historical documentation and biblical lore and incorporates stray bits of miscellaneous information to definitively answer questions that previous scholars left unanswered or answered incorrectly. In fact, the author's narrative delves into such fine detail that some portions of it risk sounding repetitive or extraneous as he examines the facts from all angles. While a few details are speculative, there is much established truth to support these suppositions.
The book provides readers with detailed family trees of Jesus's forebears across four generations, revealing that the man known as "Messiah" was, indeed, positioned by birth to become a literal "King of the Jews" via his ancestral ties. Norris reveals that Jesus was directly related to the last kings of Judea and the high priests of the temple of Jerusalem. The author succeeds in fleshing out the simple biblical story of Mary the virgin and Joseph of Nazareth into a more complex but coherent and plausible biographical history. The genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are examined and shown how they, too, reflect the ancestry of Jesus accurately, though with some omissions of detail that neither disciple would have known in their day. Norris' studies expand the simple biblical stories of Jesus' life and parentage—the condensed gospel versions of the more complex, multi-layered political conflicts and historical events of the era. Closely examined is also the role of Herod the Great and his compulsion to destroy the Holy Family—an obsession which makes greater sense in the context of Jesus' genealogical heritage.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review