Day 2: Rolling the Credits

That is not how the Gospel writers saw it, and these family trees are there to make sure that the Jesus story stays grounded in the story of the Jewish people. That reality mattered more to whoever finally assembled the Gospels into their current form than the genealogical details, and this should be the takeaway for those of us reading the story now. There are two messages we should get from the begats: First, that Jesus was Jewish and His story needs to be seen as the continuation of the Jewish religious story that starts with God’s promises to Abraham and even further on back to the creation of the world. Second, the life of Jesus should be seen as part of the grounded world of history and not a free-floating myth. It’s important to the Gospel writers that we approach the Christmas story as a historical event with spiritual significance rather than as a set of pretty fables. They are claiming that all this really happened, and to understand the Christmas story as Christians historically have experienced it, we have to acknowledge this claim.