Honor And Shame In The Gospel Of Matthew

Jerome Neyrey clarifies what praise, honor, and glory meant to Matthew and his audience. He examines the traditional literary forms for bestowing such praise and the conventional grounds for awarding honor and praise in Matthew’s world. Neyrey argues that the evangelist Matthew was trained in conventional ways, and that his writing employs as many of the genres taught in the rhetorical handbooks concerning praise. Analysis from this standpoint, supplemented with cross- cultural studies from countries that border the Mediterranean, gives new insight into the gospel’s meaning and purpose.