Why Does Matthew not give Jesus Christ's genealogy from Adam? In Matthew 1:1, it says that Jesus is the son of David and the son of Abraham. Why does he not start from Adam and Eve?
This question spawns from a misunderstanding of why the genealogy is there in the first place.

The genealogy is not a benign collection of facts, much like our own western approach to the topic would have it listed. Instead, Matthew provides Jesus' genealogy to legitimize him for any Jewish readers. 

First, consider that everyone is from Adam. It means nothing for any purpose to start a genealogy from Adam. We all came from Adam. If Matthew was simply stating the facts of Jesus' family line, then starting at Adam would have been acceptable. But Jesus needed to be legitimized for a Jewish audience.

Abraham is the father of all Judaism. That's not just a colloquialism. Abraham literally is the ancestor of all Jews, by both blood and marriage. The genealogy starts at Abraham to tell the audience that Jesus was indeed a Jew.

Judah, the son of Jacob, stands out as the forefather one of the twelve tribes. This tells the reader that Matthew is claiming Jesus is from the tribe of Judah.

David stands out, and is probably the most important, because of specific messianic prophecies that the Messiah must be from the line of David. Matthew claims Jesus is the Messiah, so this one name in Jesus' genealogy is vitally important.

In contrast to modern, western thinking, Matthew used Jesus' genealogy like an address, proving that he is the Messiah. There is a very obvious appeal to Jewish readers. A number of other things stand out, such as the fact that it is listed in three sets of fourteen, indicating a kind of poetry, and the heavy annotations in the first set, but missing from the other two.

Compared to Luke's genealogy, which is more utilitarian and fact centered, tracing from Jesus to Adam, it is clear that Matthew's genealogy serves a very specific purpose.



The sources on this are abundant across the internet. The Wikipedia article Genealogy of Jesus is a good start.