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| MATTHEW |
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| Listen to one modern author describe what it was like to hear an ancient genealogy: "There is an expression, 'the peak experience,' a moment which emotionally can never again be equaled in your life. I had mine, that first day in the village of Juffure, in black West Africa . . . Goose bumps came out on me the size of marbles." With those words, Alex Haley, author of Roots, recalls the day he first heard, from the lips of an aged storyteller, the account of young Kunta Kinte being taken captive by slave traders in 1752. The Importance of Roots Haley's ancestory in Tennessee and Virginia had descended from a native African captured in a tiny village in Gambia. The day he listened to the gentle African elder recite, "And so-and-so took as a wife so-and-so, and begat so-and-so," the final link in Haley's family chain snapped into place. Roots tells the story of this connection. In a similar way, the book of Matthew doesn't begin with Jesus' birth, but reaches back further to establish his roots. If indeed Jesus is the Messiah, his ancestry must match up to that claim. As any student of history knows, kings don't merely declare themselves; they must belong to a royal line. Matthew traces Jesus' lineage to the father of the Jewish race, Abraham - who first received the promise of the Messiah - then to the great Jewish king, David. Links to the Old Testament After recording Jesus' bloodline, Matthew narrates the story of Jesus' life on earth. He relies heavily on the Old Testament, quoting it more frequently than does any other New Testament author. (Note such phrases as "that it might be fulfilled as was spoken by the prophets.") The first book in the New Testament, then, stands as the Gospel that pulls things together, the link between the old |