He is conceived of a virgin by the power of the Spirit of God ( Mt 1:18– 25). In the first of the episodes of the infancy narrative that follow the genealogy, the mystery of Jesus’ person is declared. The kingly ancestor who lived about a thousand years after Abraham is named first, for this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the royal anointed one ( Mt 1:16). Yet at the beginning of that genealogy Jesus is designated as “the son of David, the son of Abraham” ( Mt 1:1). The gospel begins with a narrative prologue ( Mt 1:1– 2:23), the first part of which is a genealogy of Jesus starting with Abraham, the father of Israel ( Mt 1:1– 17). The reason for that becomes clear upon study of the way in which Matthew presents his story of Jesus, the demands of Christian discipleship, and the breaking-in of the new and final age through the ministry but particularly through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Although the majority of scholars now reject the opinion about the time of its composition, the high estimation of this work remains.
The position of the Gospel according to Matthew as the first of the four gospels in the New Testament reflects both the view that it was the first to be written, a view that goes back to the late second century A.D., and the esteem in which it was held by the church no other was so frequently quoted in the noncanonical literature of earliest Christianity.
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