and ridicule what is false. So the evangelist
presents to his readers Jesus as the Lord's Anointed with inspired
powers of persuasion. The manner in which he records our Lord's urgent
warnings against going after false Jewish Messiahs at the time when the
destruction of Jerusalem should draw near, is a witness to the depth of
his convictions. Like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who
wrote shortly before him, he cannot endure the thought of any waverers
or deserters. The Jewish Christian must be loyal to Jesus, even
although the invasion of the holy land by Gentiles may sorely tempt him
to throw in his lot with his patriotic but unbelieving kinsmen.

The very first verse suggests the nature of the Gospel--"The book of
the generation" (_i.e._ the genealogical tree) "of Jesus Christ, the
son of David, the son of Abraham." This "book" includes the first 17
verses of the Gospel. While St. Luke traces the genealogy of our Lord
back to Adam, the head of the human race, St. Matthew desires to show
that our Lord, _as the son of Abraham_, is the child of promise in whom
all the families of the earth shall be blessed, and, _as the son of
David_, {43} is heir to the kingdom of spiritual Israel. The genealogy
is partly based on that of the Greek version of 1 Chron. i.-iii., and
is intended to teach certain special truths. It is arranged so as to
be a kind of summary of the history of the people of God, each group of
14 names ending with a crisis. Jesus is the flower and fulfilment of
that history. It furnishes a reply to Jewish critics. They would say
that Jesus could not be Messiah unless Joseph, his supposed father, was
descended from David. St. Matthew shows that St. Joseph was of Davidic
descent. Again, the Jews would say that in any case the Messiah would
not be likely to be connected with a humble carpenter and his folk.
The evangelist's reply is that David himself was descended from
comparatively undistinguished men and from women who were despised.
Thus St. Matthew meets both points raised by the Jews.

Of recent years another criticism has been passed on this pedigree of
our Lord. A copy of the Old Syriac version of the Gospels, discovered
at Sinai and published in 1894, says that Joseph begat Jesus, and in
this way denies that Jesus was born of a pure virgin. Some writers who
wish to believe that our Lord was brought into the world in the same
manner as ourselves, have said that this Syriac versio