Customer Reviews

The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Com (Eerdmans))

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There are many good things about this commentary. Nolland has a huge bibliography for anyone interested in further reading and research on Matthew. He provides a good deal of historical background that is helpful to understanding Matthew. But, the most beneficial part of the commentary to me was the literary structures (mainly the chiastic structures) that he would point out that seem to pervade Matthew. The book as a whole seems to be chiastic:

A. Introduction
B. First Discouse (Sermon on the Mount)
C. Teaching/Healing
D. Second Discourse
E. Teaching/Healing
F. Third Discourse (Parables)
E'. Teaching/Healing
D'. Fourth Discourse
C'. Teaching/Healing
B'. Fifth Discourse (Olivet Discourse)
A'. Conclusion

This can be scrutinized, of course, but generally it seems to work.

The one big detraction of the book was the text, source, and redaction critical approach that it seemed to take and Matthew's supposed interaction with Q. If you can get around that, then there are still some great insights that can be gleaned from this commentary.

This hefty and rather expensive commentary on the Gospel of Matthew definitely has its merits, but it also manifests some of the same shortcomings one finds in other modern commentaries on the First Gospel.

On the positive side, the reader will note immediately that Nolland's treatment of the Greek text is indeed thorough and masterful. His book is an up-to-date resource that takes into account all the textual and lexical study that has enriched our understanding of Matthew over the past 75 years. Furthermore, because Nolland pays close attention to the sequence of thought within the gospel, a reader seeking to understand how a particular passage relates to its wider context will find this commentary very helpful.

A conservative or traditionalist reader, however, will be disappointed with this book on two counts. First, Nolland's assumption of Markan priority among the Gospels -- and of Matthew's literary dependence on Mark -- sometimes mars his exegesis of certain pericopes. The reader thus finds himself working through explanations of how Matthew altered Mark's account by rearranging material and drawing on additional sources to enrich his own telling of the story. For a preacher concerned with presenting Matthew's Gospel on its own terms, this kind of discussion is less than helpful. Second, Nolland sometimes leaves one with the impression that Matthew's depiction of Christ is perhaps more theologically instructive than historically accurate. Does the evangelist show us the "real" Jesus, or merely a "theologized" figure of his own creation? In both these respects, Nolland's book is, unfortunately, very much like the already numerous commentaries that apply the usual methods of source/redaction criticism to the First Gospel.

Anyone interested in building a collection of erudite and reliable commentaries on the Greek text of Matthew should consider buying this volume. Others -- and especially more traditional/conservative readers -- will be happier with the most recent works on Matthew by R. T. France (Eerdmans, 2007) and Jeffrey A. Gibbs (Concordia, 2007).

John Nolland, expositor of The Gospel of Matthew in The New International Greek Testament Commentary Series (Eerdmans) has been working on this commentary for ten years. Believing that the apostle Matthew was not the author, he nevertheless holds that the portrayal of Jesus' ministry is mostly accurate and that the gospel was written prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. In addition to a thorough exegesis of the Greek text, Nolland focuses on the presentation of Matthew as story.

(My background--I spent a semester of seminary immersed in Matthew and many of the commentaries written on it.)

I was sorely disappointed with this work. The introduction is outstanding and instructive, particularly concerning the literary craft of the Gospel of Matthew. The book then promptly departs from what seemed to be the purpose and aim of the book, to see the literary cohesiveness and structure of the whole, thereby unlocking the meaning of the parts. Puzzling.

Nolland has done much legwork and there is a ton of useful background information, although sometimes it seems a stretch to pull in as much as he does from practices and customs outside of Judaism to explain Matthew's context, Jesus' discipleship methods, etc. Did I mention it's a very dry read?

Bar-none the best commentary on Matthew for the person seeking a scholarly help is Davies and Allison. If you don't want the whole 3 volume, there is also an abridged version that is worth every penny.
Also, D. A. Carson's is excellent help, though not as lengthy as Nolland or Davies and Allison.

Despite Nolland's hangups with authorship, this is a significant contribution to the discussion, and a helpful commentary to consult when unpacking Matthew. I highly recommend it.

There is SOME good material in the 1200+ text pages of this book, but not nearly as much as one would think. The problem is that the author goes way, way overboard with the comparisons to the Gospel of Mark. Instead of merely highlighting important changes, this commentary spends hundreds of pages discussing each and every change, in each and every verse. Anyone with a Bible can see what has changed between the two gospels, so it is a waste of time and paper to describe each change in excrutiating detail. Like "Only cosmetic changes differentiate Matthew's text for the first half-verse from here to Mk. 6:35" and "In the second half of the verse Matthew again reproduces the substance .. with only minor changes". The author has totally missed the point: a reader wants the commentator to use his expert skill to select and describe IMPORTANT changes, not to mechanically document each and every word in which the gospels differ.

John's assertion that Matthew is not the author is made because he can make that assertion. Of course any first century student would know that just as we have Kinko's and Staples around on every corner to help us out with our printing needs, first century Rome had the same type of shops around town to help out those who needed to write letters. Of course these people who worked in these shops were well versed in Koine Greek. No mystery here.