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Book Review: The Theme of Recompense in Matthew's Gospel

Dale C. Allison, Jr. Interpretation 1994 48: 303 DOI: 10.1177/002096439404800319 The online version of this article can be found at: http://int.sagepub.com/content/48/3/303.citation

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Shorter Reviews and Notices

ingJesus by calling him "good" (hence Jesus' retort"Why do you call me 'good'?"). More frequently, they lead to new understandings of familiar passages. Luke's readers, the authors suggest, would have understood Mary and Joseph as having been denied the guest room in a relative's house (not a room at an "inn") because it was reserved for a higher ranking relation. This book, by the authors' own admission, is "simplified," and the field itself is young and as yet not fully explored. In addition, there will be challenges, no doubt, to specific applications of the social-science models (e.g., how typical was Jesus' personality?). Nonetheless, the idiosyncracies of particular events, persons, and even cultures do not diminish the pervasive significance of this approach or the usefulness of this book. Indeed, until the social contours of the biblical world are lined out, the most dedicated student is no more than a tourist in a strange land. The book provides a lucid introduction to the heir apparent in the tradition of historical criticismthe application of the social sciences to the Bible. Dean W. C h a p m a n First Presbytenan Church DeBary, Fionda

Matthew's teaching about reward and punishment incorporates an Old Testament scheme of recompense, the scheme associated with the promise of the land in the Sinai covenant. Israel was promised that her obedience would bring the land as an inheritance and warned that her disobedience would entail the loss of the land. The First Gospel is much informed by that promise and that warning, along with such attendant themes as entrance into the land and the darkness of exile. In fact, the adoption in Matthew of the Old Testament scheme (which appears above all in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah) reveals that Jesus and his church of Jews and Gentiles stand in direct continuity with the history of Israel and that the promises and threats made to the latter remain in force for the former. Charette's method is composition criticism, which concentrates on the final form of the text rather than on differences from Mark and Luke. Themes and motifs from Matthew are accordingly set beside Old Testament themes and motifs so that wholes are compared with wholes. The result is illuminating regarding Matthew's teaching on reward, less compelling regarding his teaching on punishment. There remains, however, the issue of whether one should examine Matthew's use of the Old Testament in isolation. How were the relevant Old Testament subjects and passages used or construed by others beside Matthewby other early Christians, by the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by the rabbis? Matthew read with the presuppositions and convictions of a first-century Jewish Christian, and surely investigation of any theme in his Gospel would profit from examination of what his contemporaries had to say on that theme. I suspect that attention to extracanonical Jewish literature would confirm many of Charette's conclusions, but raise quesInterpretation 303

The Theme of Recompense in Matthew's Gospel, by Blaine Charette. JSNT Sup. Senes 79. JSOT/Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1992. 184pp. $50.00. ISBN 1-85075-385-7.
Six WORDS perhaps should have been added to the title of this well-written revision of a Sheffield thesis: "Against the Background of the Old Testament." Charette's major contention is that

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tions about others. (I very much doubt, for instance, that the association of eschatological punishment with darkness has much to do with motifs of exile.) With this caveat, which is less a criticism than a call for further research, the book can be judged a success in making its own contribution. Dale C. Allison, J r . Frends University Wichita, Kansas

references to the patriarch that go beyond Paul's uses. Furthermore, Harrisville contends, Paul made little or no use of the Old Testament references to Abraham outside of the Book of Genesis. Rather, his exegetical base was limited to Genesis 1225 and was particularly determined by Genesis 15:6. Harrisville concludes that the apostle's interpretation was faithful to the Genesis narrative, rather than being an imposition of a late Christian grid upon the Genesis source. Although several studies have been carried out on Paul's use of Abraham, none of them have provided an extensive comparison a n d contrast between Paul's thought and that of late Judaism in this regard. This book moves a long way toward filling that vacuum. In the process, the unique aspects of Paul's thought appear in sharper relief. Harrisville is conversant with a wide range of scholarship on his theme, as evidenced by one h u n d r e d pages of copious endnotes and an extensive bibliography. His exegesis of the relevant Pauline passages in Romans and Galatians is especially enlightening on the intricacies and nuances of Paul's thought regarding Abraham. Fred D. Layman Asbury Theological Seminary Wilmore, Kentucky

The Figure of Abraham in the Epistles of St. Paul: In the Footsteps of Abraham, by Roy A. Harrisville, III. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 1992. 314pp. $79.95. ISBN 0-7734-9841.
THE INTENT of this study is to set Paul's interpretation of Abraham within the context of the biblical and Jewish writings that speak of the patriarch in order to establish the literary antecedents of the apostle's portrayal. An evaluation of nearly fifty extrabiblical Jewish sources that deal with Abraham leads Harrisville to the conclusion that none of them served as the literary source for Paul. Any similarities that exist are owing to independent reflections on the Genesis narrative. At the substantive level, however, Paul arrived at fundamentally different views from those of his Jewish counterparts on such theological themes as promise, faith, covenant, seed of Abraham, the gentiles, righteousness, circumcision, and the law. The other New Testament writings that speak of Abraham originated later than Paul's letters a n d could n o t have been literary antecedents for him. Although they reflect Pauline influences in some instances, they also make

Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John, by Tina Pippin. Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation. Westminster/ John Knox Press, Louisville, 1992. 144 pp. $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0-66425157-9.
A RESISTANCE to any univocal reading is

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