A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew

In this volume Craig Keener focuses on two aspects of the interpretation of Matthew. First, he analyzes the social-historical-rhetorical contexts of both Matthew and his traditions. Second, he examines the nature of Matthew's exhortations to his Christian audience pericope by pericope. Since it is impossible to reconstruct the precise social situation of Matthew, Keener casts a wider net and considers the general eastern Mediterranean, perhaps Syrian, Jewish context of Matthew. A close comparison of the issues raised in the Gospel with what we know elsewhere of late first-century Jewish-Christian relations provides the basic picture of the issues faced by the Matthean community.

You see the full character of Christ through the four different portraits in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each of them is painting a different picture – not a contradictory one, but filling it out with a new aspect. Matthew paints the King of the Jews. That is his object. We now suddenly realise why Matthew is the first in the New Testament, even if it was not the first to be written. The answer is that it is the nearest Gospel to the Old Testament, the most Jewish one that picks up the threads of all that has gone before….