Again, I want to refer to Christopher Wright’s book Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. He asks the question, Why does Matthew start his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus? Why didn’t he go straight to the wonderful story of the Magi? It's "because, says Matthew, you won’t understand that story--the one I am about to tell you--unless you see it in the light of a much longer story which goes back for many centuries but leads up to the Jesus you want to know about." (Wright, 1)