Himself said, "My Kingdom is not of this world" (John xviii. 36).

42. M. But from comparing Matt. i. 12 with Luke iii. 27, we see that Salathiel and Zorobabel occur in both genealogies, and from 1 Chron. iii. 17, 19, it is clear that both Salathiel (Shealtiel) and Zorobabel (Zerubbabel) were descended from Jeconiah. If Jeconiah was unworthy to hand down the temporal sovereignty to his sons, still less could he be the ancestor of the Messiah. As Christ was a prophet, there must here be some corruption in your Bible.

C. From Luke iii. 27 it is doubtful whether the Salathiel and Zorobabel mentioned there are the persons of the same name who are mentioned in Matt. i. 12 and 1 Chron. iii. 17, 19. Moreover, what possible object could Christians have in corrupting the text of the Gospel so as to introduce this difficulty ¹?

43. M. In Deut. xxiii. 3 and Neh. xiii. 1 we read that a Moabite was not to come into the congregation of the Lord "for ever." Yet both genealogies represent Christ as descended from David, whose ancestress was Ruth the Moabitess. Here is another contradiction.

C. Ruth iv. 21, 22 shows that the Jews (who

must best have understood their own Scriptures) did not understand the passage in Deuteronomy (repeated in Nehemiah) as you do, otherwise the prophets would not have recognized any of the kings of Judah (who were descended from Ruth through David) as being members of the Chosen People at all, nor would they have prophesied the Messiah's descent from David. The Jews themselves paraphrase the passage thus: "Neither an Ammonite nor a Moabite man is fit to take a wife from the congregation of the Lord's people; nor unto the tenth generation shall they take a wife from the congregation of the Lord's people" (Palestinian Targum). Thus no male Moabite was to be admitted into the Israelite nation, unless, of course, he became a true convert. The same rule may have applied to women; but Ruth was a convert (Ruth i. 16). From Neh. xiii. 3, 23-8, we see that Nehemiah understood Deut. xxiii. 3 as forbidding Moabite idolaters to be reckoned among the Israelites. This is therefore the proper meaning of the passage. Moreover, a time is defined, "even to their tenth generation" (Deut. xxiii. 3). Christ was not a Moabite but a Jew by birth, even though many generations previously a Moabitess had been among his ancestresses.

44. M. What proves the corruption of the Bible beyond all doubt is that it contains so many contradictions and discrepancies. Two contradictory accounts of the same thing cannot both be true.

C. The Bible does not contain contradictions, and