John K. Riches – författare

A cultural and anthropological interpretation of Mark and Matthew, which examines their contribution to the formation of early Christian identity, world-view and ethos. John Riches studies the notions of sacred space and ethnicity in the Gospel narratives. He shows how early Christian group identity emerged through a dynamic process of reshaping traditional Jewish symbols and motifs associated with descent, kinship and territory. Ideas about descent from Abraham and the return from exile to Mount Zion are interwoven into early Christian traditions about Jesus and in the process substantially reshaped to produce different senses of identity. At the same time, he argues, the Evangelists were attempting to set forth a view of the world in a dialogue with the two opposing cosmologies current in Jewish culture of the time: one, cosmic dualist, the other, forensic. Riches shows how these two very different accounts of the origin and final overcoming of evil both inform Mark and Matthew's narratives and contribute to the richness and ambiguity of the texts and of the communities which sprang up around them.

Concise yet comprehensive, manageable and affordable, T&T Clark Study Guides are an invaluable resource for students, preachers and Bible study leaders. Each book in the series gives the reader a thorough introduction to a particular book of the Bible or the Apocrypha and includes:• An introduction to the contents of the particular biblical book• A balanced survey of the important critical issues• Attention to literary, historical, sociological, and theological perspectives• Suggestions about critical appropriation of the text by the contemporary reader• Reference to other standard works through annotated bibliographies.All the books in the series, formerly published by Sheffield Academic Press, are by leading biblical scholars and the authors have drawn on their scholarly expertise as well as their experience as teachers of university and college students.

In what sense does Matthew's Gospel reflect the colonial situation in which the community found itself after the fall of Jerusalem and the subsequent humiliation of Jews across the Roman Empire? To what extent was Matthew seeking to oppose Rome's claims to authority and sovereignty over the whole world, to set up alternative systems of power and society, to forge new senses of identity? If Matthew's community felt itself to be living on the margins of society, where did it see the centre as lying? In Judaism or in Rome? And how did Matthew's approach to such problems compare with that of Jews who were not followers of Jesus Christ and with that of others, Jews and Gentiles, who were followers? This is volume 276 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series and is also part of the Early Christianity in Context series.