Richard A. Jensen relates the following story about the importance of genealogies:

There is a story told of a man who translated the Bible into one of the many languages of the people of Papua New Guinea. His translating procedure was to translate a passage, have his assistant read it to the people, and revise the translation accordingly. In doing this the translator skipped the genealogy for the same reason we pay so little attention to it: boring!  At the end of…