Steven Mitchell Ferry,
yes, that is ONE of the traditional explanations. People have been trying to reconcile these two conflicting genealogies for around ~1850, since the Gospels were written. IF the answer was so clear-cut, the debate about this would have been over ages ago.
Looked at objectively, BOTH of these lineages can't possibly be accurate. One of them is too long. It has far too many generations. Over the known time period it gives average length of generation of around 16!! The other line is far too short! The average generation works out to be around 40.
"Generation" being defined as the age of the father at the birth of their child. My father was born in 1945, and I was in 1971. Giving a generation of 26 years. Now it IS possible to have a generation of 16, or 40. But these would be extreme cases. So it is completely unreasonable to have DOZENS of these one after another.
