I got my review copy of Hauerwas’ commentary on Matthew yesterday. Thanks, Brazos! I am thoroughly appreciative and equally excited to examine this creative exploration of Matthew. Just flipping through it, I can tell that this totally redefines the term “commentary.” In his Introduction, Hauerwas talks about how he taught classes on Matthew and had students go through more traditional historical critical commentaries. He says:

I have learned much from my students and the commentaries I have read. I have learned much from the historical work done on the book of Matthew over the past two centuries. I have learned much from the commentaries written by the church fathers as well as Reformation figures. But finally I realized I simply had to write what I thought should be said in and for our time. Accordingly I have tried not to write about Matthew. I have tried to write with Matthew, assuming that the gospel was written for us.

If someone is looking for a commentary, the likes of which they are familiar, that person may be taken aback. Going through the chapters of Hauerwas’ book, there is no translation at the beginning of a section, no verse-by-verse analysis, etc. Footnotes seem scarce in comparison. Hauerwas breaks it up into the chapters one finds in the canonical text, so that chapter one is entitled “Matthew 1: The Beginning.” You also find, for example, chapters on “Matthew 5: The Sermon” and “Matthew 24-25: Enduring.” Hauerwas breaks out of the internal conversation of biblical scholarship on the biblical text. One does find references to Davies, Allison, and Luz, for instance, but the names with which Hauerwas interacts more often include people like Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Yoder. He also discusses Dorothy Day, Jean Vanier, Immanuel Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The early church is not neglected either, as can be seen with comments on Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Simon of Cyrene and, most prominently, Augustine.

To elaborate on the quote above, Hauerwas continues,

By writing “with” Matthew I mean to indicate how I have tried to retell the story that Matthew tells as, Ephraim Radner suggests, a ruminative overlay. As a result I should like to think that the commentary imitates the form of commentaries common in the Middle Ages and Reformation that were moral allegories. Readers will discover that Herod becomes “Herods” who represent the politics of death, that scribes and Pharisees become “intellectuals for hire” to such a politics, and the journey of the wise men after their encounter with the Christ child is one we must take if we are to escape Herod’s politics. Such a “method”–and I certainly have no stake in claiming to know what I am doing–risks being heavy-handed. I hope the readers will discover that by following along they may discover how we are read by the story Matthew tells.

One challenge that I always try to remember when studying the Bible is to let the text read me and the community and society in which I find myself a part. I think that historical critical commentaries also risk being heavy-handed by strictly defining and confining things in a particular historical box. That being said, it appears that Hauerwas has done a close reading of the text, examined the more traditional approaches, and has based his exploration upon this foundation. In other words, I think he’s opened the “box,” so to speak.

My review is for Brethren in Christ History & Life and is primarily aimed at an audience of pastors and informed laypersons, though many scholars also read the journal (particularly scholars at Messiah College). I will have to find a balance in approaching the commentary between the people who are accustomed to traditional commentaries and those who could not care less about traditional commentaries (though the emphasis would weigh more heavily on the latter). I’m sure the task will be a pleasure.