While the title and presentation of the book appears as a standard monograph, Waetjen’s work is actually a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on the whole of Matthew. Herman C. Waetjen is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at San Francisco Theological Seminary and veteran NT scholar. As the title indicates, Waetjen holds to a particular thesis concerning Matthew’s meaning, a thesis he seeks to present through his exposition of the First Gospel.
The introductory chapter is brief but contains the thesis that underlies Waetjen’s exposition. Amid describing his perspective, Waetjen states simply rather than argues for his understanding of the standard introductory matters. Waetjen asserts that the author was not a disciple of Jesus but constructed his work from Mark and Q from Antioch in the aftermath of the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Within this milieu, Waetjen believes that Judaism was confronted with how to reformulate and reconstitute itself and...
