the Gospel in Genealogy: Matthew, Luke, and Architecture of Incarnation

Biblical genealogies are often treated as lists to be endured or skipped. But what if they are among Scripture's most carefully constructed literary structures?The Gospel in Genealogy examines the genealogies of Matthew and Luke as distinct but converging presentations of Jesus within Israel's canonical history. Matthew moves forward from Abraham through David, exile, and restoration, shaping the lineage through deliberate compression. Luke moves backward from Jesus through David and Abraham to Adam, expanding the genealogy toward the horizon of humanity itself.Rather than forcing the two accounts into artificial sameness, Stephanie Gentry and Manuel Armstrong Jr. examine what each genealogy actually preserves: its direction, omissions, structural boundaries, lexical forms, historical setting, and theological function.This volume investigates: - Matthew's three-part arrangement and purposeful compression - Luke's reverse movement from Jesus to Adam - the Davidic lines associated with Solomon and Nathan - the exile, Jechoniah, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, and the post-exilic record - the grammatical significance of Matthew 1:16 - ancient genealogical conventions and comparative controls - harmonization proposals and their evidentiary limits - the difference between biological descent, legal paternity, dynastic continuity, and literary structure - the point at which historical evidence ends and theological interpretation beginsSupported by genealogical tables, structural models, Greek analysis, primary-source controls, adversarial questions, indexes, and an annotated bibliography, The Gospel in Genealogy offers a disciplined investigation of how two different genealogies can preserve a shared canonical destination without erasing their genuine differences.The genealogies do not merely introduce the Gospel story. They establish the architecture through which the story enters history.