Matthew 1:1-17, The family tree

The three sets of fourteen do not come out exactly even, and Matthew skips some generations; Keener reads fourteen as a rounded number marking the great turning points, and notes that the Hebrew letters of David's name add up to fourteen, which some scholars call coincidence. Wright counts the list as "six groups of seven names," so that Jesus opens the seventh seven. Whether Tamar was a Canaanite, as Keener's notes and the CSB Study Bible say, or an Aramean, as Bailey argues from Jubilees, is itself debated. The book names no author. Carson, Moo and Morris note that the early church named the apostle Matthew, the tax collector of 10:3, without dissent, and find the case that the title is early "very strong, even if not unassailable"; most scholars put Matthew between AD 80 and 100, after Mark and after Jerusalem's fall; Carson, Moo and Morris argue for the sixties, before 70, and Wilkins, following Irenaeus, for the late fifties or early sixties. Most place it in Syria, perhaps Antioch, where Ignatius is the first writer clearly to use it; the church fathers assumed Palestine, and Carson, Moo and Morris say the place cannot be known for certain.