Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary (Illuminations | ILLUM)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
An insightful commentary on the Gospel of Matthew that focuses on historical context and reception history
Building on decades of focused work on the first Gospel, Warren Carter brings the fruit of that research to bear in a tour de force of historical insight and methodological rigor. Within this remarkable two-volume commentary, Carter situates the Gospel of Matthew within the context of Jewish traditions and negotiations of Roman imperialism after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. He positions the Gospel as illuminating how a community of Jesus-followers constantly navigates Roman power. He pays particular attention to Jesus’s strategies for dealing with Roman rule, showing how Jesus alternately replicates it, accommodates it, resists it, and develops a way of life committed to the empire of God. In addition to examining the Gospel of Matthew in its historical and social context, Carter shines new light on instances of the book’s reception, illustrating how scholars have interpreted it from the era of the early church up to the present. This fascinating commentary is an essential and distinctive resource for New Testament scholars and students of theology.
- Brings the fruit of that research to bear in a tour de force of historical insight.
- Situates the Gospel of Matthew within the context of Jewish traditions.
- Shines new light on instances of the book’s reception.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
To the Reader
Preface
List of Abbreviations and Sigla
Introduction
1. Matthew’s Genre as an Ancient Biography
2. Telling the Story of Jesus
3. Written in the Late First Century in Syrian Antioch
4. Negotiating the Post–70 CE World of Syrian Antioch
5. Synagogue Conflict and Horizontal Verbal Violence under Roman Occupation
6. The Socioeconomic Realities of Daily Life in the Roman Empire
7. Interpreting Matthew’s Gospel across Two Millennia
8. Bibliography
First Narrative Block 1:1–4:16
Second Narrative Block 4:17–11:1
Third Narrative Block 11:2–16:20
Fourth Narrative Block 16:21–20:34
Fifth Narrative Block 21:1–27:66
Sixth Narrative Block 28:1–20
Subject Index
Author Index
Scripture Index
Ancient Sources
This impressive and very valuable resource encapsulates the work of one of the most important Matthew scholars of our time. The book not only relays up-to-date information from current scholarship but is also replete with new insights not currently available anywhere else. It will delight and ultimately satisfy anyone who wants to read Matthew’s Gospel both as a venerable volume with a ‘history of consequences’ and as a dynamic treatise that retains striking relevance for our modern world.
—Mark Allan Powell, Trinity Lutheran Seminary
Warren Carter’s Matthew is a gift from a prolific scholar who has spent his career exploring the first Gospel. With clarity and depth of research, Carter offers a cogent reading of Matthew that foregrounds its engagement with Roman imperial power. He offers wide-ranging discussions of the text, its contexts, and its interpretation and effects across the centuries. Essential reading for interpreters of the Gospels.
—Jeannine K. Brown, Bethel Seminary
Karl Barth retrieved Paul’s apocalyptic message from the Letter to the Romans for a Germany lost in a liberal and nationalistic cultural gospel. Brian Blount shredded systemic racism and retrieved a liberating word for African Americans from the book of Revelation. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza exposed the masculinism of Bible interpreters while proposing hope for women. And now Warren Carter has exposed the persistent, systematic colonialism and imperialism of American nationalist misreadings of the Gospel of Matthew. Carter has been the voice of empire criticism for more than two decades. At times I found myself disagreeing, but his achievement is monumental. The coherence of his method and the depth of his probing of the text of Matthew will influence sociopolitical scholarship on Matthew for decades.
—Scot McKnight, Houston Theological Seminary
- Title: Matthew 1:1–16:20: An Introduction and Commentary (Illuminations | ILLUM)
- Author: Warren Carter
- Series: Illuminations
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2025
- Pages: 1650
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- ISBNs: 9780802870087, 0802870082
- Resource ID: LLS:ICS61MT
- Resource Type: Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-03-24T19:29:52Z