Luke 3:36Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The genealogy of the Lord also acknowledges the righteous Noah (see Luke 3:36. Cf. Gen. 6-10), as the Creator of the Church chose to highlight His lineage through the one who became the architect of the Church's initial form.

This section of the lineage aligns clearly with the Old Testament and also with the Septuagint, as evidenced by the inclusion of the name Cainan in verse 36. This name appears exclusively in the Septuagint and is absent from the Hebrew scriptures (Gen. 10:24; Gen. 11:12); it likely originates from an ancient translation. Some scholars argue that Cainan must have been present in the original text, suggesting that it would be more plausible for it to have been omitted from the Hebrew rather than to have been added to the Septuagint if it were not originally part of the former.

The name Cainan, a patriarch following the Flood and a grandson of Shem, appears in Luke's lineage of the God-man. This name is derived from the Greek version of the LXX and is also found in the Vulgate. However, many esteemed scholars believe it was likely introduced into the Hebrew text due to a scribal error, influenced by the similarity of this ancestor's name to that of the pre-Flood Cainan (Gen. 5:10), or perhaps it was placed there intentionally by an interpreter who counted ten generations from the Flood to Abraham, similar to the count from Adam before the Flood.