Genealogies, such as the one found in Matthew 1:1-17, are often thought to be deadly boring. I disagree!

(a) In Matthew’s list of 46 names, spanning 2,000 years, you will find non-descripts, heroes, women (each with an interesting story to tell!) and villains. See if you can find three examples of each of these types.

(b) What does this genealogy tell us about Mary and Joseph and their son Jesus? And what does it tell us about God’s purposes for the world?

(c) This first verse of Matthew consists, in the Greek, of eight nouns. The absence of a verb suggests to some commentators that it is intended as a title (though not to the book as a whole). Actually, it stands as a perfectly good sentence, although other languages would require other words to signal the relationships between words that are already clear in the Greek.