Introduction

The earliest church fathers to mention this gospel concur that the author was the apostle Matthew. Papias’s famous statement (cf. ) was interpreted to mean, “Matthew composed the Logia [gospel?] in the Hebrew [Aramaic?] dialect and everyone interpreted them as he was able.” In other words, the apostle first wrote his gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic, and it was subsequently translated into Greek. Matthean priority was almost universally upheld; Mark was considered an abbreviation and therefore somewhat inferior. These factors—apostolic authorship (unlike Mark and Luke) and Matthean priority—along with the fact that Matthew preserves much of Jesus’ teaching not found elsewhere, combined to give this first gospel enormous influence and prestige in the church. With few exceptions, these perspectives dominated gospel study till after the Reformation.

The consensus could not last. An indication of its intrinsic frailty came in 1776 and 1778 when, in two posthumously published essays, A. E. Lessing insisted that the only way to account for the parallels and seeming discrepancies among the Synoptic Gospels was to assume that they all derived independently from an Aramaic “Gospel of the Nazarenes.” Others (J. A. Eichorn, J. G. Herder) developed this idea; and the supposition of a “primal gospel,” whether oral or literary, began to gain influence. Meanwhile J. J. Griesbach (1745–1812) laid the foundations of the modern debate over the “synoptic problem” (see ) by arguing with some care for the priority of both Matthew and Luke over Mark, which was taken to be a condensation of the other two. In the middle of the nineteenth century, many in the Tübingen school adopted this view. As a result, Matthew as an historical and theological source was elevated above the other Synoptics.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a new tide was running. Owing largely to the meticulous work of H. J. Holtzmann (1834–1910), the “two-source hypothesis” gained substantial acceptance. By the beginning of the twentieth century, this theory was almost universally adopted, and subsequent developments were in reality mere modifications of this theory. B. H. Streeter, advocating a “four-source hypothesis” that was essentially a detailed refinement of the two-source theory, argued that Luke’s gospel is made-up of a “Proto-Luke” that was filled out with Mark and Q. This raised the historical reliability of Proto-Luke to the same level as Mark. Streeter’s hypothesis still has some followers, and today most scholars adopt some form of the two-source theory or the four-source theory. This consensus has recently been challenged (see ).

These predominantly literary questions combined with the substantial antisupernaturalism of some critics toward the beginning of the twentieth century to produce various reconstructions of Jesus’ life and teaching. During the 1920s and 1930s, the source criticism implicit in these efforts was largely passed by in favor of form criticism. Philologists first applied this method to the “folk literature” of primitive civilizations, especially the Maoris. H. Gunkel and H. Gressmann then used it to classify OT materials according to their “form.” New Testament scholars, especially K. L. Schmidt, M. Dibelius, and R. Bultmann, applied the method to the Gospels in an effort to explore the so-called tunnel period between Jesus and the earliest written sources. They began by isolating small sections of the Gospels that they took to be units of oral tradition, classifying them according to form. Only the passion narrative was taken as a connected account from the beginning. Oral transmission was thought to effect regular modifications common to all such literature—e.g., repetition engenders brevity in pronouncement stories and provides names in legends, rhythm and balance in didactic sayings, and multiple details in miracle stories. The form critics then assigned these forms to various Sitze im Leben (“life settings”) in the church.

The historical value of any pericope was then assessed against a number of criteria. For instance, the “criterion of dissimilarity” was used to weed out statements attributed to Jesus that were similar to what Palestinian Judaism or early Christianity might have said. Only if a statement was “dissimilar” could it be ascribed with reasonable confidence to Jesus. The net result was a stifling historical skepticism with respect to the canonical gospels. Many scholars used the same literary methods in a more conservative fashion (e.g., V. Taylor’s great commentary on Mark); but the effect of form criticism was to increase the distance between our canonical gospels and the historical Jesus, a distance increased further in Matthew’s case because of the continued dominance of the two-source hypothesis. Few any longer believed that Matthew the apostle was the first evangelist.

Following World War II a major change took place. Anticipated by George D. Kilpatrick’s study, which focused on the distinctives in Matthew’s theology, the age of redaction criticism as applied to Matthew began with a 1948 essay by Günther Bornkamm. He presupposed Mark’s priority and then in one pericope sought to explain every change between the two gospels as a reflection of Matthew’s theological interests and biases. Redaction criticism offered one great advantage over form criticism: it saw the evangelists not as mere compilers of the church’s oral traditions and organizers of stories preserved or created in various forms but as theologians in their own right, shaping and adapting the material in order to make their own points.

It became important to distinguish between “traditional” material and “redactional” material, i.e., between what came to the evangelist already formed and the changes and additions he made. In other words, while tradition may preserve authentic historical material, redactional material does not do so. It rather serves as the best way of discerning an evangelist’s distinctive ideas. In his meticulous study of one pericope, Bornkamm sought to demonstrate a better method of understanding Matthew’s theology—a method that could best be discerned by trying to understand how and why Matthew changed his sources (esp. Mark and Q).

Countless studies poured forth in Bornkamm’s wake, applying the same methods to virtually every pericope in Matthew. The translation of redaction-critical studies by G. Bornkamm, G. Barth, and H. J. Held exercised profound influence in the world of New Testament scholarship. In 1963, the first full-scale redaction-critical commentary on Matthew appeared, in which Pierre Bonnard handles his tools fairly conservatively, frequently refusing to comment on historical questions and focusing on Matthew’s theology and the reasons (based on reconstructed “life settings”) for it. His work, which is immensely valuable, became the forerunner of several later English commentaries (notably David Hill’s).

Nevertheless, a rather naive optimism regarding historical reconstruction developed that influenced many writers, who tended to think they could read off from Matthew’s redaction the theological beliefs either of Matthew’s community or of the evangelist himself as he sought to correct or defend some part of his community. The last four or five decades displayed a wide variety of such reconstructions. Kilpatrick argues that the book is catechetical, designed for the church of Matthew’s time. Stendahl thinks the handling of the OT quotations reflects a “school” that stands behind the writing of this gospel, a disciplined milieu of instruction. The major redaction-critical studies attempt to define the historical context in which the evangelist writes—the community circumstances that call this gospel into being (it is thought) between AD 80 and AD 100—and pay little useful attention to the historical context of Jesus. One need only think of such works as those of Trilling, Strecker, Cope, Hare, Frankemölle, and Kunzel, to name a few.

Not all redaction critics interpret Matthew’s reconstructed community the same way; indeed, the differences among them are often great. Moreover, some critics have argued that much more material in the Gospels (including Matthew’s) is authentic than others have thought. Yet the wide diversity of opinion suggests at least some methodological and presuppositional disarray.

Today arguments that depend almost exclusively on redaction-critical judgments are no longer in vogue. In line with developments that have been taking place across the field of New Testament studies, Matthean scholars reflect the enormous diversity of competing special interests. Redaction criticism competes with numerous other foci of interest, including narrative criticism (with its interest in plot development and characterization), close analysis of this book’s literary genre, the nature of oral witness, postfoundational epistemology, an emphasis on the theology of Matthew without bothering to try to sort out historical claims, attempts at delineating the social structures reflected in this gospel (and perhaps calling forth this gospel), and much else. The diversity of approaches is then matched by a diversity of conclusions. Two fairly recent general introductions to Matthew make the point tellingly. They both competently survey the field, but Carter holds that Matthew contains some historically reliable information even though the focus of his work is elsewhere, while Westerholm insists that Matthew is drawing theological and pastoral lessons but sees a much higher place for historical fidelity. Similarly, the most recent commentaries are sharply divided. The major work by Ulrich Luz, reflected also in his brief Studies in Matthew, argues that Matthew is not biography but fictional narrative, while the commentary by R. T. France holds the opposite view.

A modern commentary that aims primarily to explain the text must to some extent respond to current questions, the more so if it adopts a fairly independent stance, for many of these questions significantly affect our understanding of what the text says.

Few problems are philosophically and theologically more complex than the possible relationships between history and theology. The broader issues in the tension between these two cannot be discussed here: e.g., How does a transcendent God manifest himself in space-time history? Can the study of history allow, in its reconstructions of the past, for authority and influence outside the space-time continuum? To what extent is the supernatural an essential part of Christianity, and what does it mean to approach such matters “historically”? What are the epistemological bases for a system professing to be revealed religion? Even the titles of recent books about Jesus show the chasm that separates scholar from scholar on these points.

This section will therefore ask some preliminary methodological questions. How appropriate and reliable are the various methods of studying the Gospels if we are to determine not only the theological distinctives of each evangelist but also something of the teaching and life of the historical Jesus? We must begin by avoiding many of the historical and theological disjunctions notoriously common among NT scholars. Consider, for example, the essay by K. Tagama, who arrives at his conclusion that the central theme of Matthew is “people and community” by insisting that all other important themes are mutually contradictory and therefore cancel one another out. But contradiction is a slippery category. As most commonly used in NT scholarship, it does not refer to logical contradiction but to situations, ideas, beliefs that on the basis of the modern scholar’s reconstruction of early church history are judged to be mutually incompatible.

Such judgments are only as convincing as the historical and theological reconstructions undergirding them; and too often, historical reconstructions that in many cases have no other sources than the NT documents depend on illicit disjunctions. Did Jesus preach the nearness of the end of history and of the consummated kingdom? Then he could not have preached that the kingdom had already been inaugurated, and elements apparently denying this conclusion obviously spring from the church. Or did Jesus preach that the kingdom had already dawned? Then the apocalyptic element in the Gospels must be largely assigned to the later church. (On this particular problem, see

All such disjunctive reconstructions are suspect. Historical “contradictions,” as David Fischer has shown, too often reside in the eye of the historian. Strange combinations of ideas may coexist side by side in one generation, even though a later generation cannot tolerate them and therefore breaks them up. So we need to be cautious about pronouncing what ideas can be “historically” incompatible. Acts and the early Pauline epistles show us considerable diversity in the fast-growing infant church, as a number of NT studies attempt to explain.

Reconstruction is a necessary part of historical inquiry. Sometimes meticulous reconstruction from a number of reliable documents shows that some further document is not what it purports to be. But as far as the gospel of Matthew (or any of the canonical gospels) is concerned, we must frankly confess we have no access to the alleged “Matthean [or Markan, Lukan, etc.] community” apart from the individual gospel itself. The numerous studies describing and analyzing Matthew’s theology against the background of Christianity and Judaism contemporary with Matthew’s “community” in AD 80–100 (e.g., Allison, Carter, Stanton) beg a host of methodological questions. This is not to deny that Matthew’s gospel may have been written within a community about AD 80 or may have addressed some such community; rather, is it to argue the following points.

1. What Matthew aims to write is a gospel telling us about Jesus, not a church circular addressing an independently known problem.

2. There is substantial evidence that the early church was interested in the historical Jesus and wanted to know what he taught and why. Equally there is strong evidence that the Gospels constitute, at least in part, an essential element of the church’s kerygmatic ministry, its evangelistic proclamation—each gospel having been shaped for particular audiences.

3. It is therefore methodologically wrong to read off some theme attributed by the evangelist to Jesus and conclude that what is actually being discussed is not the teaching of Jesus but an issue of AD 80, unless the theme or saying can be shown to be anachronistic.

4. Matthew’s reasons for including or excluding this or that tradition or for shaping his sources must owe something to the circumstances he found himself in and the concerns of his own theology. But it is notoriously difficult to reconstruct such circumstances and commitments from a gospel about Jesus of Nazareth.

5. Moreover, virtually all the themes isolated as reflections of AD 80 could in fact reflect interests of any decade from AD 30 to 100. In the early thirties, for instance, Stephen was martyred because he spoke against the law and the temple. Similar concerns dominated the Jerusalem Council (AD 49) and demanded thought both before and after the Jewish War (AD 66–70). The truth is that such themes as law and temple and even many christological formulations (see ) offer very little help in identifying a “life setting” for the church in Matthew’s day. Although Matthean scholarship may advance by trying out new theories, no advance that forces a Procrustean synthesis based on methodologically dubious deductions constitutes genuine progress.

For those who are strongly influenced by the rather extreme voices of the “Jesus Seminar,” whose members still rely heavily on source criticism and redaction criticism, a few things must be said. This approach to the Gospels has been scrutinized elsewhere (e.g., Carson and the literature cited there); and only a few points need be made here.

1. The “criteria of authenticity,” as has often been pointed out, are hopelessly inadequate. For instance, the “criterion of dissimilarity,” namely, that only if a statement was “dissimilar” from what Palestinian Judaism or early Christianity might have said could it be ascribed with reasonable confidence to Jesus, can only cull out the distinctive or the eccentric while leaving the characteristic untouched—unless one is prepared to argue that Jesus’ teaching characteristically never resembled contemporary Judaism and was never adopted by the church.

2. The analysis of the descent of the tradition, though useful in itself, is marred by four major flaws. First, comparative studies in oral transmission have dealt largely with periods of hundreds of years, not decades. On any dating of the Gospels, some eyewitnesses were still alive when the evangelists published their books. Second, the work of several Scandinavian scholars has drawn attention to the role of memory in Jewish education. Their work has been seriously criticized, but even their most perceptive critics recognize that too little attention has been paid to the power of human memory before Gutenberg—a phenomenon attested in many Third-World students today. More impressive yet, the detailed attack on form criticism by Erhardt Guttgemanns is so compelling that one wonders whether form criticism is of any value as a historical (as opposed to literary) tool. Oral traditions, especially religious oral traditions, are not conducive to tampering and falsification but are remarkably stable. Third, convincing reasons have been advanced for concluding that some written notes were taken even during Jesus’ public ministry. Written material, of course, necessarily fits into various forms or genres; but such genres must be considered quite separately from the forms of oral transmission and the shaping that takes place by this means. If traditions of Jesus’ words and deeds were passed on by both oral and written forms, many of the historical conclusions of the form-critical model collapse. Fourth, classic form criticism is intrinsically incapable of dealing historically with several similar sayings of Jesus, since they all tend toward the same form.

3. More broadly, the fact that Jesus was an itinerant preacher (see

4. To deduce that all changes in Mark and Q (however Q may be defined), including omissions and additions, are the result of exclusively theological motives fails to reckon with the extreme likelihood of a multiplicity both of reasons for introducing changes and of sources, oral and written, within the first few decades (cf. Lk 1:1–4) and with the possibility that the author was an apostle (see ). While apostolic authorship would not give the text more authority than nonapostolic authorship, it must affect our judgment of the role of oral and written sources in the making of this gospel. These factors—multiplicity of sources and possible apostolic authorship—suggest that in most instances there is no compelling reason for thinking that material judged redactional is for that reason unhistorical.

5. Modern redaction criticism also suffers from dependency on a particular solution to the Synoptic Problem (see ).

6. Also, redaction criticism fails to consider how many changes from Mark to Matthew (assuming Mark’s priority) might owe something to stylistic predilections rather than theology. For example, Frans Neirynck has clearly shown that Matthew’s account of the feeding of the five thousand, often said to reflect more clearly than Mark the institution of the Eucharist, in reality turns out to be entirely consistent with the stylistic changes he introduces elsewhere.

7. Too many redaction-critical studies develop an understanding of the theology of Matthew’s gospel solely on the basis of the changes instead of giving adequate thought to the document as a whole. Surely what Matthew retains is as important to him as what he modifies. The possibility of distortion becomes acute when, on the basis of changes, Matthew’s distinctive theology is outlined and then anything conflicting with this model is reckoned to be “unassimilated tradition” or the like. It is far wiser to check the “changes” again and determine whether they have been rightly understood and, avoiding a priori disjunctions, to seek to integrate them into all that Matthew writes down.

Such considerations do not eliminate the need for redaction criticism. In God’s providence we are able to compare the Synoptic Gospels with one another, and such study helps us better understand each of them. Matthew’s topical treatment of miracles (Mt 8–9), his chiastic arrangement of parables (Mt 13), the differences he exhibits when closely compared with Mark—these all help us identify his distinctives more precisely than would otherwise be possible. Thus no responsible modern commentary on the Synoptic Gospels can avoid using redaction criticism. But redaction criticism, trimmed of its excesses and weaned from its radical heritage, throws only a little light on historical questions; and one must always guard against its dethroning what is essential by focusing on what is distinctive and idiosyncratic. It is best deployed when one is simultaneously utilizing an array of other approaches that together commit the student to attentive listening to the entire text.

It is possible to approach the question of how much history is found in Matthew by examining the genre of literature—either of the gospel as a whole or of some section of it. Perhaps a “gospel” is not meant to convey historical information; perhaps certain stories in Matthew are midrash and, like parables, make theological points without pretending to be historical. Anticipating later discussion (), we conclude that the evangelists, including Matthew, intended that their gospels convey historical information. This does not mean they intended to write dispassionate, modern biographies. But advocacy does not necessarily affect truth telling. A Jewish writer on the Holocaust is not necessarily either more or less accurate because his family perished at Auschwitz. Nor is it proper in the study of any document professedly dealing with history to approach it with a neutral stance that demands proof of authenticity as well as proof of inauthenticity.

Stewart Goetz and Craig Blomberg, in an adaptation of a Kantian argument, write:

If the assumption was that no one ever wrote history for the sake of accuracy, then no fraudulent history could ever be written with the expectation that it would be believed. The process of deception is parasitic on the assumption that people normally write history with the intent of historical accuracy. People must (a) acknowledge the a priori truth that truth telling is the logical backdrop to lying, and (b) actually assume that people tell the truth in order for a lie to be told with the expectation that it will be believed.

So with any particular historian, including Matthew, the writer of history must be assumed reliable until shown to be otherwise. “The reader must make this a priori commitment if the practice of writing history is to be viable.” In other words, other things being equal, the burden of proof rests with the skeptic.

From this perspective, harmonization, which currently has a bad name in NT scholarship, retains a twofold importance: negatively, it is nothing more than one way of applying the coherence test for authenticity; and, positively, once we no longer insist that every gospel distinctive is the result of theological commitment or that the only possible sources are Mark, Q, and a little undefined oral tradition, harmonization carefully handled may permit the illumination of one source by another, provided legitimate redaction-critical distinctions are not thereby obliterated.

This commentary endeavors to apply these observations and assessments to the gospel of Matthew. Rigorous application would have trebled the length. Therefore, certain sections and pericopes were singled out for more extensive treatment (see, e.g.,

The return of the Synoptic Problem to center stage as the focus of much debate (see ) during the last several decades necessitates some assessment of the developments that impinge on questions of authorship, date, and interpretation of Matthew. One contributing factor to the debate is the quotation from Papias (ca. AD 135) recorded by Eusebius. Several of Papias’s expressions are ambiguous: “Matthew synetaxato [composed? compiled? arranged?] the logia [sayings? gospel?] in Hebraidi dialektō [in the Hebrew (Aramaic?) language? in the Hebrew (Aramaic?) style?]; and everyone hērmēneusen [interpreted? translated? transmitted?] them as he was able [contextually, who is ‘interpreting’ what?].” The early church understood the sentence to mean that the apostle Matthew first wrote his gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic and then it was translated. But few today accept this. Although Matthew has Semitisms, much evidence suggests it was first composed in Greek.

The most important attempts to understand this sentence from Papias include the following.

1. T. W. Manson made popular the view that identifies the logia with sayings of Jesus found in Q. That would make Matthew the author of Q (a source or sources including approximately 250 verses common to Matthew and Luke) but not of this gospel. Papias confused the two. This view falters on two facts. First, it cannot explain how an important apostolic source such as the Q that this theory requires could have so completely disappeared that there is no other mention of it, let alone a copy. Indeed, the entire Q hypothesis, however reasonable, is still only a hypothesis. Second, Papias’s two other instances of logia (recorded by Eusebius) suggest the word refers to both sayings and deeds of Jesus, while Q is made up almost exclusively of the former. From this perspective, logia better fits the gospel of Matthew than a source such as Q.

2. This last criticism can also be leveled against the view that logia refers to OT “testimonia,” a book of OT “proof texts” compiled by Matthew from the Hebrew canon and now incorporated into the gospel. Furthermore, it is not certain that such “testimonia” ever existed as separate books; and in any case it would have been unnecessary to compile them in Hebrew and then translate them, since the LXX was already well established. Matthew demonstrably follows the LXX in passages where Mark has parallels (see ).

3. If by logia Papias meant our canonical Matthew, then in the opinion of many scholars convinced that canonical Matthew was set down in Greek (e.g., David Hill), Papias was plainly wrong. Either his testimony must be ignored as valueless or we must suppose that Papias was right as to the language but confused the gospel with some other Semitic work, perhaps the apocryphal gospel according to the Hebrews.

4. Josef Kürzinger offers a possible way out of the dilemma. He thinks logia refers to canonical Matthew but that Hebraidi dialektō refers not to Hebrew or Aramaic language but to Semitic style or literary form. Matthew arranged his gospel in Semitic (i.e., Jewish-Christian) literary form dominated by Semitic themes and devices. In this view, the last clause of Papias’s statement cannot refer to translation, since language is no longer in view. Kürzinger points out that immediately before Papias’s sentence about Matthew, he describes how Mark composed his gospel by putting down Peter’s testimony; and there Mark is called the hermēneutēs of Peter. This cannot mean Mark was Peter’s translator. It means he “interpreted” or “transmitted” (neither English word is ideal) what Peter said. If the same meaning is applied to the cognate verb in Papias’s statement about Matthew, then it could be that everyone “passed on” or “interpreted” Matthew’s gospel to the world, as he was able.

It is difficult to decide which interpretation is correct. A few still argue that Matthew’s entire gospel was first written in Aramaic. That view best explains the language of Papias, but it is not easy to reconcile with Matthew’s Greek. Why, for instance, does he sometimes use a Greek source such as the LXX? It cannot be argued that the alleged translator decided to use the LXX for all OT quotations in order to save himself some work, for only some of them are from the LXX. If this interpretation of Papias’s statement does not stand, then Papias offers no support for Matthean priority.

The other two plausible interpretations of Papias are problematic. The view that Papias was referring to Q or some part of it offers the easiest rendering of Hebraidi dialektō (“in the Hebrew [Aramaic] language”) but provides an implausible rendering for logia. Kürzinger’s solution provides the most believable rendering of logia (namely, canonical Matthew) but a less likely interpretation of Hebraidi dialektō (“in the Semitic literary form”). Yet this rendering is possible and makes sense of the whole, even though Kürzinger’s view has not been well received. The important point is that either of these last two views fits easily with a theory of Markan priority, which may also be hinted at in the fact that, as Eusebius preserves him, Papias discusses Mark at length before turning rather briefly to Matthew.

Quite apart from the testimony of Papias, the NT evidence itself demands some decisions, however tentative, regarding the Synoptic Problem. Its boundaries are well-known. About 90 percent of Mark is found in Matthew, and very frequently Matthew agrees with Mark’s ordering of pericopes as well as his wording (see esp. chs. 3–4; 12–28). Matthew’s pericopes are often more condensed than Mark’s but have a great deal of other material, much of it discourses. Of this material, about 250 verses are common to Luke, and again the order is frequently (though by no means always) the same. In both instances the wording is often so similar throughout such lengthy passages that it is difficult to see oral fixation of the tradition as an adequate explanation. Some literary dependence seems self-evident. It is easier to support the view that Matthew and Luke both depend on Mark than vice versa, largely because Matthew and Mark frequently agree against Luke, and Mark and Luke frequently agree against Matthew, but Matthew and Luke seldom agree against Mark.

It is not the argument from order itself that is convincing, for all that proves is that Mark stands in the middle between the other two. What is more impressive is that close study finds it easier to explain changes from Mark to Matthew and Luke than the other way around. The two-source hypothesis, despite its weaknesses—what, for instance, is the best explanation for the so-called minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark if both Matthew and Luke depend on Mark?—is still more defensible than any of its competitors.

Before pointing out a few of the historical and interpretive implications of this view, notice must be taken of the main alternatives.

1. By far the most common alternative is some form of the Griesbach hypothesis. This argues for Matthean priority, dependence of Luke on Matthew (according to some), and Mark as an abbreviation of Matthew and Luke. Despite increasingly sophisticated defenses of this position, it remains implausible. It appears highly unlikely that any writer, let alone a first-century writer such as Mark, would take two documents (in this case Matthew and Luke) and analyze them so carefully as to write a condensation virtually every word of which is in the sources—a condensation that is graphic, forceful, and not artificial. The impressive list of literary analogies compiled by Roland Frye, who argues that Mark must be secondary because it is much shorter than Matthew and Luke and that literary parallels confirm that writers deeply dependent on written sources condense their sources, actually confounds his conclusion; for where he follows Mark, Matthew’s account is almost always shorter. His greater total length—and even the occasional longer Matthean pericope—always comes from new material added to that from the Markan source. Frye therefore inadvertently supports the two-source hypothesis. Moreover, the Griesbach hypothesis flies in the face of other evidence from Papias, who insists that Mark wrote his gospel on the basis of material from Peter, not by condensing Matthew and Luke.

2. Antonio Gaboury and Xavier-Léon Dufour argue that the pericopes preserving the same order in the triple tradition (i.e., in Matthew, Mark, and Luke) constitute a primary source on which all three Synoptic Gospels have been built. But it is demonstrable that sometimes the evangelists chose topical arrangements quite different from their parallels (e.g., see

3. Several scholars adopt Markan priority but deny the existence of Q. Parallels between Matthew and Luke are explained by saying that Luke read Matthew before composing his own gospel. That is possible; but if so, he has hidden the fact extraordinarily well (cf., e.g., Mt 1–2 and Lk 1–2). Gundry holds to the existence of a somewhat expanded Q but argues as well that Luke used Matthew—and this explains the “minor agreements” between Matthew and Luke. But this view, though possible, is linked in Gundry’s mind with his theory that sources shared by Matthew and Luke include even such matters as the nativity story—and this is very doubtful.

4. John Rist and one or two contemporary commentators (e.g., Jeffrey Gibbs) reject both the two-source hypothesis and the Griesbach hypothesis and argue for the independence of Matthew and Mark. As many others have done, Rist focuses attention on 4:12–13:58, where there are numerous divergences in order between Matthew and Mark. He examines a short list of passages in the triple tradition where there is not only close verbal similarity but identical order and argues that in each case the order is either logical or the result of memory, not literary dependence. But Rist does not adequately weigh the impressive list of instances where Matthew agrees with Mark’s order without close verbal similarity. Such order argues strongly for some kind of literary dependence, no matter how the verbal dissimilarities are explained.

5. Others, in the hope of keeping Matthean priority alive, argue that his gospel was first written in Aramaic; and this became a source for Mark, which in turn influenced the Greek rendering of Matthew. This is possible, but we have already seen that Papias’s testimony may not support a Semitic Matthew at all. And it remains linguistically improbable that the whole of Matthew was originally in Aramaic.

There are other proposed solutions to the Synoptic Problem, generally of much greater complexity. But not only do they suffer from the improbability of some of their details; the theories as a whole are so complex as to be unprovable.

The two-source hypothesis remains the most attractive general solution. This does not mean that it can be proved with mathematical certainty or that all arguments advanced in its favor are convincing. But some small details are very weighty. Robert Gundry has shown that the OT quotations and allusions Matthew and Mark have in common are consistently from the LXX, whereas those found in Matthew alone are drawn from a variety of versions and textual traditions. It is singularly unlikely that Mark was condensing Matthew, for so consistent a collection of Matthew’s OT quotations—only those from the LXX—seems too coincidental to be believed. The pattern is easy enough to understand if Matthew depended on Mark.

Yet in itself the two-source hypothesis is almost certainly too simple. Source-critical questions are enormously complex; many facets of the question demand tighter controls. Moreover, close study has convinced some careful scholars that the evidence does not warrant the degree of certainty with which many hold the two-source hypothesis. Such uncertainty is unpopular, but it is scarcely more scientific to go beyond the evidence than to admit uncertainty where the evidence does not provide an adequate basis for anything more. Such hesitations are especially anathema to radical redaction critics, for every major redaction-critical study of Matthew rests on the two-source hypothesis. Their aim is to find out how Matthew changed Mark.

In view of the weaknesses inherent in a radical use of redaction criticism and the uncertainties surrounding the two-source hypothesis, this commentary adopts a cautious stance. The two-source hypothesis is sufficiently credible that we do not hesitate to speak of Matthew’s changes of, additions to, and omissions from Mark. But such statements say little about historicity or about the relative antiquity of competing traditions. In some instances it is apparent that Matthew used not only Mark but Q (however Q is conceived), probably other sources, and perhaps his own memory as well. In some instances an excellent case can be made for Matthew’s use of a source earlier than Mark. Any theory of literary dependence must also face subsidiary problems, such as the perplexing features of Luke’s “central section” (see

As for diversity (see

The question of the unity of Matthew’s gospel has little to do with source-critical questions. Instead it deals with how well the evangelist has integrated his material to form cohesive pericopes and a coherent whole. In sections very difficult to interpret (e.g., ch. 24), it is sometimes argued that the evangelist has sewn together diverse traditions that by nature are incapable of genuine coherence. Failing to understand the material, he simply passed it on without recognizing that some of his sources were mutually incompatible.

There are so many signs of high literary craftsmanship in this gospel that such skepticism is unjustified. It is more likely, not to say more humble, to suppose that in some instances we may not understand enough of the first-century setting to be able to grasp exactly what the text says.

Nowhere does the first gospel name its author. The universal testimony of the early church is that the apostle Matthew wrote it, and our earliest textual witnesses attribute it to him (kata Matthaion). How much of that testimony depends on Papias is uncertain. We have already noted that many today think Papias is referring to some source of canonical Matthew rather than to the finished work or, alternatively, that Papias was wrong (see ). If Papias is right, the theory of Matthew’s authorship may receive gentle support from passages like 10:3, where on this theory the apostle refers to himself in a self-deprecating way not found in Mark or Luke.

Modern literary criticism offers many reasons for rejecting Matthew’s authorship. If the two-source hypothesis is correct, then (it is argued) it is unlikely that the eyewitness and apostle Matthew would depend so heavily on a document written by Mark, who was neither an apostle nor (for most events) an eyewitness. Moreover, the reconstructions of canonical Matthew’s life setting, fostered by redaction criticism, converge on AD 80–100 in some kind of savage Jewish-Christian conflict. This is probably a trifle late to assume Matthew’s authorship (though cf. traditions that say the apostle John composed his gospel ca. AD 90); and the details of the reconstructed settings discourage the notion. Werner Kümmel argues that “the systematic and therefore nonbiographical form of the structure of Matthew, the late-apostolic theological position and the Greek language of Matthew make this proposal completely impossible.” He concludes that the identity of the first evangelist is unknown to us but that he must have been a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian with some rabbinic knowledge, who depended on “a form of the Jesus tradition which potently accommodated the sayings of Jesus to Jewish viewpoints.”

These reasons for rejecting Matthew’s authorship are widely accepted today. Thus alternate proposals have sprung up. George Kilpatrick suggests that the early patristic tradition connecting the first gospel with Matthew arose as a conscious community pseudonym by the church that wrote the gospel, in order to gain acceptance and authority for it. Ernest Abel argues that Matthew’s extra material is so confused and contradictory that we must assume it represents the efforts of two separate individuals working independently of each other. Several redaction-critical studies have denied that the author was a Jew, feeling that the antipathy exhibited toward Jesus in this gospel and the ignorance of Jewish life are so deep that the writer must have been a Gentile Christian. Those who think Papias was referring to Q or to some other source used by Matthew are often prepared to say that the apostle composed the source if not the gospel. There are several other theories.

The objections are not as weighty as they at first seem. If what the modern world calls “plagiarism” (the wholesale takeover, without acknowledgment, of another document) was an acceptable literary practice in the ancient world, it is difficult to see why an apostle might not find it congenial. If Matthew thought Mark’s account to be reliable and generally suited to his purposes (and he may also have known that Peter stood behind it), there can be no objection to the view that an apostle depended on a nonapostolic document. Kümmel’s rejection of Matthew’s authorship on the grounds that this gospel is “systematic and therefore nonbiographical” is a non sequitur because (1) a topically ordered account can yield biographical facts as easily as a strictly chronological account, and (2) Kümmel wrongly supposes that apostolicity is for some reason incapable of choosing anything other than a chronological form. The alleged lateness of the theological position may be disputed at every point (see ).

Those who argue that the author could not have been a Jew, let alone an apostle, allege serious ignorance of Jewish life, including inability to distinguish between the doctrines of the Pharisees and the Sadducees (16:12) or, worse, thinking that the Sadducees were still an active force after AD 70 (22:23). But the second of these two passages has synoptic parallels (Mk 12:18; Lk 20:27; here Matthew has interpreted Mark’s verb as a historical present); and neither Matthean passage denies that there are differences separating Pharisees and Sadducees—differences Matthew elsewhere highlights (22:23–33)—but merely insists that on some things the Pharisees and Sadducees could cooperate. This is scarcely surprising. After all, both groups sat in the same Sanhedrin. Politics and theology make strange bedfellows (see ). Other “glaring errors” prove equally ephemeral (e.g., Matthew’s use of Zec 9:9; see

The charge that the Greek of the first gospel is too good to have come from a Galilean Jew overlooks the trilingual character of Galilee, the possibility that Matthew greatly improved his Greek as the church reached out to more and more Greek speakers (both Jews and Gentiles), and the discussion of Robert Gundry, who argues that Matthew’s training and vocation as a tax gatherer (9:9–13; 10:3) would have uniquely equipped him not only with the languages of Galilee but with an orderly mind and the habit of jotting down notes, which may have played a large part in the transmission of the apostolic gospel tradition. C. F. D. Moule wonders whether 13:52, which many take as an oblique self-reference by the evangelist, hides a use of grammateus (GK 1208) that does not mean “teacher of the law” (NIV) but “clerk,” or “secular scribe.” “Is it not conceivable that the Lord really did say to that tax collector Matthew, ‘You have been a “writer” ...; you have had plenty to do with the commercial side of just the topics alluded to in the parables—farmer’s stock, fields, treasure-trove, fishing revenues; now that you have become a disciple, you can bring all this out again—but with a difference.’”

Moule proposes an apostle who was a secular scribe and note taker and who wrote primarily in a Semitic language, leaving behind material that was arranged by another scribe, a Greek writer unknown to us. One may wonder if grammateus, used so often in the Jewish sense of “teacher of the law,” can so easily be assigned a secular sense. But whatever its other merits or demerits, Moule’s argument suggests that the link between this first gospel and the apostle Matthew cannot be dismissed as easily as some have thought.

Richard Bauckham has recently introduced a fresh argument against Matthean authorship. On the basis of his study of equivalent names in the first century, Bauckham does not think that the “Levi” of Mark 2:14–17 can be identified with the “Matthew” of Matthew 9:9–13 (see

None of the arguments for Matthew’s authorship are conclusive. Thus we cannot be entirely certain who the author of the first gospel is. But there are solid reasons in support of the early church’s unanimous ascription of this book to the apostle Matthew, and on close inspection the objections do not appear substantial. Though Matthew’s authorship remains the most defensible position, very little in this commentary depends on it. Where it may have a bearing on the discussion, a cautionary notice is inserted.

During the first three centuries of the church, Matthew was the most highly revered and frequently quoted canonical gospel. The earliest extant documents referring to Matthew are the epistles of Ignatius (esp. To the Smyrnaeans 1.1 [cf. Mt 3:15], ca. AD 110–15). So the end of the first century or thereabouts is the latest date for the gospel of Matthew to have been written.

The earliest possible date is much more difficult to nail down because it depends on so many other disputed points. If Luke depends on Matthew (which seems unlikely), then the date of Luke would establish a new terminus ad quem for Matthew; and the date of Luke is bound up with the date of Acts. If the Griesbach hypothesis (see and ) is correct, then Matthew would have to be earlier than Mark. Conversely, if the two-source hypothesis is adopted, Matthew is later than Mark; and a terminus a quo is theoretically established. Even so there are two difficulties. First, we do not know when Mark was written, but most estimates fall between AD 50 and 65. Second, on this basis most critics think Matthew could not have been written until 75 or 80. But even if Mark is as late as 65, there is no reason based on literary dependence why Matthew could not be dated AD 66. As soon as a written source is circulated, it is available for copying.

Two other arguments are commonly advanced to support the view now in the ascendancy that Matthew was written between 80 and 100 (between which dates there is great diversity of opinion). First, many scholars detect numerous anachronistic details. Though many of these are discussed in the commentary, one frequently cited instance will serve as an example. It is often argued that Matthew transforms the parable of the great banquet (Lk 14:15–24) into the parable of the wedding banquet (Mt 22:1–14); and the process of transformation includes an explicit reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 (22:7). Therefore this gospel must have been written after that. But the conclusion is much too hasty. Those who deny that Jesus could foretell the future concede that Mark predicts the fall of Jerusalem (Mk 13:14; Mt 24:15), arguing that if Mark wrote about AD 65, he was so close to the events that he could see how political circumstances were shaping up. But on this reasoning Matthew could have done the same thing in 66.

More fundamentally, it is at least doubtful that Matthew’s parable (22:1–10) is a mere rewriting of Luke 14:15–24; more likely they are separate parables. And on what ground must we insist that Jesus could not foretell the future? That conclusion derives, not from the evidence, but from an antisupernatural presuppositionalism. Moreover, the language of 22:7 derives from OT categories of judgment, not from the description of an observer. One could almost say that the lack of more detailed description of the events of AD 70 argues for an earlier date. In any event, if it is legitimate to deduce from 22:7 a post–70 date, it must surely be no less legitimate to deduce from 5:23–24, 12:5–7; 23:16–22; and 26:60–61 a pre–70 date, when the temple was still standing. The absurdity of this contradictory conclusion must warn us against the dangers of basing the date of composition on passages that permit other interpretations.

Second, recent studies have tended to argue that the life setting presupposed by the theological stance of the gospel best fits the conditions of AD 80–100. It is more difficult to reconstruct a life setting than is commonly recognized (see ). Many of the criteria for doing so are doubtful. Explicit references to “church” (16:18; 18:17–18) are taken to reflect an interest in later church order. But the authenticity of 16:18 has been ably defended by B. F. Meyer and others (see

Though Matthew’s gospel seems to presuppose uneasy relations between church and synagogue, the gospel is less anti-Jewish than anti-Jewish leaders and their position on Jesus (see ); and such a stance stretches all the way back to the days of Jesus’ ministry. Significantly, Matthew records more warnings against the Sadducees than all other NT writers combined; and after AD 70 the Sadducees no longer existed as a center of authority. Other small touches seem to show that a definite break with Judaism had not yet occurred; and these agree with Bo Reicke, who says, “The situation presupposed by Matthew corresponds to what is known about Christianity in Palestine between AD 50 and ca. 64.”

We must face the awkward fact that criteria such as Matthew’s Christology are not very reliable indices of Matthew’s date (see ). They might easily allow a range from 40 to 100. Gundry believes Luke depends on Matthew and that Luke-Acts was completed not later than 63, so he concludes that Matthew must be still earlier. Clearly this conclusion is only as valid as the hypothesis of Luke’s dependence on Matthew, a hypothesis that does not seem well grounded. While surprisingly little in the gospel conclusively points to a firm date, perhaps the sixties are the most likely decade for its composition.

Most scholars take Antioch as the place of composition. Antioch was a Greek-speaking city with a substantial Jewish population; and the first clear evidence of anyone using the gospel of Matthew comes from Ignatius, bishop of Antioch at the beginning of the second century. This is as good a guess as any. Yet we must remember that Ignatius depends more on John’s gospel and the Pauline epistles than on Matthew. But this does not mean they were all written in Antioch.

Other centers proposed in recent years include Alexandria, Edessa, the province of Syria, and perhaps Tyre or Caesarea Maritima. In each instance the grounds are inadequate. More plausible is H. Dixon Slingerland’s proposal that Matthew 4:15 and 19:1 show that the gospel was written somewhere east of the Jordan (he specifies Pella, but this is an unnecessary and unprovable refinement). If he is right, then Antioch is ruled out.

We cannot be sure of the first gospel’s place of composition. Still more uncertain is its destination. The usual assumption is that the evangelist wrote it to meet the needs of his own center—a not implausible view. But the evangelist may have been more itinerant than usually assumed; and out of such a ministry he may have written his gospel to strengthen and inform a large number of followers and to give them an evangelistic and apologetic tool. We do not know. The only reasonably certain conclusion is that this gospel was written somewhere in the Roman province of Syria, and many others (for the area covered by the designation “Syria,” see

Unlike many of Paul’s epistles or even John’s gospel (20:30–31), Matthew tells his readers nothing about his purpose in writing or its occasion. To some extent, the gospel shows Matthew’s purpose in the way it presents certain information about Jesus. But to go much beyond this and specify the kind of group(s) Matthew was addressing, the kind of problems they faced, and his own deep psychological and theological motivations may verge on speculation. Three restraints are necessary.

1. It is unwise to specify too precise an occasion and purpose because the possibility of error and distortion increases as one leaves hard evidence behind for supposition.

2. It is unwise to specify only one purpose; reductionism cannot do justice to the diversity of Matthew’s themes.

3. Great caution is needed in reconstructing the situation in the church of Matthew’s time from material that speaks of the historical Jesus (see ). In one sense, this may be legitimate, for in all probability Matthew did not compose his gospel simply out of a dispassionate curiosity about history. He intended to address his contemporaries. But it does not necessarily follow that what he alleges occurred in Jesus’ day is immediately transferable to his own day.

Nowhere are these restraints more important than in weighing recent discussion about the diverse emphases on evangelism in this gospel. On the one hand, the disciples are forbidden to preach to others than Jews (10:5–6); on the other, they are commanded to preach to all nations (28:18–20). Because of this bifurcation, some scholars have suggested that Matthew is preserving the traditions of two distinct communities—one that remained narrowly Jewish and the other that was more outward looking. Others think Matthew had to walk a tightrope between conflicting perspectives within his own community, and therefore he preserves both viewpoints—a sort of committee report that satisfied neither side. Still others erect a more specific “occasion” for this tension, a conflict between the church and the synagogue over the place of Gentile mission, with Matthew taking a mediating (not to say compromised) position whose aim was to avoid cleavage between the two groups. Though such reconstructions cannot be ruled out, they suffer from a serious flaw. They fail to recognize that Matthew himself makes distinctions between what Jesus expects and demands during his earthly ministry and what he expects and demands after his resurrection.

Matthew 10:5–6 tells us what Jesus required of his disciples in their first-recorded major assignment; it does not necessarily tell us anything about what was going on in Matthew’s day. The reason Matthew includes 10:6 as well as 28:18–20, and all the texts akin to one passage or the other, may be to explain how Jesus began with his own people and moved outward from there. One might argue that Jesus’ own example is the foundation of Paul’s “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Ro 1:14–17). This change develops not merely on pragmatic grounds but as the outworking of a particular understanding of the OT (see

If this is a responsible approach to the evidence, then we are not justified in postulating conflicting strands of tradition within the Matthean community. It may be that by this retelling of the changed perspective effected by Jesus’ resurrection Matthew is encouraging Jewish Christians to evangelize beyond their own race. Or it may be that he is justifying before non-Christian Jews what he and his fellow Christian Jews are doing. Or it may be that he is explaining the origins of Christian mission to zealous Jewish-Christian personal evangelists who after the warmth of their initial experience want to learn about the historical developments and teaching of Jesus that made the Jewish remnant of his day the church of their own day. Or it may be that, though such questions have not yet arisen, Matthew foresees that they cannot be long delayed and, like a good pastor, decides to forestall the problem by clear teaching. Or it may be that Matthew has Gentile readers in mind. Or it may be that all these factors were at work because Matthew envisages an extensive and varied readership. Several other possibilities come to mind. But such precise reconstructions outstrip the evidence, fail to consider what other purposes Matthew may have had in mind, and frequently ignore the fact that he purports to talk about Jesus, not a Christian community in the sixth, eighth, or tenth decade of the first century.

Particularly unfortunate are several recent works that define the purpose of Matthew’s gospel in categories, both reductionistic and improbable. Rolf Walker argues that Matthew does not reflect specific church problems but that it was written as a piece of theological combat, designed to show that Israel has been totally rejected in the history of salvation and had been displaced by the church so completely that the Great Commission must be understood as a command to evangelize Gentiles only (see

Hubert Frankemölle in his final chapter argues that Matthew’s work is so different from Mark’s—long discourses, careful structure, prologue, epilogue—that it is meaningless to say it is a “gospel” in the same sense as Mark (see ). Instead, Matthew belongs to the literary Gattung (form or genre) to which Deuteronomy and Chronicles belong. Frankemölle cites several phrases (e.g., cf. Dt 31:1, 24; 32:44–45) used by Matthew to round off his own discourses, and from such evidence he concludes that Matthew’s “gospel” is in reality a “book of history,” not of “salvation history” as normally understood but of the community as it summarized its beliefs. Matthew, Frankemölle maintains, does not distinguish between the life and teaching of the historical Jesus and that of the present exalted Lord. In his “literary fiction,” Matthew fuses the two. Thus Jesus becomes the idealized authority behind Matthew the theologian, who here addresses his community. But Frankemölle overemphasizes formal differences between Mark and Matthew and neglects the substantial differences between Matthew and Deuteronomy or Chronicles. His investigation is far from evenhanded.

Frankemölle’s insistence that Matthew is a unified book is surely right. Yet a book may be theologically unified by appealing to prophecy-fulfillment and other salvation-historical categories. Theological unity does not entail ignoring historical data. Moreover, neither Walker nor Frankemölle adequately recognizes that for most of his gospel Matthew depends heavily on Mark and Q (however Q may be understood). Matthew was creative, but not as creative as Walker and Frankemölle think.

Michael Goulder offers a lectionary theory. Arguing somewhat along the lines of Carrington and Kilpatrick, Goulder maintains that Matthew’s purpose was to provide a liturgical book. He argues that the evangelist has taken the pattern of lections of the Jewish festal year as his base and developed a series of readings to be used in liturgical worship week by week. Mark, a lectionary book for a half-year cycle, has been expanded by Matthew (not the apostle) to a yearlong lectionary; and Mark is Matthew’s only source. Luke, dependent on Matthew, has also written a lectionary for a full year but has displaced the festal cycle followed by Matthew with the annual Sabbath cycle of readings. Q does not exist.

Despite Goulder’s immense erudition, there is little to commend his thesis. We know very little of the patterns of worship in first-century Judaism. At the end of the second century AD, triennial cycles were used in some Jewish worship. But the annual cycles Goulder discerns behind Luke are almost certainly later than their triennial counterparts. As for Matthew, we have no evidence of a fixed “festal lectionary” in the first century; and even if it existed, it would have been connected with temple worship, with no evidence that it was ever connected with the synagogue worship Goulder’s thesis requires.

Not only is our knowledge of first-century Jewish liturgical custom very slender, our knowledge of Christian worship in the first century is even more slender. Thus we do not know whether Christian lectionary cycles—if they existed—developed out of Jewish lectionary cycles—if those cycles existed! Certainly by the time of Justin Martyr, the churches of which he had knowledge read the “memoirs of the apostles” (i.e., the Gospels) for “as long as time allowed,” not according to some lectionary specification. Moreover, to make his pattern fit, Goulder must postulate lections in Matthew that vary enormously in length. Goulder’s thesis is unlikely to convince many.

In recent years, a number of scholars have emphasized the “anti-Gentile” passages in Matthew (5:46–47; 6:7–8, 31–32; 18:17) and downplayed the Great Commission (28:19) to conclude that Matthew’s church is essentially still deeply Jewish, such that the Gentiles are at best a peripheral interest. This seems as lopsided, but in the opposite direction, as the view that insists Matthew’s church is entirely separate from the Jewish world. Moreover, we have already seen that it is precarious to build more than vague suggestions about Matthew’s “church” when (1) the document itself purports to give us information about Jesus in the days of his flesh, and (2) it is increasingly viewed as at least possible, and perhaps probable, that Matthew’s intended readership was not a well-defined “Matthean church” but Christians everywhere.

Numerous studies characterized by more sober judgment have contributed to our understanding of Matthew’s purposes. Many of these are referred to in the commentary. At the broadest level, we may say that Matthew’s purpose is to demonstrate that (1) Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God, the Son of Man, Immanuel; (2) many Jews, and especially the leaders, sinfully failed to perceive this during his ministry; (3) the messianic kingdom has already dawned, inaugurated by the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus; (4) this messianic reign, characterized by obedience to Jesus and consummated by his return, is the fulfillment of OT prophetic hopes; (5) the church, the community of those, both Jew and Gentile, who bow unqualifiedly to Jesus’ authority, constitutes the true locus of the people of God and the witness to the world of the “gospel of the kingdom”; and (6) throughout this age Jesus’ true disciples must overcome temptation, endure persecution from a hostile world, witness to the truth of the gospel, and live in deeply rooted submission to Jesus’ ethical demands, even as they enjoy the new covenant, which is simultaneously the fulfillment of old covenant anticipation and the experience of forgiveness bestowed by the Messiah who came to save his people from their sins and who came to give his life as a ransom for many.

Such a complex array of themes was doubtless designed to meet many needs: (1) to instruct and perhaps catechize (something facilitated by the careful arrangement of some topical sections); (2) to provide apologetic and evangelistic material, especially in winning Jews; (3) to encourage believers in their witness before a hostile world; and (4) to inspire deeper faith in Jesus the Messiah, along with a maturing understanding of his person, work, and unique place in the unfolding history of redemption.

As far as our sources go, the gospel of Matthew was promptly and universally received as soon as it was published. It never suffered the debates that divided the Eastern church and the Western church over, for example, the epistle to the Hebrews but was everywhere regarded as Scripture, at least from Ignatius (d. 110) onward.

Compared with that of Acts, the text of Matthew is fairly stable. Important variants do occur, however, and some of these are discussed. The most difficult textual questions in Matthew arise because it is a Synoptic Gospel. This provides many opportunities for harmonization or disharmonization in the textual tradition (see

We may consider Matthew’s principal themes along with the special problems of this gospel, because so many of Matthew’s themes have turned into foci for strenuous debate. To avoid needless repetition, the following paragraphs do not so much summarize the nine themes selected as sketch in the debate and then provide references to the places in the commentary where these things are discussed.

a. Christology

Approaches to the distinctive elements of Matthew’s Christology usually run along one of three lines, and these are not mutually exclusive.

The first compares Matthew with Mark to detect what differences lie between the two wherever they run parallel. Perhaps the first important study along these lines was an essay by G. M. Styler. He argues that Matthew’s Christology is frequently more explicit than Mark’s (he compares, for instance, the two accounts of the triumphal entry [21:1–11]). This is surely right, at least in some instances. But it is much less certain that Matthew focuses more attention than Mark on ontology (see

The second approach examines the christological titles used in Matthew’s gospel. These are rich and diverse. “Son of David” appears in the first verse, identifying Jesus as the promised Davidic Messiah, and then the title recurs, often on the lips of the needy and the ill, who anticipate relief from him who will bring in the messianic age (see

The third approach to Matthew’s Christology is the examination of broad themes, either in exclusively Matthean material (e.g., Brian Nolan’s study on Mt 1–2, which focuses on a Christology shaped by the Davidic covenant) or throughout the gospel. Some reference is made to these throughout the commentary. Doubtless it is best for these christological titles and themes to emerge from an inductive study of the text, for narrower approaches often issue in substantial distortion. For example, though Jack Dean Kingsbury ably demonstrates how important “Son of God” is in Matthew (see

b. Prophecy and fulfillment

Untutored Christians are prone to think of prophecy and fulfillment as something not very different from straightforward propositional prediction and fulfillment. A close reading of the NT reveals that prophecy is more complex than that. The epistle to the Hebrews, for instance, understands the Levitical sacrificial system to be prophetic of Christ’s sacrifice, Melchizedek to point to Jesus as High Priest, and so on. In Matthew we are told that Jesus’ return from Egypt fulfills the OT text that refers to the Exodus (2:15); the weeping of the mothers of Bethlehem fulfills Jeremiah’s reference to Rachel’s weeping for her children in Ramah; the priests’ purchase of a field for thirty pieces of silver fulfills Scriptures describing actions performed by Jeremiah and Zechariah (27:9); and, in one remarkable instance, Jesus’ move to Nazareth fulfills “what was said through the prophets” even though no specific text appears to be in mind (2:23). Add to this one other major peculiarity. A number (variously estimated between ten and fourteen) of Matthew’s OT quotations are introduced by a fulfillment formula characterized by a passive form of plēroō (“fulfill,” GK 4444) and a text form rather more removed from the LXX than other OT quotations. These “formula quotations” are all asides of the evangelist, his own reflections (hence the widely used German word for them, Reflexionszitate). What explains these phenomena?

Such problems have been extensively studied with very little agreement. When Matthew cites the OT, this commentary deals with many of these issues. In anticipation of these discussions, four observations may be helpful.

1. From very different perspectives, Robert Gundry and George Soares-Prabhu argue that Matthew is responsible for the formula quotations (the difference between them is that Gundry thinks the evangelist was the apostle Matthew and Soares-Prabhu does not). Wherever he follows Mark, Matthew uses the LXX; but he in no case clearly demonstrates a personal preference for the LXX by introducing closer assimilation. The most recent major study cautiously argues that what Matthew uses is an already-existing revised form of the LXX, but it still seems difficult to distinguish that stance from one that holds that Matthew selected and sometimes translated the non-LXX formula quotations. Doubtless both Hebrew and Greek OT textual traditions were somewhat fluid during the first century (as the Dead Sea Scrolls attest); and so it is not always possible to tell where the evangelist is using a text form known in his day and where he is providing his own rendering. What does seem certain, however, is that there is no good reason to support the view that the fulfillment quotations arose from a Matthean “school” or were taken over by the evangelist from a collection of testimonia.

2. Though often affirmed, it does not seem very likely that the evangelists, Matthew included, invented their “history” in order to have stories corresponding to their favorite OT proof texts. The question is most acute in Matthew 1–2 and 27:9 and is raised there. Several points, however, argue against a wholesale creation of traditions. The NT writers do not exploit much of the rich OT potential for messianic prediction. The very difficulty of the links between story and OT text argues against the creation of the stories, because created stories would have eliminated the most embarrassing strains. The parallel of the Dead Sea Scrolls cannot be overlooked. Even when they treat the OT most tortuously, the Qumran covenanters do not invent “history.”

3. The ways the events surrounding Jesus are said to fulfill the OT vary enormously and cannot be reduced to a single label. Even the Jewish categories commonly applied need certain qualification (on “Midrash,” see ).

Some of Matthew’s fulfillment quotations are said to be examples of pesher exegesis. Such rabbinical exegesis stresses revelation and authoritatively declares, “This event is the fulfillment of that prophecy” (e.g., Ac 2:16). But even here we must be careful. The clearest examples of pesher exegesis are found in 1QpHab. What is striking about its authoritative pronouncements is that the OT prophecy it refers to, Habakkuk, is interpreted exclusively in terms of the “fulfillments” it is related to, making its original context meaningless. Even the most difficult passages in Matthew, such as 2:15, do not hint that the original OT meaning is void—in this case that the people of Israel were not called by God out of Egypt at the exodus.

4. We must now face a difficult question. Even if Matthew does not deny the OT setting of the texts he insists are being fulfilled in Jesus, on what basis does he detect any relationship of prophecy to fulfillment? The verb plēroō (“fulfill”) is discussed in the commentary (see

c. Law

Few topics in the study of Matthew’s gospel are more difficult than his attitude to the law. The major studies are discussed elsewhere (see

The difficulties stem from several factors. First, several passages can be understood as staunch defenses of the law (e.g., 5:18–19; 8:4; 19:17–18) and even of the authority of the Pharisees and teachers of the law in interpreting it (23:2–3). Jesus’ disciples are expected to fast, give alms (6:2–4), and pay the temple tax (17:24–27). Second, some passages can be seen as a softening of Mark’s dismissal of certain parts of the law. The addition of the “except” clause in 19:9 and the omission of Mark 7:19b (“In saying this, Jesus declared all foods ‘clean’”) in Matthew’s corresponding pericope (Mt 15:1–20) have convinced many that Matthew does not abrogate any OT command. Third, there are some passages where, formally at least, the letter of OT law is superseded (e.g., 5:33–37) or a revered OT institution appears to be depreciated and potentially superseded (e.g., 12:6). Fourth, there is one passage, 5:17–20, that is widely recognized to be programmatic of Matthew’s view of the law. However, it embraces interpretive problems of extraordinary difficulty.

In light of these things, various theories have been proposed. Benjamin Bacon, followed by Kilpatrick, argues that the gospel of Matthew presents a “new law” that is to the church what the Torah is to Judaism. The five discourses of Matthew (see ) became the new Pentateuch. Today few follow this theory; its thematic and formal links are just too tenuous. Some suggest that this gospel reflects a Matthean church that has not yet broken away from Judaism, while others argue that the church has just broken free and now finds it necessary to define itself over against Judaism (cf. expressions such as “their teachers of the law,” “their synagogues,” or “your synagogues,” when addressing certain Jews [e.g., 7:29; 9:35; 23:34]).

But such arguments are rather finespun. Does “their synagogue” imply a break with Judaism or distinctions within Judaism? The Qumran covenanters used the pronoun “their” of the Pharisees and mainline Judaism. Therefore, could not Jesus himself have used such language to distinguish his position from that of his Jewish opponents without implying he was not a Jew? A liberal or high churchman in the Church of England may refer to their colleges, referring to Church of England training colleges reflecting evangelical tradition, without suggesting that any of the three principal groups does not belong to the Anglican communion. And if Jesus spoke in such terms and if Matthew reports this, then Matthew may also be consciously reflecting the circumstances of his own church. But if so, it still remains unclear whether his church (if it is in his mind at all) has actually broken free from Judaism (see

Another example (8:4) is commonly taken to mean that the writer believes Jesus upholds even the ceremonial details of OT law, and that this reflects a conservative view of the continuing validity of the law in Matthew’s community. This interpretation, though hard to prove, is logically possible. Alternatively, one might also argue that 8:4 reflects a pre–AD 70 community since after that, offering temple sacrifices was impossible. Again, if Jesus said something like this, then Matthew’s including it may not have been because of his community’s conservatism but because it shows how Jesus used even ceremonial law to point to himself (see

It is difficult to narrow down these various possibilities. Clearly they are related to how one uses redaction criticism (see , , ). Too frequently these methodological questions are not so much as raised, even when the most astounding conclusions are confidently put forward as established fact. Some argue that Matthew’s church had so conservative a view of the OT law that the “evildoers” (lit., “workers of lawlessness”) denounced in 7:23 are Pauline Christians. Quite apart from the authenticity of Jesus’ saying and the danger of anachronism, this view misunderstands both Matthew and Paul. Matthew’s attacks are primarily directed against Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees, whose legal maneuvers blunt the power of the law and who fail to see the true direction in which the law pointed. They are, as the Qumran covenanters bitterly said, “expounders of smooth things” (CD 1:18). As for Paul, doubtless many saw him as being antinomian. But he, too, spoke strongly about the kind of behavior necessary to enter the kingdom (Ro 8:14; 13:10; Gal 5:14).

Yet if Matthew attacks Pharisees, does this mean the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, of Matthew’s day, or of both? The least we can say is that Matthew chose to write a gospel, not a letter. Since he chose to write about Jesus as the Messiah, the presumption must be that he intended to say something about Jesus’ life and relationships. This leads us to ask whether some differences between Matthew and Paul are to be explained by the distinctive places in salvation history of their subject matter. Though he writes after Paul wrote Romans, Matthew writes about an earlier period. Undoubtedly he had certain readers and their needs in mind. Yet it is no help in understanding Matthew’s treatment of the law to view the needs of his first readers from the viewpoint of his modern readers without first weighing the historical background of his book—the life and teaching of Jesus.

Jesus’ teaching about the law, whether gathered from Matthew or from all four gospels, is not easy to define precisely. The tendency in the last two or three decades has been to tighten the connections between Jesus and Judaism. Phillip Sigal has recently set forth an iconoclastic theory. He argues that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day are not to be linked with the rabbis of the Mishnah (see ) but were a group of extremists wiped out by the events of AD 70. These extremists were opposed both by Jesus and by other teachers who occupied roles similar to his own. After all, ordination was unknown in Jesus’ day, so there was no distinction between Jesus and other teachers. Jesus was himself a “proto-rabbi”—Sigal’s term for the group that gave rise to the ordained rabbis of the post-Jamnian period (AD 85 on). All Jesus’ legal decisions, Sigal says, fall within the range of what other proto-rabbis might say. Sigal tests this theory in Matthew’s reports of Jesus’ handling of the Sabbath (12:1–14) and divorce (19:1–12).

Sigal makes many telling points. His exegesis of 5:17–20 and other test passages is not convincing, however, because he eliminates all christological claims (e.g., 12:8) as the church’s interpolations into the narrative (see

Doubtless we may link Matthew’s treatment of the law with his handling of the OT (see ). Matthew holds that Jesus taught that the law had a prophetic function pointing to himself. Its valid continuity lies in Jesus’ own ministry, teaching, death, and resurrection. The unifying factor is Jesus himself, whose ministry and teaching stand with respect to the OT (including law) as fulfillment does to prophecy. To approach the problem of continuity and discontinuity—what remains unchanged from the Mosaic code—in any other terms is to import categories alien to Matthew’s thought and his distinctive witness to Jesus (see esp.

d. Church

The word ekklēsia (“church,” GK 1711) occurs twice in Matthew (16:18; 18:17). Partly because it appears in no other gospel, the “ecclesiasticism” of Matthew has often been overstressed.

Certain things stand out. First, Matthew insists that Jesus predicted the continuation of his small group of disciples in a distinct community, a holy and messianic people, a “church” (see

This third theme is much stronger in Matthew than in Mark or Luke. One might speculate on the pressures that prompted Matthew to include this material—apathy in the church, return to a kind of casuistical righteousness, infiltration by those not wholly committed to Jesus the Messiah, the failure to discipline lax members. But this is speculation. The essential factor is that Matthew insists that the demand for a disciplined church goes back to Jesus himself.

e. Eschatology

Matthew consistently distinguishes among four time periods: (1) the period of revelation and history previous to Jesus; (2) the inauguration of something new in his coming and ministry; (3) the period beginning with his exaltation, from which point forward all of God’s sovereignty is mediated through him and his followers proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to all nations; and (4) the consummation and beyond.

Many features of Matthew’s eschatology are still being studied. The seven most important of these (the number may be eschatologically significant!) and the places where they are principally discussed in this commentary are (1) the meaning of peculiarly difficult verses (e.g., 10:23; 16:28); (2) the distinctive flavor of Matthew’s dominant “kingdom of heaven” over against “kingdom of God” preferred by the rest of the NT writers (see

f. The Jewish leaders

Two areas need clarification for understanding Matthew’s treatment of the Jewish leaders. The first is the identification of the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. A generation ago the patterns for the debate were already set. We may distinguish four viewpoints, each represented by able Jewish scholars.

1. The traditional approach is well defended by Alexander Guttmann, who argues that the Pharisees were more effective leaders than the OT prophets. The prophets were uncompromising idealists; the Pharisees, whose views are largely reflected by their successors, the rabbis behind the Mishnah, were adaptable, adjusting the demands of Torah by a finely tuned exegetical procedure issuing in legal enactments designed to make life easier and clarify right conduct.

2. By contrast, Jacob Neusner insists that a chasm yawns between the rabbinic views reflected in Mishnah and pre–AD 70 Pharisaism. The Pharisees shaped the life of pre–AD 70 Judaism by extending the purity rituals of the temple to the daily experience of every Jew.

3. Ellis Rivkin argues that the Pharisees—a post-Maccabean and theologically revolutionary group—were men of considerable learning and persuasiveness. They developed the oral law, now largely codified in the Mishnah, and unwittingly departed radically from their OT roots. Rivkin denies that they had separatistic or ritualistic tendencies; their influence was broad and pervasive.

4. Phillip Sigal argues for a complete disjunction between the Pharisees, whom he identifies as the perushim (“separatists”), and the rabbis behind Mishnah. In Jesus’ day the rabbis were not officially ordained; ordination had not yet been invented. That is why Jesus himself is addressed as “rabbi” in the Gospels (e.g., 26:49; Mk 9:5; 10:51; 11:21; Jn 1:38, 49; 3:2). He belonged to a class of “proto-rabbis,” the forerunners of the ordained rabbis of the Mishnaic period. His opponents, the Pharisees, were extremists who died out after AD 70 and left virtually no literary trace.

The tentative assessment adopted in this commentary is that these competing interpretations of the evidence are largely right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. Sigal is almost certainly right in arguing that ordination was unknown in Jesus’ day, though there may have been informal procedures for recognizing a teacher of Scripture. There can be no simple equation of Pharisee and Mishnaic rabbi. But against Sigal, it is unlikely that the Pharisees were so separatistic that they did not embrace most if not all “proto-rabbis.” The Gospels refer to every other major religious grouping—Sadducees, priests, scribes—and it is almost inconceivable that the evangelists should say almost nothing about the “proto-rabbis,” the dominant group after AD 70, and vent so much criticism on a group (the Pharisees) so insignificant in Jesus’ day that they disappeared from view after AD 70. The fairly rapid disappearance of the Sadducees after AD 70 is no parallel because much of their life and influence depended on the temple destroyed by the Romans; and in any case the evangelists do give us some description of their theological position.

As for Jesus, he cannot be reduced to a “proto-rabbi,” training his followers to repeat his legal decisions. His messianic claims cannot so easily be dismissed. To onlookers he appeared as a prophet (21:11, 46). Guttmann is right in saying that the Pharisees adapted the laws to the times and were effective leaders (see point 1 above). The problem is that their minute regulations made ritual distinctions too difficult and morality too easy. The radical holiness demanded by the OT prophets became domesticated, preparing the way for Jesus’ preaching that demanded a righteousness greater than that of the Pharisees (5:20). Though Neusner correctly detects the Pharisees’ concern with ceremonial purity (cf. 15:1–12), his skepticism concerning the fixity of many oral traditions and the possibility of knowing more about the Pharisees is unwarranted. The evidence from Josephus cannot be so easily dismissed as Neusner would have us think. Even allowing for Josephus’s own bias toward the Pharisees, his evidence so consistently demonstrates their wide influence in the nation, not to say their centrality during the Jewish War, that it is very difficult to think of them as a minor separatistic group (so Sigal) or as concerned exclusively with ritual purity.

The Mishnah (ca. AD 200) cannot be read back into AD 30 as if Judaism had not faced the growth of Christianity and the shattering destruction of temple and cultus. Nevertheless, it preserves more traditional material than is sometimes thought. One suspects that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day include the proto-rabbis, ideological forebears of the Mishnaic Tannaim (lit., “repeaters,” i.e., the “rabbis” from roughly AD 70 to 200). In this view, they included men every bit as learned and creative as the second-century rabbis. But they also included many lesser men, morally and intellectually, who were largely purged by the twin effects of the growth of Christianity and the devastation of AD 70. These events called forth a “counterreformation” whose legacy is Mishnah. Rivkin is undoubtedly right in seeing the Pharisees as learned scholars whose meticulous application and development of OT law massively influenced Judaism (see point 3 above), though his identification of Pharisees with scribes and his handling of the development of oral law are simplistic. More recent work has produced a plethora of studies aimed at helping contemporary readers to discern, along quite different lines, which material in the Mishnah probably dates from the time of Jesus.

I hold that the Pharisees were a nonpriestly group of uncertain origin, generally learned, committed to the oral law, and concerned with developing halakah (rules of conduct based on deductions from the law). Most teachers of the law were Pharisees; and the Sanhedrin included men from their number as well (see

The second area needing clarification is the way Matthew refers to Jewish leaders. It is universally agreed that Matthew is quite strongly anti-Pharisaic. Recently, however, more and more scholars have argued that Matthew’s picture of the Pharisees reflects the rabbis of the period AD 80–100, not the situation around AD 30. His grasp of the other Jewish parties, which largely fell away after AD 70, is shallow and sometimes wrong. Lloyd Gaston thinks the depth of Matthew’s ignorance, especially of the Sadducees, is “astonishing.”

The question is complex. Certain observations, however, will qualify the charge of Matthew’s ignorance.

1. If Matthew’s sole target had been the rabbis of AD 80–100, designated “Pharisees,” it is astonishing that they are virtually unmentioned during the Passion Week and the Passion Narrative when feeling against Jesus reached its height. What we discover is that the chief opponents are priests and elders, who were members of the Sanhedrin, which is just what we would expect in the vicinity of Jerusalem before AD 70. This demonstrates that Matthew is not entirely ignorant of historical distinctions regarding Jewish leaders; it calls into question the thesis that his opponents are exclusively Pharisees and urges caution in making similar judgments.

2. Matthew mentions the Sadducees more often than all the other evangelists combined. If Matthew was so ignorant of them, and if they were irrelevant to his alleged circumstances in AD 80–100, why did he multiply references to them?

3. Matthew demonstrates that he was aware of some of the Sadducees’ doctrinal distinctives (see

First, the linking of Pharisees and Sadducees under one article in Matthew 3:7 may reflect, not their theological agreement, but their common mission. Just as the Sanhedrin raised questions about Jesus’ authority, it is intrinsically likely they sent delegates to sound out John the Baptist. The Sanhedrin included both Pharisees and Sadducees (Ac 23:6); and their mutual distrust makes it likely that the delegation was made up of representatives from both parties. The fourth gospel suggests this. The “Jews of Jerusalem” (who else but the Sanhedrin?) sent “priests and Levites” (Jn 1:19)—certainly Sadducees—to ask John who he was; but Pharisees were also sent (Jn 1:24). Matthew’s language may therefore preserve accurate historical reminiscence. Something similar may be presupposed in 16:1. We must always remember that though the Pharisees and Sadducees could fight each other fiercely on certain issues, their political circumstances required that they work together at many levels.

Second, though the linking of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the remaining references (16:6, 11, 12) appears to make their teaching common, the context demands restraint. In certain circumstances, a Baptist may warn against “the teaching of the Presbyterians and Anglicans,” not because he is unaware of fundamental differences between them (or even among them!), but because he wishes to set their paedobaptism against his own views. Quite clearly in 16:5–12, Jesus cannot be denouncing everything the Pharisees and Sadducees teach, for some of what they teach he holds in common with them. The particular point of teaching in this context is their attitude toward Jesus and their desire to domesticate revelation and authenticate it—an attitude so blind it cannot recognize true revelation when it appears (see

4. Categories for the Jewish leaders overlap in the Gospels, Matthew included. As far as we know, the Sanhedrin, for instance, was made up of Sadducees, Pharisees, and elders. The Sadducees were mostly priests. The elders were mostly lay nobility and probably primarily Pharisees. Thus “Pharisees” in the Sanhedrin were “laymen” in the sense that they were not priests; but many of them were scribes (“teachers of the law”) and thus different from the elders. When 21:23 speaks of the chief priests and elders of the people coming to Jesus, it is probably referring to members of the Sanhedrin described in terms of their clerical status rather than their theological position. The ambiguities are considerable, but we must avoid indefensible disjunctions.

5. Our own ignorance of who the Pharisees were and of the distinctive beliefs of the Sadducees (we know them almost entirely through the writings of their opponents—“almost” because some scholars think that Sirach, for instance, is a proto-Sadducean document) should make us hesitate before ascribing “astonishing” ignorance to the evangelist. The astonishing ignorance may be our own. One suspects that in some instances Matthew’s treatment of Jewish leaders is being pressed into a mold to suit a date of AD 80–100. The truth is that our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity during that period has formidable gaps. Though Matthew may have been written then—though in my view this is unlikely—his treatment of Jewish leaders cannot be used to defend the late date view.

But is Matthew’s polemic so harsh that he must be considered anti-Semitic (see

g. Mission

Many have long recognized that the closing pericope (28:16–20) is fully intended to be the climax toward which all of Matthew moves. By tying together some of Matthew’s most dominant themes, these verses give them a new depth that reaches back and sheds light on his entire gospel. For instance, the Great Commission is perceived to be the result of God’s providential ordering of history (1:1–17) to bring to a fallen world a Messiah who would save his people from their sins (1:21); but the universal significance of Jesus’ birth, hinted at in 1:1 and repeatedly raised in the flow of the narrative (see

We have already observed that the extent of the Great Commission has been limited by some—though on inadequate grounds—to Gentiles only (; see

h. Miracles

The biblical writers do not see miracles as divine interventions in an ordered and closed universe. Rather, God as Lord of the universe and of history sustains everything that takes place under his sovereignty. Sometimes, however, he does extraordinary things; and then we in the modern world call them “miracles.” Biblical writers preferred terms like “sign,” “wonder,” or “power.” Parallels between Jesus and Hellenistic miracle workers are not as close as some form critics have thought. On the other hand, the value of miracles as proof of Jesus’ deity is not as conclusive as some conservative expositors have thought.

Miracles in Matthew share certain characteristics with those in the other Synoptics, and these characteristics must be understood before Matthew’s distinctives can be explored. Jesus’ miracles are bound up with the inbreaking of the promised kingdom (8:16–17; 12:22–30; cf. Lk 11:14–23). They are part of his messianic work (Mt 4:23; 11:4–6) and therefore the dual evidence of the dawning of the kingdom and of the status of Jesus the King, the Messiah. This does not mean that Jesus did miracles on demand as a kind of spectacular attestation (see

“Nature miracles” (the stilling of the storm or the multiplication of loaves and fish) not only attest the universal sweep of God’s power but may in some cases (calming the storm) provide the creation rebelling against God with a foretaste of restored order—an order to be climaxed by the consummation of the kingdom. In some cases (the multiplication of loaves and fish, the withered fig tree), miracles constitute a “prophetic symbolism” that promises unqualified fruition (the messianic banquets, the certainty of judgment) at the end.

Matthew’s miracles are distinctive for the brevity with which they are reported. He condenses introductions and conclusions, omits secondary characters, and the like (see

The particular themes most flavored by Matthew in connection with Jesus’ miracles are worked out in the commentary.

i. The disciples’ understanding and faith

Ever since the work of Gerhard Barth, many scholars have held that whereas in Mark the disciples do not understand what Jesus says till he explains it to them in secret, Matthew attributes large and instant understanding to the disciples. Indeed, what sets them apart from the crowd is that the disciples understand; the outsiders do not. Where the disciples falter and must improve is not in their understanding but in their faith.

The thesis can be defended by a careful selection of the data, but it will not withstand close scrutiny. Apart from depending too much on the “messianic secret” in Mark (see comments at Mk 9:9), it does not adequately treat the disciples’ request for private instruction (Mt 13:36), their failure to understand Jesus’ teaching about his passion even after his explanations (e.g., 16:21–26; 17:23; 26:51–56), and the passages that deal with “stumbling” or “falling away.” These are not peripheral matters; they are integral to what Jesus and Matthew say about discipleship.

The thesis also errs, not only for the two reasons mentioned above, but also for a third. Adopting a doctrinaire form of redaction criticism, it so stresses what the relevant passages reveal about Matthew’s church that it blunts their real thrust. In particular, the failure of the disciples to understand the significance of Jesus’ passion and resurrection predictions is largely a function of the disciples’ unique place in salvation history. They were unprepared before the events to accept the notion of a crucified and resurrected Messiah; not a few of Jesus’ christological claims are sufficiently vague that their full import could be grasped by those with a traditional Jewish mind-set only after Calvary and the empty tomb. To this extent, the disciples’ experience of coming to deeper understanding and faith was unique because it was locked into a phase of salvation history rendered forever obsolete by the triumph of Jesus’ resurrection.

Matthew’s readers, whether in the first century or today, may profit from studying the disciples’ experience as he records it. But to try subjectively to imitate the disciples’ coming to full faith and understanding following Jesus’ resurrection is futile. Rather we should look back on this witness to the divine self-disclosure, observing God’s wisdom and care as through his Son he progressively revealed himself and his purposes to redeem a fallen and rebellious race. Feeding our faith and understanding on the combined testimony of the earliest witnesses who tell how they arrived by a unique historical sequence at their faith and understanding, we shall learn to focus our attention not on the disciples but on their Lord. This is not to say that the disciples have nothing to teach us about personal growth; rather, it is to insist that we will basically misunderstand this gospel if we do not see that it deals with a unique coming to faith and understanding. This topic is so important that the commentary refers to it repeatedly (e.g., 13:10–13, 23, 36, 43, 51–52; 14:15–17; 15:15–16; 16:21–28; 17:13, 23; 20:17–19, 22; 23:13–36; 24:1; 28:17). Elsewhere it has been comprehensively treated by Andrew Trotter.

The interpretation of any piece of literature is affected by an understanding of its genre. A sonnet, novel, parable, history, fable, free verse, or an aphorism must be read according to its literary form.

a. Gospel

What, then, is a gospel? Many theories have been proposed and affinities discovered in other writings (e.g., apocalyptic literature, OT books, Graeco-Roman biographies, etc.). Some time ago, Charles Talbert argued that the gospel belongs to the genre of Graeco-Roman biography. In a convincing rejoinder, David Aune showed that Talbert has misunderstood not a few ancient sources and has arrived at his conclusions by adopting ambiguous categories that hide essential differences. Aune, followed by many, insists that the gospels belong in a class of their own. This does not mean that the gospels have no relation to other genres. The truth is that “‘new’ genres were constantly emerging during the Graeco-Roman period, if by ‘new’ we mean a recombination of earlier forms and genres into novel configurations.” Today the pendulum is swinging back toward carefully nuanced discussions that demonstrate the closest literary genre to the canonical gospels is the ancient biographies of the Hellenistic world, regardless of the unavoidable differences.

Thus our gospels are made up of many pericopes, some belonging to recognized genres, others with close affinities to recognized genres. Each must be weighed, but the result is a flexible form that aims to give a selective account of Jesus, including his teaching and miracles and culminating in his death by crucifixion and his burial and resurrection. The selection includes certain key points in his career (his baptism, ministry, passion, and resurrection) and aims at a credible account of these historical events. At the same time, the material is organized so as to stress certain subjects and motifs. The writing is not dispassionate but confessional—something the evangelists considered an advantage. Some of the material is organized along thematic lines, some according to a loose chronology; still other pericopes are linked by some combination of catchwords, themes, OT attestation, genre, and logical coherence. The result is not exactly a history, biography, theology, confession, catechism, tract, homage, or letter—though it is in some respects all of these. It is a “gospel,” a presentation of the “good news” of Jesus the Messiah.

b. Midrash

Scholars have increasingly recognized the Jewishness of the NT and have therefore cultivated Jewish literary categories for understanding these documents. Among the most important of these categories is midrash. One application of this work, the lectionary theory of Michael Goulder, has already been discussed (). The major commentary on Matthew by Robert Gundry is another. He argues that Q is larger than is customarily recognized, embracing material normally designated “M” (see ), including the birth narratives in Matthew 1–2. What Matthew does according to Gundry, is apply “midrashic techniques” to the tradition he takes over, adding nonhistorical touches to historical material, sometimes creating stories, designated midrashim, to make theological points, even though the stories, like parables, have no historical referent.

Everything depends on definition. Etymologically, midrash simply means “interpretation.” But in this sense, every comment on another text is midrash—including this commentary. Such a definition provides no basis for saying that because Matthew relates midrashic stories in Matthew 1–2, they are not historically true. Most other definitions, however accurate, are not sufficient to yield Gundry’s conclusion. J. Duncan M. Derrett, for instance, defines midrashic method in terms of its allusiveness to many sources, not in terms of historicity at all. Klyne Snodgrass defines midrash, not as a genre, but “as a process in which forms of tradition develop and enrich or intensify later adaptation of Old Testament texts.” Jacob Neusner tends to look for patterns across time. Many other definitions have been offered.

To compound the difficulty, the term seems to undergo a semantic shift within Jewish literature. By the time of the Babylonian Talmud (fourth century AD), midrash had developed a more specialized meaning akin to what Gundry clearly wants. Other Jewish commentaries, mainly the Qumran Pesharim, were characterized by three things: (1) they attempted to deal systematically with every point in the text; (2) they limited themselves almost exclusively to the text; and (3) they adopted a revelatory stance toward the text that identified virtually every point in the text with a point of fulfillment in the interpreter’s day or later, without any sense of historical context. By contrast, the midrashim worked through the text of Scripture more haphazardly, using Scripture as a sort of peg on which to hang discourse, stories, and other pieces to illuminate the theological meaning of the text. This was in conscious distinction from “peshat,” the more “literal” meaning of the text. But in the first two centuries, it is very doubtful whether midrash had a meaning even this specialized. It referred rather to “an interpretive exposition however derived and irrespective of the type of material under consideration.”

In a wide-ranging work, Douglas Moo discusses the various ways in which literature that treats the OT text may be analyzed. He distinguishes literary genre (form and general content), citation procedures (e.g., explicit quotation, allusion, conceptual influence, and the like), appropriation technique (the ways the OT text is applied to the contemporary setting), and the hermeneutical axioms implicitly adopted by the interpreter (e.g., that the Scripture was a closed entity needing to be ingeniously interpreted to elicit answers to questions about conduct not specifically treated in the text).

Now if midrash refers to genre, in the first century it is too wide a term to bear the weight Gundry places on it and is inadequate on other grounds. Attempts to define midrash in terms of appropriation techniques have not proved successful, because none of the techniques are restricted to midrash. Moo tentatively suggests that midrash be characterized “in terms of the hermeneutical axioms which guide the approach.” There is considerable merit in this; but of course this results in largely limiting midrash to rabbinic Judaism, since the operative hermeneutical axioms of this approach include a largely noneschatological perception and a deep preoccupation with enunciating its identity and directing its conduct (corresponding roughly to the two forms haggadic midrash and halakic midrash). By contrast, the stories of Matthew 1–2 are fundamentally eschatological. They are said to fulfill Scripture in the context of a book in which messianic fulfillment and the dawning of the eschatological kingdom constitute fundamental themes. Matthew 1–2 is little concerned with rules of conduct or the identity of the people of God. It bursts with christological concern and a teleological perspective.

When distinctions such as these are borne in mind, the modern category “midrash pesher,” which some wish to apply to Matthew’s treatment of the OT, is seen as an inadequate label for the Qumran commentaries. Midrash and pesher are alike in many of their techniques, but the hermeneutical axioms are profoundly different. But if the makeshift midrash pesher is inappropriate for the commentaries of Qumran, it is usually inappropriate for Matthew. And in any case, it is definitely not a genre recognized by Jewish readers of the first century.

These conclusions are inevitable:

1. Gundry cannot legitimately appeal to midrash as a well-defined and recognized genre of literature in the first century.

2. In particular, if midrash reflects genre, as opposed to hermeneutical axioms irrelevant to Matthew, it is being given a sense more or less well-defined only from the fourth century on. This raises the question of what we could expect Matthew’s readers to have thought. Gundry argues that the reason the church has failed to recognize the midrashic (and therefore nonhistorical) nature of Matthew 1–2 is that this gospel was quickly taken over by the Gentiles, who had little appreciation for Jewish literary genres. This plausible argument is weakened by strong evidence that midrash in any specialized sense relevant to Gundry’s thesis is too late in Jewish circles to be useful.

3. Even if we adopt this late narrowing of the term midrash, it is still inappropriate as a description of Matthew’s “M” material. Although the Jewish midrashim are often only loosely connected with the texts they “expound,” yet a line of continuity runs through those OT texts. By contrast, Matthew’s continuity in chs. 1–2, for instance, is established by the story line, not the OT texts, all of which could be removed without affecting the passages’ cohesion.

4. Much of the force of Gundry’s argument depends on his assessment of the tendencies in Matthew’s editing of sources. Gundry feels that demonstrable tendencies in Matthew require appeal to midrashic technique as the only adequate explanation of material that diverges so radically from the sources. But another assessment of the same evidence is often possible. Few will be convinced by his postulation of a common source behind Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2. Moreover some of the “tendencies” he detects in Matthew—e.g., he follows the now popular line on the disciples’ understanding (see )—are better interpreted in other ways. These points depend on details of exegesis and emerge in this commentary.

An important element in Gundry’s argument is that the stories cannot be taken as history because, read that way, they include some demonstrable errors. On some of these matters, I will say more in the commentary. Here it is sufficient to say that whoever uses midrash of any part of Matthew’s gospel should tell their readers precisely what the term means.

c. Miscellaneous

Several other important forms of literature make up the constituent parts of our canonical gospels: wisdom sayings, genealogies, discourses, parables, and so forth. The most important receive brief treatment in the commentary, with the most extensive note being devoted to parables (see

The following is a selective list of resources on Matthew, confined for the most part to those referred to in the commentary. Commentaries will be referred to simply by the author’s name [and initials only when necessary to distinguish two authors of the same surname]). General works and other resources will be referred to by the author’s name and short title. In instances where the same author has written a commentary as well as (a) book(s) and/or (an) article(s), the commentary will be referred to by the author’s name, and the book(s)/article(s) by the author’s name and short title. When a commentary is cited without a page number, it is assumed that the reference points the reader to the appropriate section from the specific verse or verses under consideration.

References to resources that do not appear in the bibliography will carry full bibliographic details at the first mention and thereafter a short title.

Commentaries

Albright, W. F., and C. S. Mann. Matthew. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1971.

Alexander, J. A. The Gospel according to Matthew. New York: Scribner, 1860.

Allen, Willoughby C. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to S. Matthew. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1912.

Benoit, P. L’Évangile selon Saint Matthieu. 4th ed. Paris: Cerf, 1972.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.

______. “Matthew.” Pages 1–109 in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007.

Bonnard, Pierre. L’Évangile selon Saint Matthieu. 2nd ed. Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1970.

Broadus, John. Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Valley Forge, Pa.: American Baptist Publication Society, 1886.

Calvin, John. Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Edited by D. W. Torrance and T. F. Torrance. Translated by A. W. Morrison and T. H. L. Parker. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Davies, W. D., and D. C. Allison. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. 3 vols. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988–97.

Fenton, J. C. Saint Matthew. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.

Filson, Floyd V. A Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. New York: Harper, 1960.

France, R. T. The Gospel according to Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. Leicester: InterVarsity, 1985.

______. The Gospel of Matthew. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.

Gaebelein, Arno C. The Gospel of Matthew: An Exposition. 2 vols. New York: Our Hope Publications, 1910.

Gaechter, Paul. Das Matthäus Evangelium. Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1963.

Garland, David E. Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel. New York: Crossroad, 1993.

Gibbs, Jeffrey A. Matthew 1:1–11:1. Concordia Commentary. St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 2006.

Green, H. Benedict. The Gospel according to Matthew. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975.

Grosheide, F. W. Het heilig evangelie volgens Mattheus. Kampen: Kok, 1954.

Grundmann, Walter. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus. 4th ed. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1975.

Gundry, Robert H. Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981. 2nd ed. titled Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994 [pagination unchanged; additional preface and endnotes].

Hagner, Donald A. Matthew. 2 vols. Word Biblical Commentary 33A and 33B. Dallas: Word, 1993.

Harrington, Daniel J. The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina 1. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1991.

Hendriksen, William. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973.

Henry, Matthew. A Commentary on the Holy Bible. London: Marshall Bros., n.d.

Hill, David. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Keener, Craig S. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.

Kingsbury, Jack Dean. Matthew. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977.

Klostermann, Erich. Das Matthäus-Evangelium. 2nd ed. Tübingen: Mohr, 1927.

Lagrange, M.-J. Évangile selon Saint Matthieu. Paris: Lecoffre, 1948.

Lenski, R. C. H. Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1932.

Lohmeyer, Ernst. Das Evangelium des Matthäus. Edited by W. Schmauch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956.

Loisy, A. Les évangiles synoptiques. 2 vols. Ceffonds: Loisy, 1907–08.

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works. 55 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman. Philadelphia: Muehlenberg and Fortress, and St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1955–86.

Luz, Ulrich. Matthew: A Commentary. 3 vols. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001.

Maier, Gerhard. Matthäus-Evangelium. 2 vols. Neuhausen: Hanssler, 1979–80.

McNeile, Alan Hugh. The Gospel according to St. Matthew: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indices. London: Macmillan, 1915.

Meyer, Heinrich August Wilhelm. Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Part I. The Gospel of Matthew. Translated by W. P. Dickson and W. Stewart. 2 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1877–79.

Morison, James. A Practical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892.

Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.

Plummer, Alfred. An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to S. Matthew. London: Robert Scott, 1915.

Plumptre, E. H. The Gospel according to Matthew. Repr., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957.

Ridderbos, H. N. Het evangelie naar Mattheus. Kampen: Kok, 1952.

Sabourin, Leopold. L’Évangile selon Saint Matthieu et ses principaux paralleles. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1978.

Schlatter, Adolf. Der Evangelist Matthäus: Seine Sprache, sein Ziel, seine Selbstandigkeit. 6th ed. Stuttgart: Calwer, 1963.

Schniewind, Julius. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956.

Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News according to Matthew. Atlanta: Knox, 1975.

Stendahl, Krister. “Matthew.” Pages 769–98 in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible. London: Nelson, 1962.

Tasker, R. V. G. The Gospel according to St. Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. London: InterVarsity, 1961.

Turner, David L. Matthew. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008.

Walvoord, John F. Matthew: Thy Kingdom Come. Chicago: Moody, 1974.

Witherington, Ben, III. Matthew. Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary. Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 2006.

Zahn, Theodor. Das Evangelium des Matthäus. Leipzig: Deichert, 1903.

General Works

Alford, Henry. The New Testament for English Readers. 3 vols. Cambridge, U.K.: Rivingtons, 1868.

Allison, Dale C., Jr. Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Arens, Eduardo. The ῏Ηλθον-sayings in the Synoptic Tradition: A Historico-Critical Investigation. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976.

Bacon, Benjamin W. Studies in Matthew. London: Constable, 1930.

Bailey, Kenneth E. Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2008.

Banks, Robert. Jesus and the Law in the Synoptic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975.

Bauckham, Richard J. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.

Beasley-Murray, G. R. Baptism in the New Testament. London: Macmillan, 1954.

Bengel, Johann Albrecht. Gnomon of the New Testament. 4th ed. Translated by James Bandinel et al. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1860.

Benoit, P. Jesus and the Gospel. New York: Herder and Herder, 1973.

Best, Ernest. The Temptation and the Passion: The Markan Soteriology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965.

Best, Ernest, and Robert McL. Wilson, eds. Text and Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979.

Betz, Hans Dieter. The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49). Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1995.

Beyer, Klaus. Semitische Syntax im Neuen Testament. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968.

Black, Matthew. An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.

Blair, Edward P. Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. New York: Abingdon, 1960.

Blickenstaff, Marianne. “While the Bridegroom Is with Them”: Marriage, Family, Gender and Violence in the Gospel of Matthew. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 292. London: T&T Clark, 2005.

Blinzler, Josef. The Trial of Jesus. Translated by F. McHugh. Cork: Mercier, 1959.

Blomberg, Craig L. Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with Sinners. New Testament Studies in Biblical Theology 19. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2005.

Bock, Darrell L. Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism and the Final Examination of Jesus. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 106. Tübingen: Mohr, 1998.

Bolt, Peter G. The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel. New Testament Studies in Biblical Theology 18. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2004.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. 2nd ed. London: SCM Press, 1959.

Bornkamm, Günther. Jesus of Nazareth. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960.

______. Geschichte und Glaube I. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1968.

Bornkamm, Günther, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, eds. Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. Translated by Percy Scott. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

Boucher, Madeleine. The Mysterious Parable: A Literary Study. Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1977.

Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke. 2nd ed. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1993.

______. The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave; A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels. New York: Doubleday, 1994.

Brown, Raymond E., Karl P. Donfried, and John Reumann, eds. Peter in the New Testament. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1973.

Bultmann, Rudolf. Theology of the New Testament. 2 vols. Translated by K. Grobel. London: SCM Press, 1952–55.

______. The History of the Synoptic Tradition. Translated by J. Marsh. Oxford: Blackwell, 1963.

Burger, Christoph. Jesus als Davidssohn: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970.

Carmignac, Jean. Recherches sur le “Notre Père.” Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1969.

Carson, D. A. The Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978.

______. Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility. Atlanta: Knox, 1981.

Carson, D. A., ed. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982.

Carson, D. A., and J. D. Woodbridge, eds. Scripture and Truth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983.

Carter, Warren. Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Bible and Liberation 204. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001.

Carter, Warren, and John Paul Heil. Matthew’s Parables: Audience-Oriented Perspectives. Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 30. Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1998.

Casey, Maurice. Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7. London: SPCK, 1980.

______. The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem. London: Continuum, 2007.

Catchpole, David R. The Trial of Jesus: A Study in the Gospels and Jewish Historiography from 1770 to the Present Day. Leiden: Brill, 1971.

Chae, Young S. Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 216. Tübingen: Mohr, 2006.

Charette, Blaine. The Theme of Recompense in Matthew’s Gospel. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 79. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992.

Chilton, Bruce D. God in Strength: Jesus’ Announcement of the Kingdom. Freistadt: Plochl, 1977.

Clarke, Howard. The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2003.

Cope, O. Lamar. Matthew: A Scribe Trained for the Kingdom of Heaven. Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1976.

Cranfield, C. E. B. The Gospel according to St. Mark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Cullmann, O. Baptism in the New Testament. Studies in Biblical Theology 1. London: SCM Press, 1950. Translated by Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

Dahl, N. A. Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976.

Dalman, A. Jesus-Jeshua: Studies in the Gospels. London: SPCK, 1929.

Daube, David. The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism. London: Athlone, 1956.

Davies, W. D. Christian Origins and Judaism. London: Darton, Longman, 1962.

______. The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1963.

Deissmann, Gustav Adolph. Light from the Ancient East. Translated by L. R. M. Strachan. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978.

______. Bible Studies. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1923. Repr., Winona Lake, Ind.: Alpha, 1979.

Derrett, J. D. M. Law in the New Testament. London: Darton, Longman, 1970.

______. Studies in the New Testament. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1977–78.

Didier, M., ed. L’Évangile selon Matthieu: Rédaction et Théologie. Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium 29. Gembloux: Duculot, 1972.

Dodd, C. H. The Parables of the Kingdom. London: Nisbet, 1936.

Douglas, J. D., ed. Illustrated Bible Dictionary. 3 vols. Rev. ed. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1980.

Dunn, J. D. G. Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament. London: SCM Press, 1975.

______. Christology in the Making: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. London: SCM Press, 1980.

Dupont, Jacques. Mariage et divorce dans l’évangile: Matthieu 19, 3–12 et paralleles. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959.

Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. London: Longmans, Green, 1912.

Elliott, J. K., ed. Studies in New Testament Language and Text. Novum Testamentum Supplements 44. Leiden: Brill, 1976.

Ellis, E. Earle, and Max Wilcox, eds. Neotestamentica et Semitica. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1969.

Ellis, E. Earle, and E. Grässer, eds. Jesus und Paulus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975.

Fischer, David. Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. New York: Harper, 1970.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament. London: Chapman, 1971.

______. A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978.

Flender, Helmut. Die Botschaft Jesu von der Herrschaft Gottes. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1968.

France, R. T. Jesus and the Old Testament: His Application of Old Testament Passages to Himself and His Mission. London: Tyndale, 1971.

France, R. T., and D. Wenham, eds. Gospel Perspectives. 2 vols. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980–81.

Frankemölle, Hubert. Jahwebund und Kirche Christi: Studien zur Form und Traditionsgeschichte des “Evangeliums” nach Matthäus. Munster: Aschendorff, 1974.

Garland, David E. The Intention of Matthew 23. Leiden: Brill, 1979.

Gaston, Lloyd. No Stone on Another: Studies in the Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels. Leiden: Brill, 1970.

Gerhardsson, Birger. The Mighty Acts of Jesus according to Matthew. Lund: Gleerup, 1979.

Gnilka, J., ed. Neues Testament und Kirche. Freiburg: Herder, 1974.

Goppelt, Leonhard. Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Edited by Jürgen Roloff. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976.

Goulder, M. D. Midrash and Lection in Matthew. London: SPCK, 1974.

Gundry, Robert H. The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel, with Special Reference to the Messianic Hope. Novum Testamentum Supplements 18. Leiden: Brill, 1975.

Guthrie, Donald. New Testament Theology. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1981.

Ham, Clay Alan. The Coming King and the Rejected Shepherd: Matthew’s Reading of Zechariah’s Messianic Hope. New Testament Monographs 4. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005.

Hannan, Margaret. The Nature and Demands of the Sovereign Rule of God in the Gospel of Matthew. London: T&T Clark, 2006.

Hare, Douglas R. A. The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967.

Hawthorne, G. F., ed. Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975.

Hengstenberg, E. W. Christology of the Old Testament. 2 vols. Repr., McLean, Va.: MacDonald, 1972.

Hennecke, E. New Testament Apocrypha. 2 vols. London: Lutterworth, 1965.

Hill, David. Greek Words with Hebrew Meanings. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 5. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967.

Hoehner, Harold W. Herod Antipas. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 17. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972.

______. Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977.

Hoekema, A. A. The Bible and the Future. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.

Hoffmann, Paul, et al., eds. Orientierung an Jesus. Freiburg: Herder, 1973.

Hooker, Morna D. Jesus and the Servant. London: SPCK, 1959.

______. The Son of Man in Mark. London: SPCK, 1967.

Hubbard, B. J. The Matthean Redaction of a Primitive Apostolic Commissioning: An Exegesis of Matthew 28:16–20. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 19. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1974.

Hull, John M. Hellenistic Magic and the Synoptic Tradition. London: SCM Press, 1974.

Hummel, Reinhardt. Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Kirche und Judentum im Matthäusevangelium. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1966.

Jeremias, J. Jesus’ Promise to the Nations. Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1958.

______. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Translated by F. H. Cave and C. H. Cave. London: SCM Press, 1962.

______. The Parables of Jesus. Translated by S. H. Hooke. London: SCM Press, 1963.

______. The Eucharistic Words of Jesus. Translated by N. Perrin. 3rd ed. London: SCM Press, 1966.

______. The Prayers of Jesus. Translated by John Bowden and Christoph Burchard. London: SCM Press, 1967.

______. New Testament Theology. Part 1. The Proclamation of Jesus. Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1971.

Johnson, Marshall D. The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969.

Kilpatrick, G. D. The Origins of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Oxford: Clarendon, 1946.

Kingsbury, Jack Dean. The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13: A Study in Redaction-Criticism. London: SPCK, 1969.

______. Matthew: Structure, Christology, Kingdom. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975.

Kistemaker, Simon J. The Parables of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980.

Knowles, Michael. Jeremiah in Matthew’s Gospel: The Rejected Prophet Motif in Matthaean Redaction. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 68. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993.

Kümmel, W. G. Promise and Fulfillment. Translated by Dorothea M. Barton. 2nd ed. Studies in Biblical Theology 23. London: SCM Press, 1961.

______. Introduction to the New Testament. Translated by Howard Clark Kee. Nashville: Abingdon, 1975.

Kupp, David D. Matthew’s Emmanuel: Divine Presence and God’s People in the First Gospel. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 90. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.

Ladd, G. E. The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

______. A Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

Lane, William L. The Gospel according to Mark. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

Lindars, Barnabas. New Testament Apologetic. London: SCM Press, 1961.

Livingstone, E. A., ed. Studia Biblica 1978. 2 vols. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980.

Longenecker, Richard N. The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity. London: SCM Press, 1970.

______. Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975.

Longenecker, Richard N., and Merrill C. Tenney, eds. New Dimensions in New Testament Study. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974.

Luz, Ulrich. Studies in Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.

Machen, J. Gresham. The Virgin Birth of Christ. New York: Harper, 1930.

Manson, T. W. The Sayings of Jesus. London: SCM Press, 1949.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

______. Last Supper and Lord’s Supper. Exeter: Paternoster, 1980.

Marshall, I. Howard, ed. New Testament Interpretation. Exeter: Paternoster, 1977.

McConnell, Richard S. Law and Prophecy in Matthew’s Gospel. Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt, 1969.

McHugh, John. The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1975.

McKnight, Scot. Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and Atonement Theory. Waco, Tex.: Baylor Univ. Press, 2005.

Meier, John P. Law and History in Matthew’s Gospel: A Redactional Study of Mt. 5:17–48. Analecta biblica 71. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1976.

______. The Vision of Matthew: Christ, Church, and Morality in the First Gospel. New York: Paulist, 1979.

Menken, M. J. J. Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist. Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium 173. Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2004.

Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. London: UBS, 1971.

______. New Testament Studies: Philological, Versional, and Patristic. Leiden: Brill, 1980.

Meyer, Ben F. The Aims of Jesus. London: SCM Press, 1979.

Mohrlang, R. Matthew and Paul: A Comparison of Ethical Perspectives. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 48. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984.

Moo, Douglas J. The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narratives. Sheffield: Almond, 1983.

Moore, G. F. Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1927–30.

Morris, Leon. The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955.

______. The Gospel according to John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Moule, C. F. D. An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek. 2nd ed. London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959.

______. The Origin of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977.

______. The Birth of the New Testament. 3rd. ed. London: A. & C. Black, 1981.

Moulton, James Hope. A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Vol. 1, Prolegomena. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908.

______. A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Vol. 2, Accidence and Word Formation. Edited by W. F. Howard. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920.

Nolan, Brian M. The Royal Son of God: The Christology of Matthew 1–2 in the Setting of the Gospel. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979.

Orton, David E. The Understanding Scribe: Matthew and the Apocalyptic Ideal. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 25. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1989.

Parrot, André. Golgotha and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Translated by E. Hudson. London: SCM Press, 1957.

Pennington, Jonathan T. Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew. Novum Testamentum Supplements 126. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Piper, John. “Love Your Enemies”: Jesus’ Love Command in the Synoptic Gospels and Early Christian Paraenesis: A History of the Tradition and Interpretation of Its Uses. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 38. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979.

Przybylski, Benno. Righteousness in Matthew and His World of Thought. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Ridderbos, Herman. The Coming of the Kingdom. Translated by R. Zorn. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962.

Robertson, A. T. Word Pictures in the New Testament. 6 vols. New York: Harper, 1930.

Robinson, John A. T. Twelve New Testament Studies. London: SCM Press, 1962.

Rothfuchs, Wilhelm. Die Erfüllungszitate des Matthäus-Evangeliums. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969.

Sand, Alexander. Das Gesetz und die Propheten: Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Evangeliums nach Matthäus. Regensburg: Pustet, 1976.

Schottroff, Luise, et al. Essays on the Love Commandment. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978.

Schürer, Emil. A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ. Translated by Sophia Taylor and Peter Christie. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1901.

Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. 2nd ed. Translated by W. Montgomery. London: A. & C. Black, 1911.

Senior, Donald. The Passion Narrative according to Matthew: A Redactional Study. Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium 39. Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1975.

Sherwin-White, A. N. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.

Sigal, Phillip. The Halakhah of Jesus of Nazareth according to the Gospel of Matthew. Rev. ed. Studies in Biblical Literature 18. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2007 [1986].

Sim, David C. The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.

Soares-Prabhu, George M. The Formula Quotations in the Infancy Narrative of Matthew. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1976.

Stanton, Graham N. Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974.

______. A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992.

Stendahl, Krister. The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Lund: Gleerup, 1954.

Stier, Rudolf. The Words of the Lord Jesus. Translated by W. B. Pope. 2 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1874.

Stonehouse, Ned B. The Witness of Matthew and Mark to Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1944.

______. Origins of the Synoptic Gospels: Some Basic Questions. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963.

Stott, John R. W. The Message of the Sermon on the Mount. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1985.

Strecker, Georg, ed. Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit. 3rd ed. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 82. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962.

______. Jesus Christus in Historie und Theologie. Tübingen: Mohr, 1975.

Suggs, M. Jack. Wisdom, Christology, and Law in Matthew’s Gospel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970.

Taylor, Vincent. The Gospel according to St. Mark. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1966.

Thompson, William G. Matthew’s Advice to a Divided Community: Mt. 17, 22–18, 35. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970.

Thrall, Margaret E. Greek Particles in the New Testament. Leiden: Brill, 1962.

Trench, R. C. Studies in the Gospels. London: Macmillan, 1878.

Trilling, Wolfgang. Das wahre Israel: Studien zur Theologie des Matthäus-Evangeliums. München: Kosel, 1964.

Turner, Nigel. Syntax. Vol. 3 of J. H. Moulton. A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963.

______. Grammatical Insights into the New Testament. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1965.

______. Christian Words. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1980.

Urbach, E. E. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Translated by I. Abrahams. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975.

van der Loos, Hendrik. The Miracles of Jesus. Leiden: Brill, 1965.

van Tilborg, Sjef. The Jewish Leaders in Matthew. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

Verseput, Donald J. The Rejection of the Humble Messianic King: A Study of the Composition of Matthew 11–12. Frankfurt: Lang, 1986.

Via, Dan O. The Parables. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967.

Walker, Rolf. Die Heilsgeschichte im ersten Evangelium. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967.

Warfield, Benjamin B. Selected Shorter Writings. 2 vols. Edited by John E. Meeter. Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970.

Wenham, David, ed. The Rediscovery of Jesus’ Eschatological Discourse. Gospel Perspectives 4. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984.

Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Coniectanea biblica: New Testament Series 10. Lund: Gleerup, 1978.

Wilson, Alistair I. When Will These Things Happen? A Study of Jesus as Judge in Matthew 21–25. Bletchley, U.K.: Paternoster, 2004.

Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God 2. London: SPCK, 1996.

______. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God 3. London: SPCK, 2003.

Zerwick, M. Biblical Greek. Rome: Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 1963.

Zumstein, Jean. La condition du croyant dans l’Évangile selon Matthieu. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977.

Articles

Bacon, Benjamin W. “The ‘Five Books’ of Moses Against the Jews.” The Expositor 15 (1918): 56–66.

Barth, Gerhard. “Matthew’s Understanding of the Law.” Pages 58–164 in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. Edited by Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

Berger, Klaus. “Die königlichen Messiastraditionen des Neuen Testaments.” New Testament Studies 20 (1974): 1–44.

Blaising, Craig A. “Gethsemane: A Prayer of Faith.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 22 (1979): 333–43.

Bornkamm, Günther. “End-Expectation and the Church in Matthew.” Pages 15–51 in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. Edited by Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

______. “The Stilling of the Storm in Matthew.” Pages 52–57 in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. Edited by Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

Carson, D. A. “Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel—After Dodd, What?” Pages 83–145 in Gospel Perspectives. Edited by R. T. France and D. Wenham. Vol. 2. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980–81.

______. “Jesus and the Sabbath in the Four Gospels.” Pages 57–97 in From Sabbath to Lord’s Day. Edited by D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982.

______. “Jewish Leaders in Matthew’s Gospel: A Reappraisal.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25 (1982): 161–74.

______. “Christological Ambiguities in the Gospel of Matthew.” Pages 97–114 in Christ the Lord: Studies in Christology Presented to Donald Guthrie. Edited by Harold Rowdon. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1982.

______. “Redaction Criticism: On the Legitimacy and Illegitimacy of a Literary Tool.” Pages 119–42 in Scripture and Truth. Edited by D. A. Carson and J. D. Woodbridge. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983.

______. “The ὅμοιος Word-Group as Introduction to Some Matthean Parables.” New Testament Studies 31 (1985): 277–82.

Dodd, C. H. “New Testament Translation Problems I.” Bible Translator 27 (1976): 301–11.

Dupont, J. “Le point de vue de Matthieu dans le chapitre des paraboles.” Pages 221–59 in L’Évangile selon Matthieu: Rédaction et Théologie. Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium 29. Edited by M. Didier. Gembloux: Duculot, 1972.

Ellis, E. E. “New Directions in Form Criticism.” Pages 299–315 in Jesus Christus in Historie und Theologie. Edited by Georg Strecker. Tübingen: Mohr, 1975.

Fee, G. D. “Modern Text Criticism and the Synoptic Problem.” Pages 154–69 in J. J. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text-Critical Studies, 1776–1976. Edited by Bernard Orchard and Thomas R. W. Longstaff. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978.

France, R. T. “The Servant of the Lord in the Teaching of Jesus.” Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1966): 26–52.

______. “God and Mammon.” Evangelical Quarterly 51 (1979): 3–21.

______. “Exegesis in Practice: Two Samples.” Pages 252–81 in New Testament Interpretation. Edited by I. Howard Marshall. Exeter: Paternoster, 1977.

Gooding, D. W. “Structure littéraire de Matthieu, XIII, 53 à XVIII, 35.” Revue Biblique 85 (1978): 227–52.

Heil, John Paul. “Significant Aspects of the Healing Miracles in Matthew.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979): 274–87.

Held, Heinz Joachim. “Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories.” Pages 165–299 in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. Edited by Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

Hill, David. “Son and Servant: An Essay on Matthean Christology.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 6 (1980): 2–16.

Huffmann, Norman A. “Atypical Features in the Parables of Jesus.” Journal of Biblical Literature 97 (1978): 207–20.

Kaiser, W. C. “The Weightier and Lighter Matters of the Law.” Pages 176–92 in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation. Edited by G. F. Hawthorne. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975.

Lachs, S. T. “Some Textual Observations on the Sermon on the Mount.” Jewish Quarterly Review 69 (1978): 98–111.

Liefeld, Walter L. “Theological Motifs in the Transfiguration Narrative.” Pages 162–79 in New Dimensions in New Testament Study. Edited by Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974.

Moo, Douglas J. “Jesus and the Authority of the Mosaic Law.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 20 (1984): 3–49.

Neil, William. “Five Hard Sayings of Jesus.” Pages 157–71 in Biblical Studies. Edited by J. R. McKay and J. F. Miller. London: Collins, 1976.

O’Brien, P. T. “The Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20.” Evangelical Review of Theology 2 (1978): 254–67.

Ogawa, Akira. “Paraboles de l’Israël véritable? Reconsidération critique de Mt. xxi.28 xxii.14.” Novum Testamentum 21 (1979): 121–49.

Pamment, Margaret. “The Kingdom of Heaven according to the First Gospel.” New Testament Studies 27 (1980–81): 211–32.

Payne, Philip Barton. “The Authenticity of the Parable of the Sower and Its Interpretation.” Pages 163–207 in Gospel Perspectives. Edited by R. T. France and D. Wenham. Vol. 2. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980–81.

Reicke, Bo. “Synoptic Prophecies on the Destruction of Jerusalem.” Pages 121–34 in Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature. Edited by D. E. Aune. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

Slingerland, H. Dixon. “The Transjordanian Origin of St. Matthew’s Gospel.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 3 (1979): 18–28.

Stanton, Graham N. “The Origin and Purpose of Matthew’s Gospel: Matthean Scholarship from 1945 to 1980.” Page 25 in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Vol. 2. New York: de Gruyter, 1982.

Wenham, David. “The Synoptic Problem Revisited: Some New Suggestions About the Composition of Mark 4:1–34.” Tyndale Bulletin 23 (1972): 3–38.

______. “The Resurrection Narratives in Matthew’s Gospel.” Tyndale Bulletin 24 (1973): 21–54.

______. “The Interpretation of the Parable of the Sower.” New Testament Studies 20 (1974): 299–319.

______. “The Structure of Matthew XIII,” New Testament Studies 25 (1978–79): 516–22.

Unpublished Material

Blomberg, Craig. “The Tendencies of the Tradition in the Parables of the Gospel of Thomas.” Master’s thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1979.

Trotter, Andrew H. “Understanding and Stumbling: A Study of the Disciples’ Understanding of Jesus and His Teaching in the Gospel of Matthew.” PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1986.

Wood, Thomas R. “The Regathering of the People of God: An Investigation into the New Testament’s Appropriation of the Old Testament Prophecies Concerning the Regathering of Israel.” PhD diss., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2005.

↑ Back to top