This book is a reading of Matthew's Gospel as though it were written to integrate with, advance, and conclude the existing body of Scriptures. Matthew is read as though John was the last prophet of God and Israel's last chance for repentance, and that Jesus was YHWH who had come to judge the Temple, priesthood, and covenant nation according to the terms of the covenant God made with Moses at Sinai. Through this lens, new interpretations are given to the infancy narrative, the Sermon on the Mount, the mission, the parables, and Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem along with the events that followed.
By reading Matthew this way, a greater appreciation can be gained for its necessary place in the canon, and many of Matthew's well-known conundrums can be meaningfully addressed. As a Hebrew document, Matthew understood the necessity to record the crimes against YHWH/Jesus in Israel and Jerusalem as the ultimate cause for the termination of the ethnically and geographically bound covenant, which could then be replaced by the cross-cultural and international covenant that Christians now enjoy.
Martin Spadaro is the minister of St Andrew's Scots Presbyterian Church in Rose Bay, New South Wales. He has pastored churches for thirty years, and this is his first book. Spadaro is a graduate of Regent College, Vancouver and attained a PhD in New Testament studies at the University of Melbourne.
“Reading Matthew as the Climactic
Fulfilment of the Hebrew Story can be
commended for three broad features.
First, the book pays careful attention to
Matthew as a holistic narrative, drawing its
thesis out of the rich narrative tapestry that is
Matthew’s Gospel. Although not often explicitly
referring explicitly to the kind of narrative and
reader-oriented devices Matthew uses to make
an impact upon its readers, the book vigilantly
reads each paragraph in the light of the whole
Gospel and within the flow of Matthew’s
unfolding drama of Jesus.”
“... perhaps most pertinently for
Martin’s major thesis, the book takes seriously
Matthew’s overt desire to explain the coming of
Jesus Christ amongst first-century Israel as the
climax and fulfillment of the Hebrew story, and
of the Hebrew Scriptures. Perhaps it is here
that Spadaro is at his best. Guiding the reader
through Matthew’s narrative about Jesus, he
persuasively points out texts or patterns from
the Hebrew Scriptures upon which Matthew
potentially riffs. “
---Peter G. Bolt, Sydney College of Divinity