Matthew within Sectarian Judaism (2019 Kampen), book

John Kampen, Matthew within Sectarian Judaism (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).

Abstract

"In this masterful study of what has long been considered the "most Jewish" gospel, John Kampen deftly argues that the gospel of Matthew advocates for a distinctive Jewish sectarianism, rooted in the Jesus movement. He maintains that the writer of Matthew produced the work within an early Jewish sect, and its narrative contains a biography of Jesus which can be used as a model for the development of a sectarian Judaism in Lower Syria, perhaps Galilee, toward the conclusion of the first century CE. Rather than viewing the gospel of Matthew as a Jewish-Christian hybrid, Kampen considers it a Jewish composition that originated among the later followers of Jesus a generation of so afer the disciples. This method of viewing the work allows readers to understand what it might have meant for members of a Jesus movement to promote an understanding of Jewish history and law that would sustain Jewish life at the end of the first century."--Publisher description.

Contents

Introduction -- Matthew and the First-Century Jewish World -- Matthew within Jewish Sectarianism -- The Polemic of the Sermon on the Mount -- Sectarian Wisdom -- Communal Organization and Discipline -- Jesus and His Opponents -- Commissioning the Sect -- Conclusion.