Customer Reviews

Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew

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I've been preparing, over the last several months, to teach a class at my church on the New Testament in its historical/cultural setting. Out of the dozen plus books I read this was one of the most informative and best written of them. Certainly one needs many other sources to get a full picture of what is going on in the NT and in Matthew in particular, but this book gives a great amount of info you probably won't get from anywhere else. Also, since the author is writing about the context in which Matthew was written, he seems to have no interest in the traditional critical questions such as authorship, date, sources, etc. This makes it friendly to those interested in the Bible from either side of the conservative/liberal divide.

Most readers will learn quite a lot reading this book. Some might just have their perspectives changed on the interpretation of Biblical texts. A lot depends on what you bring to the book. If you are broadly acquainted with inter-disciplinary textual analysis of ancient literature, this work will be less striking than if this is your first exposure to such an analysis. That being said, this is a remarkably good starting point for any reader to gain an acquaintance with socio-rhetorical commentary on ancient texts. The author, Jerome Henry Neyrey, is Professor of New Testament Studies at Notre Dame University and is a member of the Society of Jesus and an ordained Roman Catholic Priest. He is also the Executive Secretary of "The Context Group: A Project on the Bible in Its Cultural Environment."

And indeed, this entire book attempts to place the text of the gospel of Matthew into its proper cultural setting in a society where honor and shame were vital social determinatives. To do this, the author leads us through a ground up education on the rhetorical conventions of ancient Mediterranean society and its fixation with honor and shame. These rhetorical conventions when coupled with honor and shame values current in the first century CE as applied to the Matthean text explain much of the gospel that generally remains otherwise obscure. Like it or not, the thought patterns and value structures of the world of antiquity were radically different than those of the Post Modern world in which we live. Reading ancient texts through the lens of our anachronistic values and cultural assumptions renders them opaque at best and grossly misinterpreted at worst.

Substantively the following struck me: The author of the gospel of Matthew was in all likelihood a very highly educated Greek speaker with a formal classical education; When analyzed by the socio-rhetorical methods used by Neyrey, Jesus' teachings are extremely demanding of his followers, then as well as now, far more demanding than we would normally assume; and, Jesus' maxims were entirely unique and very out of step with the antique Mediterranean society he lived in and that includes the specific contemporary Jewish world which he spent his entire life in. To some degree the later may explain Matthew's critical attitudes towards certain sectors of Jewish society and their practices. However, I perceive other factors based on the Matthean community and the location of the gospel in time and place as pivotal to the author's acrimony with certain elements of Judaism. Lastly, I became convinced while reading this book that Matthew's author was far more skilled at Old Testament exegetics than I had previously been willing to grant. I found this book straight forward and easy to understand but worth deep consideration and study. This is a must read for any New Testament scholar or student.

Prof. Neyrey brings fresh insight to the text of Matthew using resources from otherwise ignored classical sources. With the tools of classical literature and social science criticism, Neyrey writes clearly, arguing cogently for Matthew as encomium literature. A must for every bookshelf.

The latest and finest in sophisticated scriptural scholarship is about what the people heard when the Christian message was preached. If you hear the word "bullpen," you need to know if the context is baseball or rodeo. I've studied, taught and published scriptural materials for 40 years. This is the first time I know for sure what the Beatitudes really mean. I am grateful and I'm giving the book to other teachers.

My New Testament professor recommended this book. The ideas and concepts presented are fascinating, and correlate with much that I had already started to learn about the differences in culture in the Southern Hemisphere and the Western world. Even though I only needed to read a section of the book, I read on. Neyrey is a little repetitious, but overall, I really enjoyed this. Even though I am a student, I am not young...and this was new and helpful to me.

Read one book, one chapter, or even one page by Father Neyrey, and you have read them all. Here is his teaching in a nutshell: the Bible has to be read in the context of the ancient Mediterranean. And then....silence. Ask Father Neyrey if a man can transcend time and place with his mind (or via revelation), and he acts really confused. So why dedicate your life to something that was written by a bunch of dumb peasants from 2000 years ago (Dr. Neyrey's position)? Therein lies Father Neyrey's frustration. His life is like wanton soup without the wanton (recognize that little insult, Father Neyrey!).

What is more, though he is funny and lively in person, his writing style leaves much to be desired. He is witty, but he is hellbent to write like an anthropologist. He has abandoned Mt. Helicon for the insular drudgery of Cambridge. Or as the case may be, South Bend.

P.S. Living in South bend reflects a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Another way of looking at the purposes and meaning of the gospel. It makes me wonder if Matthew, a supposedly uneducated man, really wrote the Gospel all by himself, or a man named "Matthew" received the credit.