Why is Christ's genealogy important?

Answer 1

A:

To the authors of Matthew and Luke, the genealogy of Jesus was important because it demonstrated that Jesus was descended from King David, as the first-century Jews expected their Messiah would be. It was, of course, expected by both authors that the virgin birth be overlooked, since this would seem to make the genealogy meaningless.

Both authors also believed that the genealogy was important because numerology proved that Jesus was destined for greatness - see, for example Matthew 1:17, which explains that there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen more until the carrying away to Babylon and then fourteen to Jesus. To do this, Matthew has to ignore 3 kings in the Old Testament and have David in the preceding (as 14) and following (as 1) groups, but not so Josiah.

Luke's Gospel also has sixteen verses on the genealogy of Jesus, back through Joseph and his father Heli all the way to Adam. The author does not highlight the numerology as does the author of Matthew, but this genealogy is equally propitious, as it has great men occurring in multiples of seven generations. To do this, he had to insert his own fictitious people into the Old Testament list: Kainan at 13; Admin at 28.