Matthew And Empire

In Matthew and Empire, Warren Carter argues that Matthew’s Gospel protests Roman imperialism by asserting that God’s purpose and will are performed not only by the empire and emperor but by Jesus and his community of disciples. Carter makes the claim for reading Matthew this way against the almost exclusive emphasis on the relationship with the synagogue that has long characterized Matthean scholarship. He establishes Matthew’s imperial context by examining Roman imperial ideology and material presence in Anitoch, the traditional provenance for Matthew. Carter argues that Matthean Christology, which presents Jesus as God’s agent, is shaped by claims-and protests against those claims-that the emperor and the empire are God’s agents.