This Handbook provides any commentator — whose purposes might include writing a consecutive treatment of a Gospel, or engaging with episodic themes or passages, or preparing a particular section of the Gospel for study, teaching, or preaching — with resources from the Gospels’ Judaic environment that appear useful for understanding the texts themselves. Translation, presentation, comparison with Judaica, and occasional comments are all designed with that end in view. Materials are included from the Pseudepigrapha (together with Philo and Josephus), discoveries related to Qumran, and Rabbinic Literature (inclusive of the Targumim). As in a previous volume that dealt with Mark’s Gospel, this Comparative Handbook targets the issue of comparison more than analysis or commentary.
Alan J. Avery-Peck, PhD. (1981), is Professor of Religious Studies and Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA. A specialist in early Rabbinic Judaism, he wrote the introduction and commentary to 2 Corinthians, in A.J. Levine and Marc Brettler, eds.,
The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2nd edition, Oxford, 2017).
Bruce Chilton (PhD Cambridge, 1976) is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard College. Recent works include
Rabbi Jesus (Doubleday, 2000),
The Targums. A Critical Introduction (with Paul Flesher; Baylor and Brill, 2011), and
Resurrection Logic (Baylor, 2019).
Darrell Bock (Phd, Aberdeen, 1983) is Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies and Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is the author and editor of several books, including technical studies on blasphemy and exaltation in Judaism and on the historical Jesus.
Craig A. Evans, Ph.D. (1983), Claremont, D.Habil. (2009), Budapest, is John Bisagno Distinguished Professor of Christian Origins at Houston Baptist University in Texas. He has published several books and articles on the historical Jesus and the use of Israel’s scriptures in the New Testament and early Christianity. These include
Jesus and His Contemporaries (Brill, 2005),
Jesus and the Remains of His Day (Hendrickson, 2015), and Jesus and the Manuscripts (Hendrickson, 2020).
Daniel M. Gurtner, PhD (2005), has published broadly in the New Testament and Second Temple Judaism, notably the award-winning T&T Clark
Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism edited with Loren T. Stuckenbruck (2 vols., 2020). His primary research interests lie in the gospels and their interface with the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, as in his published dissertation,
The Torn Veil: Matthew’s Exposition of the Death of Jesus (2007). He is currently writing the Word Biblical Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.
Preface
Introductions 1
Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Philo and Josephus 2
The Dead Sea Scrolls 3
The Rabbinic Canon 4
The Targumim
The Comparison
Index
Students of the Gospels — specialists, students, and simple inquirers — will benefit from the systematic survey that the Comparative Handbook offers to the Judaic contexts of Matthew and Luke.