Of these two solutions, (1) that Joseph may have been the adopted son of Eli, or (2) the son of his wife who, as the next of kin, married Jacob after his decease, the latter is stated by Africanus (Eus. H. E. i. 7) to be traditional and derived from kinsmen of the Lord’s. It may be the more likely, in that the name of the wife of Matthan and Malchi (Estha) is also handed down, through whom, though half-blood, Heli and Jacob became, at all events, near kinsmen. Else in the Jerus. Talm. (ap. Lightfoot ad loc.) St. Mary is called the daughter of Heli, and her genealogy might be counted as his, to whom, according to the above statement, she was nearly related. The name Heli, indeed, is no way connected (as some have thought) with Eliachim, i.q. Joachim; but this name of the father of the Blessed Virgin is said by St. Augustin to have been taken by the Manichees from apocryphal books (comp. Faust. xxiii. 9), so neither is it any hindrance. St. Augustin remarks (Quæst. Ev. ii. 5) that any one possible explanation is sufficient, and yet that it would be rash to say that there were only the two that he had named. He treats it then as “madness” to ground any charge against the evangelists thereon; inasmuch as it can be solved, faith is indifferent to the “how,” since God has not explained it.