Matthew (IVP NT Commentary)
By Craig S. Keener
444 pages. £9.99
ISBN 0 85111 682 5
This is a powerful and hard-hitting commentary. Keener has a remarkable grasp of the scholarship relating to Matthew, and is particularly effective in drawing out the Jewishness of Matthew's understanding of the gospel.
But it is not especially in scholarship that the power of the commentary resides. Rather it is the sense that the writer has been mastered by the gospel. He does not make the details fit into neat categories, or explain away difficulties, or use scholarship to support his preconceived notions. At every turn, he lets the words of Scripture test and challenge whatever stands against the gospel, whether in the church or in the world.