As one reads the gospel of Matthew, we must take into account two basic factors. Firstly, why it was written and secondly, who wrote it. The second thing speaks volumes about the first. Matthew was the only disciple to write a synoptic gospel. His purpose in writing it was to prove that Jesus was the Jewish messiah. He travelled with Jesus and knew the importance of this fact. The way to establish this is to begin with a genealogy. This is because the claim to messiahship has a prophetic component and many Jews were looking for the Messiah to come from a certain history. Beyond this, we must also take into account that Matthew was a tax collector by trade. Therefore he would have been good at keeping track of these details and adept at navigating and recording records. This is an apparent fact of his gospel. He often creates a paper trail between prophecy, genealogy and scripture. His writing isn’t cold in its presentation, but it is efficient so that the audience needs exactly what is necessary to understand the basic facts. Here we can plainly see them laid out. We know the theology and the history. Jesus was virgin born, conceived by the Spirit. He is historically connected through David to Abraham. He is the Messiah.