For four hundred years, nothing new was added to the Bible. The prophets fell silent. During this time, Middle Eastern empires rose and fell, and the tiny nation of Israel suffered under the domination of greater powers like Greece and Rome.
And then, something momentous happened. A baby was born - a baby unlike any who had ever come before. By introducing this baby who grew into the man Jesus, the book of Matthew opens a whole new section of the Bible - the New Testament.
Matthew makes his intentions clear from the very first sentence: he connects Jesus' arrival with the Old Testament story line. Jesus was a Jew, he says, the son of Abraham. And also a king, the son of David. Matthew then sets out to prove an audacious claim: this Jesus, from the humble town of Nazareth, is the very "Messiah," the deliverer promised back in the Old Testament. (Christ is a Greek translation of the word Messiah).
Jesus' Family Tree
People all over the world, especially Jews, had been eagerly awaiting the Messiah. His coming would change the entire history of the world, they believed. Could this carpenter's son be the long-expected king? To answer that question, Matthew starts with a genealogy.
Genealogies - long lists of names - rarely prove interesting to anyone but the people directly involved. To those people, however, the lists are anything but boring. |
