a. Gospel stories of Jesus’s youth appear only in Matthew and Luke. In this, there is no underlying oral tradition behind it at all which makes each set functionally specific to each Gospel. In Matthew 1:1-17, he specifically discusses the genealogy of Jesus and formats it in 3 sets of fourteen. Many argue that this represents Jesus as the Messiah as a blood relative of David (which in Hebrew means 14). Other theories for this include the idea that this is a poetic approach symbolizing Joseph’s and Herod’s dreams which were sent from the Holy Spirit to tell of the process of the coming of the Messiah (White 242-243). Matthew’s genealogy section one of Jesus begins with Abraham and ends with King David of Israel (Matthew 1:1-6). The next section included fourteen generations between David and Jechoniah which is when the deportation to Babylon took place (Matthew 1:7-11). Last, after the deportation to Babylon, the generations between Jechoniah and Joseph were listed which would make Jesus the fourteenth generation of section three (Matthew 1:12-17). Matthew does this in a way to highlight Jesus’ deep roots and lineage with Israel and the Jews. Because this lineage exposes that Jesus is the son of both David the king and Abraham the patriarch, he is now shown to be royal and a true Israelite. As shown in ancient aretalogies, lineages become very important in validating and convincing a following that an individual, in this case Jesus, is divine if it can be tied back to a powerful historical figure(s) such as David and Abraham.

b. Verses 1:18-2:23 are all included by Matthew with the purpose of providing proof and reason of Jesus being the Messiah who has come to fulfill Jewish prophecy. Matthew explains the forthcoming of the holy spirit, the rising star which led to Jesus, and the Messiah’s extraordinary birth. All of  these serve as Matthew’s literary evidence of prophecy. Joseph’s, Mary’s and baby Jesus’s flight to Egypt is unique to the Gospel of Matthew, as is Herod’s slaughter of the children. Raymond Brown refers to this as verisimilitude, or a story that gives the appearance of being real when it is not, especially if it is based off of some other legend or event. In this case, he argues that Matthew’s story is based off of the story of Moses’s birth and the pharaoh’s attempt to kill all of the male children of the Israelites (White 240). The Matthew birth narrative also ties directly with the Moses-Joshua/Egypt-Exodus tradition, especially in Matt 2:15 when he says “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”. The parallel to this is shown in Exodus as it quotes “When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son (II:I). Furthermore, it is stated that Matthew’s story of Jesus’s return from Egypt to Nazareth is based on the wording of Isaiah II:I. All of this points to the theory that Matthew is collecting Jewish scriptures and combining them to develop his literary story of Jesus’s birth and further prove that he is truly the Messiah, son of God.