Discovering Matthew: Content, Interpretation, Reception by Ian Boxall (review)

For centuries, Matthew was truly the first gospel. It is the only Synoptic to claim apostolic authorship and it was long held to have been the first written. Of the four gospels, Matthew’s is preferred by the patristics for citation; harmonisations most commonly defer to the Matthean witness; and the Gospel of Matthew was seen as the source used by both Mark and Luke. This priority has all but disintegrated in the past century as Marcan priority has largely won the day. Even as the tide of contemporary scholarship has shifted to labelling Matthew the second gospel, its significance to the church through history remains unquestionable. Ian Boxall’s recent (2014) monograph is both a recognition of this significance and an attempt to probe the contribution that interpretive communities through history have made to our understanding of Matthew today.

The subtitle of Boxall’s work, “Content, Interpretation, Reception,” reflects his overarching interests. One may ask, what is the content without interpretation? And, in turn, what is interpretation but reception? And Boxall here has the opportunity to put the latter into practice. His is largely a reception-critical overview of Matthew. Reception criticism or reception theory, one of Boxall’s fields of interest, is one of the literary approaches that have sprung up in the last 50 years. It looks at how texts have been received through history and falls under the umbrella of reader-response criticism.

“In the following chapters,” Boxall explains, “different ways readers across the centuries have interpreted Matthew will be explored in support of the proposal that a multipronged approach—combining literary, historical and theological interest, and attending to text, authorial context and communities of readers—is required for a rounded understanding of the Gospel” (13). Indeed, chapter by chapter Boxall unfolds this multipronged approach.

Boxall takes a while to get into the actual content of Matthew (his sixth chapter “Beginnings: The Infancy Narratives” begins on p. 76 of his ±180 page work). His introductory chapter orients the reader to Matthean studies. Chapter 2 provides Boxall’s overview of interpretive history of the book. In chapter 3 he presents some broad concerns (such as dating and structure). Chapters 4 and 5 present historical and literary concerns respectively. Chapter 4 concerns Matthew’s audience and social setting and chapter 5 moves to characters and the narrative significance of Matthew’s use of geography. The remainder of the book moves through issues in Matthew following a roughly chronological order (though chs. 7–10 are not readily chronologically disentangled) starting with the “infancy narrative” and ending with the resurrection.

Boxall intends to cover the breadth of the content of Matthew without reaching too far into its depth. It is not uncommon to find a reference to a cathedral, painting or work of the arts (a major feature of the text’s pre-critical reception) illustrating a concept’s reception but specifics are more sparse. Particular texts demanding special attention arise on occasion, such as 16:8 in his chapter on the church. Boxall is certainly more at home, however, dealing with generalities of the text and its broad sweep, as seen in his chapter on “Jesus as Teacher” where the sermon on the mount (three chapters) and Jesus use of parables in general (not limited to ch. 13) each receive 2.5 pages of discussion. This survey approach allows Boxall to move seamlessly through centuries of interpretive history following threads pertaining more to theological issues raised by the text rather than getting bogged down in exegetical questions about specifics of any text.

The book is not without its weaknesses. While Boxall gives a nod toward historical concerns declaring, “a rounded interpretation of Matthew invites an interweaving of historical, literary and theological questions” (29), he clearly privileges the literary-critical approach. Kingsbury’s work (Matthew as Story, which specifically focuses on narrative criticism), for example, features frequently throughout the text to the point, I would argue, that it begins to weaken his argument that...