Matthew 1 is the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. It contains two distinct sections. The first lists the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham to his legal father Joseph, husband of Mary, his mother. The second part, beginning at verse 18, provides an account of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 25 verses.

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:

Matthew opens with the genealogy of Jesus, set out in three stages each of 14 generations: from Abraham to David, from David to the Babylonian exile and thence to Jesus' legal father Joseph, the husband of Mary his mother. The list opens and closes with a significant title for Jesus as "Jesus Christ" (1:1, 1:18; rarely used in the Gospel of Matthew). The opening words of the gospel show that it is written by a Jew for Jewish readers. The genealogy demonstrates that Jesus comes from the seed of Abraham and belongs to the House of David, and thus is their heir. The Gospel also asserts Jesus is, in fact, the Son of God, and Joseph is, thus, not actually Jesus' father. Legally, however, Joseph is Jesus' father and some scholars contend legal parentage is of the most importance. Ra McLaughlin argues that the central event in this passage is actually the adoption of Jesus by Joseph (signified by his naming of the child), which alone makes Jesus eligible to be the messiah from the line of David.

The section begins with Abraham, who is traditionally regarded as the ancestor of all the families of the Earth. It then runs through the prominent Old Testament figures of Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. The passage also references Judah's brothers who have no actual place in the genealogy. Gundry contends they are included because the author of Matthew is trying to portray the people of God as a brotherhood.

There are several problems with the genealogies. The list here is significantly different from that found in Luke 3, where the list from the Babylonian captivity to Jesus' grandfather is wholly different. Matthew skips several names in portions where the genealogy is well known from other sources, Jehoiakim is left out in 1:11 and four names are dropped from 1:8. Unlike most Biblical genealogies, Matthew's genealogy mentions several figures not in the direct line of descent, including four women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.

Several theories address these questions. One popular theory is that, while Matthew provides the genealogy of Joseph and his father Jacob, Luke details the genealogy of Joseph's father-in-law Heli. Thus, the author of Matthew focuses on Jesus' royalty lineage, rather than precise biological line (that possibly used by the author Luke) which the author of Matthew did not have access to. McLaughlin argues that because Jeconiah must be counted in two different groups in order to make the "fourteen generations" of 1:17, the genealogy here must be seen, not as a historically complete list, but as a literary device intended to highlight four significant events in Israelite history: the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with David, the Babylonian exile, and especially the reign of the messiah, which is the subject of the rest of the Gospel.

Other scholars doubt these theories, and most who do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible believe one or both of the pair are historically inaccurate. Luke's genealogy contains a more realistic number of names, given the time period, and Matthew's list also lacks the papponymic naming used in the period. Gundry believes the latter part of Matthew's list is "a large figure of speech". He argues that at the time it was perfectly acceptable to fill gaps in a historical narrative with plausible fiction.