Hitzonim | Outsiders

Apocalyptic and Apocryphal Tradition in Matthew 14 Introduction: Images of Jesus and Their Composition Following the Feeding of the 5,000, last week’s Sunday Post, in this week’s assigned gospel reading… Read more

Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition in Matthew 14.13-21 Introduction: Flat Bread, A Long Walk, Hungry People, a Messianic Age The Matthean evangelist, aware of Jesus’ Passover meal and the central role for… Read more

The parable of the mustard seed as subversive polemic against Rome Update on the Asynchronous Book Study: When Christians Were Jews I opened a poll to all subscribers a few… Read more

Matthew’s parables remind us that we’re not the original audience Introduction: Do You Know Any Farmers? Do you know any farmers? They’re a tough and resilient bunch. For example, this… Read more

What we learn about parables from Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Introduction: Why Parables? In this post, I discuss parables to remind us—yet again—that Jesus is a first century, Torah-observant Israelite whose… Read more

Getting a sense of readers’ interest in a guided study Introduction: Time for Another Study? Many readers came to this newsletter by way of a Lenten study we shared together… Read more

Ritual impurity, Torah observance, and the lighter yoke in Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Introduction: Death is the Problem; Law is the Solution To offer instruction on studying Torah, the rabbis say,… Read more

Matthew 10:40 and Matthew’s (Jesus’s) concern with law obedience and conduct This week the Revised Common Lectionary has continued reading from Matthew for the assigned gospel text. In this Sunday’s… Read more

Matthew in context with other cultural, cultic, and theological ideas of the first century Introduction: Reading Text in Con-Text We meet the people and ideas of the first century Jesus… Read more

Catching up on older episodes of the New Testament Review podcast Often my posts are a little dense—or I’m a little dense? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I thought I’d mix it up with… Read more