Luke 3

Chapter 3 opens with the historical setting for John's and Jesus' ministries. Luke gives us a little more detailed account of John's teaching in the desert--notice the religious folks, the tax collectors, and the Roman soldiers right next to each other in the text. Chapter 3 also includes another genealogy of Jesus, like Matthew 1. But upon inspection, this one is different in a few ways. Matthew 1 starts with Abraham and goes forward to Jesus while Luke 3 starts with Jesus and goes all the way back to Adam. A closer look also reveals that there are some different names in this genealogy, most notably from Jesus to David. The explanation that seems most reasonable to me is the one offered in the NIV Study Bible: Matthew follows Joseph's line (Jesus' legal line) while Luke follows Mary's line (Jesus' biological line). If you look closely at the wording in each genealogy, you can see that each author has something special he wants to communicate about Jesus, and this explanation seems to fit well.