Mark Goodacre and NTpod

The NT blogfather Mark Goodacre has a very good 5 minute podcast on Matthew's genealogy. I used to think that Matthew's genealogy was a rather boring and prosaic piece of literature included only to satisfy antiquarian interest in an important persons' biological stock, until one of my Ph.D students, Jason Hood, began writing his Ph.D thesis on the annotations of the genealogy. Jason's thesis has been eye opening in that he's seen Matthew's genealogy as an encapsulated history of Israel and looked at the signficance of the annotations. Goodacre focuses on the four women named in the Matthean genealogy and he contends that they are included either because of their gentile origins or because of their association with illicit sexual activity. While that maybe true, the mention of the women cannot be understood apart from the other annotations in the genealogy as well like "Judah and his brothers" (v. 2) "Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of exile" (v. 11). Makes for a very good discussion and Goodacre shows us the tip of the iceberg.