This article compares the inclusive tendencies of Matthew and Paul by evaluating the inclusive structure of their respective communities. The article mainly investigates two issues: Matthew's and Paul's practice of the Law and their perspectives on the Gentiles. The community that strictly keeps the Law is a more exclusive community. The Law is used to reject unclean and lower class people from the Israelite community. Secondly, Matthew's perspective on the Gentiles and that of Paul are investigated to determine tendencies of inclusivity in their respective thinking. It is observed that the Law-free Gentile community is more inclusive than the Law-observant Gentile community. The approach adopted by this article is one of cross-cultural interpretation.
The greatest wish of the Baeda l people, or South Koreans, living in the Korean Peninsula is the unification of Korea. However, even when it has been 70 years since the outbreak of the Korean War, the two Koreas that used to be one nation are still in conflict. There have been many discourses on unification over the past 70 years, but these discourses still fail to create clear rules and a framework for unification. Discourses from the perspective of biblical theology offer insight regarding the problems at stake as well as alternatives, but they do not offer perspectives on a definite solution. This article, in line with its statement on biblical theology, does not pretend to contribute to a clear-cut solution to meet the challenge of Korea’s unification. Rather, this article intends to contribute to the formation of an emotional consensus that can contribute to the unification of Korea by looking at the teachings about peace in the Gospel of Matthew. The article explores whether the notion of embracement, forgiveness and love written during the conflict between the Matthean community and Formative Judaism can be applied to help create an emotional bond between the two Koreas. The terms embracement, forgiveness and love found in the Gospel of Matthew are upheld as symbolising peace derived from opposition and conflict. Jesus taught us to overcome situations of opposition and conflict through embracement, forgiveness and love.Contribution: The purpose and contribution of this article was to discuss if the notions of embracement, forgiveness and love found in the Gospel of Matthew can be helpful for the emotional preparation of the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula by comparing the situations reflected in the Gospel of Matthew and that of the Korean Peninsula.
The past century has seen various studies on the nature of Matthew’s community, and conclusions are still being debated. The study on which this article is based acknowledges the past studies, but further proposes that the nature of the Matthean community was one of coexistence. The Matthean community implied in the book of Matthew coexisted in three ways. Firstly, Jews and Gentiles coexisted within the community: the Jewish–Christian-centred community had started to accept Gentiles and became a community where Gentiles and Jews lived together. Secondly, the community was in a state where both the Jewish law and the teachings of Jesus were followed. Finally, the community tended to set both Jews and Gentiles as targets for the mission. This means that there was missionary coexistence within the community. These three main reasons are the basis for the claim that the Matthean community maintained the nature of coexistence.
This study focuses on the women's stories that imply aspects of anti-Judaism within Matthew's depiction of Christology, which is called Matthew's theology. In fact, Matthew's community opposed the Jewish system and Jewish leaders and parted from its parent body. Even though Matthew's community was still similar to the Jewish system, it had significant differences as well. The study discusses these aspects of anti-Judaism that appear in the woman's stories that include the genealogy of Jesus, the haemorrhaging woman, the Canaanite woman, and the women at the cross and Jesus' tomb. This study shows proof and examples of anti-Judaism within the stories and thoroughly analyses them. Therefore, it can be confirmed that the women's stories imply aspects of anti-Judaism with Christological depictions by Matthew's theological tendency. IntroductionMatthew's narrative has many different stories and discourses. The narrative also includes the women's stories within Jesus' religious movement. It shows us that women's stories are important and should be considered by Matthean scholars. Several considerations have emerged from this research. Firstly, feminist theologians made an effort to understand the various roles of women in the Gospel of Matthew. They have focused on analysing Matthew's narrative through a feminist interpretation rather than from the perspective of androcentric literary tradition (Abel 1981:179-184; Anderson 1983:4). The results of these studies show how the sexual difference has influenced the male text. Secondly, studying the role of women in the Gospel of Matthew through a social-scientific approach revealed the social status of women. Recently, the feminist interpretation of Jesus' studies showed that women were equal with men in the first community of Jesus (Schlüssler Fiorenza 2001:9, 11). This issue of sexual equality in Jesus' religious movement was developed and compared with the modern egalitarian theory by the feminist interpretation (Elliott 2002:75-91; cf. Dreyer 2011:1; Osiek 1997:812). Thirdly, feminist biblical studies have attempted to reveal and recover positive images of women instead of the negative images depicted in the previous androcentric exegesis (see Anderson 1983:3; Trible 1982:116). Fourthly, Matthew's Gospel does not mention the women's names among the names of Jesus' disciples. Women are just mentioned as a connection or relative of men (Wire 1991:103). However, Shin (2007:399-415) argued that the women's roles are indirectly adherent to the disciples in Matthew's Gospel. This study concluded that the women played just as important a role as the male disciples in Matthew's narrative. The women's roles were different from the roles of men in their support of Jesus' religious movement. Finally, feminist theologians have emphasised that Matthew did not put anti-Jewish pronouncements in the stories of women that included Jesus (Levine 2001:71-87). Of course, they agree when the issues of women are brought up, law and anti-Judaism is brought up as well. But Matthew's main th...
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