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The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,
the son of David, the son of Abraham.
It's a long list, containing many names with which most of us are not familiar. But this is precisely the case because we are dealing with history, not myth. There is a concrete historical specificity found in the Gospels that has no equivalent in the poetic myths of the pagans. It is true that the author does have an agenda, that being to show that Jesus was the son of Abraham, the true heir of the promise, and the messianic son of David. But Matthew establishes this fact not as a flight of fancy but rather by this laborious genealogy. The idea of a Messiah was rooted in the understanding that the God of Israel really did act and involve himself in human history. The idea that Jesus was the proper heir to the promise made to Abraham came from a religious defined by a God who had shown himself to be faithful to his promises.
Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.
Most poets would avoid the particular so as to make the meaning more important. Their stories could easily be generalized in the application, not bound up to one time, or place, or person. But the Gospels achieve an even greater universality of meaning precisely through their insistence on particularity. Although the myths of the poets had deep meanings those meanings never really could touch the concrete particulars of history. They remained ever locked at the level of symbol and abstraction. But by taking on flesh Jesus united the poetic and the historical. He brought into the real world things even better than the best things poets had ever imagined. It took as much in order to save us. Poets could talk about our plight as humans and articulate our need for help and our desire for supernatural aid. But they could do nothing to attain this for us. In Jesus, however, the perfect story of salvation was realized in fact, not in fancy. As has been said elsewhere, if most people in most times and places understood the highest realities in mythical terms it would make sense for God, when he revealed himself, to do so in a way similar to myth and poetry, the difference being that it was actually true.
The scepter shall never depart from Judah,
or the mace from between his legs,
While tribute is brought to him,
and he receives the people’s homage.
What the genealogy of Jesus means for us is that Christianity is not merely a comforting thought or an emotional crutch. It is genuine, concrete, historical hope. Jesus was revealed as the heir to the promises in order to share those promises with us. He was revealed as the Messiah to invite us into a Kingdom which will never pass away or be destroyed. Secular history is incomplete to the degree that it ignores those truths, which is precisely why our world seems so dark at times. But in times of darkness we Christians should cling ever more firmly to the hope we have in Christ.
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