UC Berkeley

“Locating Matthew in Israel” renders visible the Second Temple Jewish ethos of Matthew’s gospel, while at the same time producing a more ethical contemporary scholarly reading of the First Gospel. This inquiry is undertaken without recourse to the arborescent and epochal framings that characterize most scholarly inquiries of Matthew. Drawing on an eclectic mix of conversation partners – including the works of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Bertolt Brecht – this reading begins the progress of remediating the epochal blockage pervasive in Matthaean studies through the introduction of the off-epochal. By off-setting epoch, new possibilities and space are opening in this reading. “Locating Matthew in Israel” demonstrates that Matthew’s composition is best described as Torah-formed. Additionally, this close reading centers on three key divine presence passages (Matthew 1:23; 18:20; 28:20) to provide an alternative non-incarnational figuration of Jesus. Functionally, Matthew’s bricolage presents Jesus as Torah-transfigured not as the incarnate logos.