Unlike Adam, this perfect man came into a world that was flawed. Luke ties Jesus into the full flow of humanity by tracing his lineage back to God through God’s created son, Adam. Matthew, always interested in prophecy fulfillment, shows Jesus as a descendent of David and Abraham, giving Jesus’s lineage from Abraham to Joseph, his adoptive father. 

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Eusebius, the early church historian, believed—as most still do—that Matthew followed Jesus’s genealogy through Joseph to show his legality as a descendant in the line of David. Luke seems more interested in his physical lineage. He traces it through Jesus’ biological parent, Mary. 

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The genealogies divide after David. Joseph's line is legally traced though Solomon; Mary's through David's son, Nathan. This doesn’t solve all of the confusion, however. Matthew says that after the exile to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel. Luke says Shealtiel’s father was Neri. Who’s right? Both are. We read in Jeremiah 22:30 that Jeconiah is to be viewed as childless—that none of his descendants would rule. The answer is that Matthew moves through the royal line and therefore through an adopted son of Jeconiah who ruled, while Luke follows the physical lineage.

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The list of generations between Jesus and Abraham may be more extensive in Luke than in Matthew, in that it lists about twice as many generations. Matthew seems to have edited his list to the more important ancestors. That doesn’t mean that Matthew is wrong saying there are fourteen ancestors in each of his categories. In the genealogies of the Bible, there is no textual distinction between father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. There must be gaps in Matthew’s list or significant members of the line would have had to have lived for centuries. Thus, Matthew must have picked out the well-known men to list in his sets of fourteen. 

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