The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew

...he [Kilpatrick] has investigated independently and freshly every aspect of the introductory problems, and has made solid contributions towards the understanding of the gospel and its origins.

Kilpatrick's book is a close and detailed study of a very difficult problem. In the course of it he has brought together a large mass of observations, which will have a usefulness beyond the very full use that he himself has made of them; and many who do not accept his conclusions will be glad to use his data in their own discussions.

The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew G. D. Kilpatrick Bolchazy-Carducci Publishing 1000 Brown St., Unit 101, Wauconda, IL 60084 9780865166677, $38.00, www.bolchazy.com The Bible was not a book written all at once. Each book has its own origins. "The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew" is a reprint of the respected text outlining the history of one of the most vital books of the Holy Bible. More than a half century old, the scholarship stands well against the test of time, and offers insights on how the gospels became gospels and earned their place in the Bible. "The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew" is a must for Biblical scholars, professional or amateur.

This volume contains not only the reprint of the corrected 1950 edition of Kilpatrick's classic work on Matthew's Gospel but also a two-page foreword by J.K. Elliott, a list of his writings (compiled by Elliott), and a seven-page obituary of him by A.M. Devine (originally published in Classical Bulletin 65 [1989] 111-114). After a seven-page introduction, his investigation of the origins of Matthew's Gospel discusses the documentary sources, the peculiar narratives, the liturgical background, the liturgical character of the Gospel, and Gospel and Judaism, the community of the Gospel , and the Evangelist. Kilpatrick (1910-89) was professor of the exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford, and this work was the published version (first in 1946) of a thesis submitted in 1944 to the University of Oxford.

Religion & Spirituality / Christianity / Biblical History The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew by G. D. Kilpatrick (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc.) The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew is an exact reprint of the 1950 Oxford University Press edition, with a new foreword by J.K. Elliott. "As a former student of George Kilpatrick whose approach to textual criticism I have espoused in my own academic work, and as one who has tried to promote his writings and teaching on the text (as well as having edited his Festschrift in 1976), I now have great pleasure in 2006 to commend this digitized production of Kilpatrick's influential book, and to recommend his groundbreaking study of the origins of the Gospel of Matthew to new readers." - J. K. Elliott, from the Foreword A pioneering study on Matthew's Gospel, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew has stood the test of time and for the past sixty years has been regularly referred to and discussed in many a learned monograph on Matthew as well as in the standard commentaries on that Gospel. G.D. Kilpatrick's investigation had rejuvenated New Testament source criticism in general and Matthaean studies in particular. George Dunbar Kilpatrick (1910-1989) was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1949 until his retirement in 1977. His academic legacy lies on two fronts, textual criticism of the Greek New Testament, and source criticism. He was a renowned and innovative text-critic. For fifty years he produced many articles in the discipline, which are often cited by later scholars. Kilpatrick was also the editor of the second edition of the British and Foreign Bible Society's Greek New Testament (1958). The contents of The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew includes: o The Documentary Sources o The Peculiar Narratives o The Liturgical Character of the Gospel o The Gospel and Judaism o The Community of the Gospel o The Evangelist o Two indexes: References to the Gospels and Subject Index o Biography by A.M. Devine, Wolfson College, Oxford, England The thesis of the book is that much of the contents of Matthew's Gospel had been read and expounded in an ecclesiastical context prior to its appearance as a book intended to supersede its sources, principally the Gospel of Mark, the sayings document Q and the special Matthaean source, M. This liturgical origin of Matthew's work and its purpose to serve as a revised Gospel are the main concerns of The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew. Kilpatrick demonstrates that this Gospel shows signs of having been utilized and molded to serve a distinctive ecclesiastical purpose. The church in which the Gospel of Matthew developed and was eventually published had possessed Mark, had used it, adapted it and expanded it. The success of the Gospel according to St. Matthew as a liturgical text for use in worship is well demonstrated by its later history. It was also the Gospel most regularly cited by church Fathers. According to J. K. Elliott in the foreword, that the conclusions of The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew now sound commonplace is due to the widespread influence of Kilpatrick's pioneering study on successive generations of scholars. His conclusions and methodology anticipated by a decade or more the writings of the redaction critics who looked for theological motives behind the evangelists' editing of sources. At the start of the twentieth century, Wrede had drawn attention to the distinctive features of Mark's theology, but it was left to Kilpatrick to put forward a plausible motive for Matthew's expansion and use of his sources. This evangelist reflected the liturgical and ecclesiastical context which used Mark and other sources. Matthew, according to Kilpatrick, reveals in detail and in its entirety how and why it was written in the way it was. This Gospel may have been an officially inspired production, authorized by church authorities (in the late first century in a relatively prosperous Syrian port, according to Kilpatrick) and arising from a Greek speaking church with a high number of Jewish Christians. But the writer of the Gospel as we have it was a composer in his own right, betraying his own distinctive stylistic and linguistic fingerprints. According to Elliott, Kilpatrick's conclusions about the dating and provenance for the Gospel have not met with such acceptance; subsequent scholars, supportive of the main theses, nonetheless have tended to nuance matters of date and geographical origin. But, overall, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew had a warm welcome from reviewers whose generous plaudits contributed to its initial reception and the need for reprintings. This ensured that the book was essential reading for all scholars working on Matthew's Gospel. And this seminal work is still so recognized, hence the initiative for its now being easily available again to ongoing generations of scholars. According to Kilpatrick in the preface, the study of the New Testament in the period between the two world wars took on new life and developed new methods and interests. The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew is in part an attempt to see how far these developments illuminate the origins of the Gospel. In part it is a contribution to the study of the relations between Judaism and early Christianity in an important but neglected period. "Kilpatrick's book is a close and detailed study of a very difficult problem. In the course of it he has brought together a large mass of observations, which will have a usefulness beyond the very full use that he himself has made of them; and many who do not accept his conclusions will be glad to use his data in their own discussions." - T. A. Manson, Journal of Theological Studies "… he [Kilpatrick] has investigated independently and freshly every aspect of the introductory problems, and has made solid contributions towards the understanding of the gospel and its origins." - Sherman Johnson, Journal of Biblical Literature Kilpatrick had made a major contribution to our understanding of the times and work of the early church and it is a boon that The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew has been reissued so that students and scholars have it readily accessible. It may contribute to reconciliation between Jewish and Christian scholars. All those who are interested in the rise of Christianity out of Judaism desire the return of peace and security to Jewish scholarship from which so much has been learned in the past.