Jesus’ birth to a single mom signals prophetic challenge to patriarchy(From NCR, Dec 22, 2021)

Genealogies were important in antiquity, writes St. Joseph Sr. Christine Schenk. They sought to explain a person's significance in light of the overarching history of those who had gone before and helped establish the identity and authenticate the status of an important person, such as that of a king or priest. If certain ancestral traits reappeared in descendants, a genealogy could reveal something about that person's character as well.

Schenk continues on to acknowledge that Matthew's genealogy works hard to link the birth of Jesus to Joseph and the proud Davidic patriarchal lineage from which every good Jew knew the Messiah would come (see Jer. 23:5-6). The first line speaks volumes: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Immediately we know that Matthew is saying that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah and his lineage can be traced to David and then to Abraham.

There is one problem with this, Schenk points out. Jesus is the son of Mary, not Joseph.

Matthew himself quietly spells this out in verse 16: "and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah."

So here we have an elaborate and painstaking genealogy created to prove Jesus' ancestral links to the male kings and patriarchs of Israel when in fact, as verse 19 explains, he was born to Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit. Not through Joseph. Not through patriarchal potency.

It is enough to make any self-respecting feminist laugh.

Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech arguing for female voting rights pretty much nails it:

Then that little man in black there [presumably a preacher], he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

"Man had nothing to do with Him." While this makes for rather fun rhetoric in the 21st century, it didn't work so well for first-century pastoral sensibilities. For the sake of the Jewish-Christian community for whom he wrote, Matthew needed to connect Jesus to the Hebrew patriarchs and to explain the unusual events surrounding Mary’s pregnancy — all within the context of Jewish tradition and history.

He succeeds in doing so and it is nothing short of masterful.

In addition to Mary, four women are woven into the Matthean genealogy: Rahab, Tamar, Ruth and "the wife of Uriah" (aka Bathsheba). All four women played critical roles in Jewish history and, according to the renowned biblical scholar Fr. Raymond Brown, they came to be seen in post-biblical Judaism as instruments of the Holy Spirit. All four women had something irregular — some would say scandalous — about their unions with their partners.

What could better witness the power of an unpredictable God than to raise up a long-awaited Messiah from the least powerful of humans — a child born of an unwed mother?

The full article can be read here….Jesus' birth to a single mom signals prophetic challenge to patriarchy | National Catholic Reporter