The New Testament in 90 Days

I can't help noticing now that the Sermon on the Mount has bee preached, that Jesus gets busy healing all kinds of illnesses, and exorcising demons.  There are many healing stories, and no two are exactly like.  There is leprosy, a fever, demon possession, paralysis, death, hemorrhaging, blindness, inability to speak. But somehow the healing can't be reduced to the names of the illnesses -- we need to know the people who were healed, and something about them:  so there is a centurion's servant, healed by command from a distance, a twelve year old girl, a man lowered on a mat through a roof by four of his friends, a man who was made an outcast by his skin disease, a woman who touches the hem of Jesus' robe.  Oh, and Peter's mother-in-law.  Among others. In the middle of all these things, Jesus finds times to quiet a storm (my translation says that the waves were "sloshing over the boat"), to call another disciple (Matthew, from his tax booth), to answer...

Here we are at the beginning of the New Testament:  Matthew's Gospel.  And here we are at the beginning of Matthew's gospel.  Matthew begins with Jesus' ancestry, his family tree.  I've often joked about how boring these lists of names can be.  If you want people to keep reading your story, why would you start with a list of names?  Why begin with "A Record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ", instead of something like this:  "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times," or "Call me Ishmael."  Even "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God" has more of a ring to it.  But Matthew must have thought that it was most intriguing, because he put it first.  He must have thought it would draw people in. There's actually a lot to be curious about in this family tree.  There are stories underneath every single name, but perhaps the people to whom Matthew wrote knew more of these stories than we do.  For me, the women...