Matthew for Everyone, part 1

by N. T. Wright

Publisher:

SPCK

, 2004

Overview

Tom Wright’s eye-opening comments on the Gospel and what it might mean for us are combined, passage by passage, with his new translation of the Bible text. This volume discusses Matthew 1-15.

Product Details

• Title: Matthew for Everyone, part 1
• Author: N. T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2002
• Pages: 240
• Christian Group: Anglican

About N. T. Wright

Nicholas Tom Wright, commonly known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews University. Previously, he was the bishop of Durham. He has researched, taught, and lectured on the New Testament at McGill, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities, and has been named by Christianity Today a top theologian. He is best known for his scholarly contributions to the historical study of Jesus and the New Perspective on Paul. His work interacts with the positions of James Dunn, E. P. Sanders, Marcus Borg, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wright has written and lectured extensively around the world, authoring more than forty books and numerous articles in scholarly journals and popular periodicals. He is best known for his Christian Origins and the Question of God Series, of which three of the anticipated six volumes are finished.

Sample Pages from the Print Edition

Contents

Top Highlights

“This is an upside-down world, or perhaps a right-way-up world; and Jesus is saying that with his work It’s starting to come true. This is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of the world. It’s about something That’s starting to happen, not about a general truth of life. It is gospel: good news, not good advice.” (Page 36)

“In our world, still, most people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life, victory in battle. Jesus is offering wonderful news for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers.” (Pages 36–37)

“We are to pray that God’s kingdom will come, and God’s will be done, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The life of heaven—the life of the realm where God is already king—is to become the life of the world, transforming the present ‘earth’ into the place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That’s the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these ‘beatitudes’ in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God’s promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it is in fact the right way up. Try it and see.” (Page 38)

“God had called Israel to be the salt of the earth; but Israel was behaving like everyone else, with its power politics, its factional squabbles, its militant revolutions. How could God keep the world from going bad—the main function of salt in the ancient world—if Israel, his chosen ‘salt’, had lost its distinctive taste?” (Page 40)

Product Details

• Title: Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15
• Author: N. T. Wright
• Series: For Everyone Bible Study Guides
• Publisher: SPCK
• Print Publication Date: 2004
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Bible. N.T. Matthew › Commentaries
• ISBNs: 9780664227869, 9780664227876, 0664227864, 0664227872
• Resource ID: LLS:EVRY61MT01
• Resource Type: Bible Commentary
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T19:40:54Z

About N. T. Wright

Nicholas Thomas “Tom” Wright (1948–) is a New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian, and Anglican bishop and currently Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College in the University of St Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Christianity Today named him one of today's top theologians. 

Wright was born in Morpeth, Northumberland, and recounts an awareness of God's presence from a young age—and that relationship with God ever since is reflected in his life and work. He's a prolific author; one of his most popular books, Surprised by Hope, frames the resurrection of the dead as the appropriate hope for all believers rather than an overemphasis on just "going to heaven when you die." He's among the leading theologians in the New Perspective on Paul debate. Wright has several honorary doctoral degrees, and in 2014, the British Academy awarded him the Burkitt Medal "in recognition of special service to biblical studies." In 2015, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Wright served as chaplain at Cambridge from 1978 to 1981, then as assistant professor of New Testament language and literature at McGill University in Montreal. Before becoming a chaplain, tutor, lecturer, and fellow at Oxford in 1986, Wright served as dean of Lichfield Cathedral, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, and the bishop of Durham from 2003–10. In addition to the entire New Testament for Everyone Series, some of N. T. Wright's books include The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, Who Was Jesus, The New Testament and the People of God, God and the Pandemic, Evil and the Justice of God, Surprised by Hope, and Simply Christian. He coauthored Jesus the Final Days with Craig A. Evans.