Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence, and Effects

In this provocative book, Ulrich Luz points the way beyond the limitations of the historical-critical method as it has been practiced during the past two centuries. He demonstrates the richness of the insights that can be gained when the interpreter considers a variety of effects and influences that a text has had in subsequent history, a method of inquiry he calls Wirkungsgeschichte.

This distinctive approach, which Luz so brilliantly exhibits in his multi-volume commentary on Matthew, is here applied to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 10, and Matthew 16:18. Insights from the ancient fathers, from Scholastics, from Reformers and Anabaptists, and from many others are adduced to demonstrate the importance of the history of Christian thought for the interpretation of biblical texts.

Ulrich Luz was born in 1938, and he studied theology in Zürich and Göttingen under Hans Conzelmann, Eduard Schweizer, and Gerhard Ebeling. He taught at the International Christian University in Tokyo (1970-1971) and at the University of Göttingen (1972-1980), and he is now Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He received honorary degrees from the universities of Leipzig, Budapest, and Sibiu and served as president of the Societas Novi Testamenti Studiorum in 1998.

His published works in English are Jesus in Two Perspectives: A Jewish-Christian Dialog (with Pinchas Lapide; 1985), Matthew 1-7 (Continental Commentaries series, Fortress Press 1985), Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence and Effects (1994), and The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew (1995).