The Church Fathers · c. 230; survives in fragments
Letter to Aristides
Julius Africanus · c. 160 – c. 240
What it is
An attempt to reconcile the two genealogies of Jesus through levirate marriage: Joseph's father had two fathers, one by nature and one by law, so both lists are true. Africanus says the desposyni, the Lord's own surviving relatives, preserved the record.
Why it lasted
The first piece of Christian historical criticism applied to a discrepancy inside the gospels, and the only report that Jesus' family kept genealogies into the third century.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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