This fresh look at the Gospel of Matthew highlights the unique contribution that Matthew's rich and multilayered portrait of Jesus makes to understanding the connection between the Old and New Testaments. Patrick Schreiner argues that Matthew obeyed the Great Commission by acting as scribe to his teacher Jesus in order to share Jesus's life and work with the world, thereby making disciples of future generations. The First Gospel presents Jesus's life as the fulfillment of the Old Testament story of Israel and shows how Jesus brings new life in the New Testament.

The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.

A Marginal Scribe collects eight studies written over a period of two decades, all of which use social-scientific criticism to interpret the Gospel of Matthew. It prefaces them, first, with a new chapter on the struggle between historians and social scientists since the Enlightenment and its parallel in New Testament studies, which culminated in the emergence of social-scientific criticism; and, second, with a new chapter on recent social-scientific interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew. The eight, more specialized studies cover a variety of themes and use a variety of models but concentrate and are held together by those that illumine social ranking and marginality. The book closes with a chapter that ties together these studies.

"John Meier is widely recognized as an authority, and one welcomes his commentary . . .Meier's book is especially rich in showing how Matthew reinterprets the Gospel in the context of his own church and its problems." America

This book, first published in 1995, introduces, retells and analyses the Gospel of Matthew.

With a comprehensive sweep of the relevant literature--including classical and Hellenistic sources, the Septuagint, and the New Testament--the author defines disciple and related terms as they were used in the ancient world. Pertinent Semitic words from the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic literature, and Qumran documents provide additional background for the term. A special emphasis is Matthew's use of mathetes and the role of Simon Peter as a model disciple. The study first appeared in 1988 in the prestigious Novum Testamentum Supplements under the title The Concept of Disciple in Matthew's Gospel: As Reflected in the Use of the Term Mathetes. In this second edition, the author includes a new chapter outlining advances in the field since the book was first published.

"Most studies of Matthew have been oriented toward a recovery of the portrait of Jesus or toward strengthening faith in him in our time. I have chosen a different orientation. The focus of my attention is on the work of the Evangelist as a teacher and on his intended audience in the churches of the first century--men and women who, like many of us, were charged with basic educational work among adult believers in Jesus Christ. I hope that such an orientation may strengthen your sense of kinship both with the Evangelist, who was a teacher, and with his first readers, who also were teachers." From the Preface This insightful commentary on the Gospel of Matthew will help readers better understand the importance of this book of the New Testament. Paul S. Minear focuses on Matthew as a teacher in the early Christian church, assesses Matthew's impact on Christians in the first century, and examines the fascinating array of literary forms found in this Gospel. Throughout, the book aims at increasing comprehension of the distinctive and constructive theological stance of Matthew.

You don't have to be perfect to do God's work. Look no further than the twelve disciples, whose many weaknesses are forever preserved throughout the pages of the New Testament. Join bestselling author John MacArthur in Twelve Ordinary Men as he draws principles from Christ's careful, hands-on training of the original disciples for today's modern disciple, you! Jesus chose ordinary men--fishermen, tax collectors, political zealots--and turned their weakness into strength, producing greatness from people who were otherwise unremarkable. The twelve disciples weren't the stained-glass saints we imagine. On the contrary, they were truly human, all too prone to mistakes, misstatements, wrong attitudes, lapses of faith, and bitter failure. Simply put, they were flawed people, just like us. But under Jesus' teaching and touch, they became a force that forever changed the world. MacArthur takes you into the inner circle of the disciples--their selection, their training, their personalities, and their incredible impact. As MacArthur took a closer look at the lives of the twelve disciples, he found himself asking difficult questions along the way, including: Why did Jesus pick each of the twelve disciples? How did Jesus teach them everything he could in just eighteen short months? Can the lessons that Jesus taught the disciples can still influence our faith today? In Twelve Ordinary Men, you'll learn that disciples are living proof that God's strength is made perfect in weakness. As you get to know the men who walked with Jesus, you'll see that if he can accomplish his purposes through them, he can do the same through you.

The fourth installment in the Jesus Chronicles, from the bestselling author of the Left Behind series. This story in the Jesus Chronicles depicts the life of the most unlikely of apostles-a sinner turned saint-and his time with the Lord. With Matthew, readers walk alongside Jesus as He gives the Sermon on the Mount, performs the miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, contemplates His fate at the Last Supper and in the Garden of Gethsemane, is crucified, and most important, resurrected. Thrilling and uplifting, Matthew's Story shows how the true Messiah changed the life of one man, and forever altered the course of history.