Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
I appreciate the academic and faith communities that have afforded me the opportunity to explore Matthew with them, especially the students in my Matthew seminars at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, now Palmer Seminary of Eastern University, in Philadelphia, the Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia, and Hood Theological Seminary in Salisbury, NC, and the members of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Salisbury, NC. I am grateful to Ben Witherington of Asbury Seminary and John Simpson of Eerdmans for their guidance and support. I owe much gratitude to my copyeditor Milton Essenburg, who patiently and cheerfully worked through a long manuscript containing sometimes tedious notes. I am also grateful to Eerdmans and InterVarsity for allowing me the opportunity to present a much more academic version of my much more popular commentary published by the latter (1997a).