Book of Matthew is also the name of a person, Matthew.

If you've ever read the sequel to a novel without having read the original story, you'll know that picking up the storyline without a transition can be difficult. The Gospel of Matthew serves as such a transition. It connects the story of the Old Testament with the story of the New Testament, helping us understand how the life and teaching of Jesus built upon what had come before.

This book may have been written by Matthew, a tax collector who became one of Christ's twelve disciples. It was written to offer irrefutable proof that the long-awaited Jewish Messiah had come to inaugurate God's kingdom on earth. This book was written primarily for Jewish readers, hence Matthew's frequent use of the Old Testament, and his Jewish bias in his descriptions. For example, he uses Son of David instead of Son of God (as in the Book of John). One of Matthew's major themes is the kingdom of heaven. Note Jesus' teachings about what it means to be a citizen of that kingdom.