In Tuell's reading, the books of Chronicles can become a canonical model for reading and interpreting scriptures in today's new context. Scripture interpreting scripture can teach subsequent generations to find renewal in scripture. Mark E. Biddle Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond Richmond, VA
The Gospel of Matthew, by Rudolf Schnackenburg. Trans. Robert R. Barr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. 329 pp. $24.00. ISBN 0-8028-4438-3. In this volume Rudolf Schnackenburg (late professor emeritus of New Testament exegesis at the University of Würzburg, Germany) offers a concise but critical reading of the Gospel of Matthew. This commentary is an English translation of a two-volume German work that was first published between 1985 and 1987 - the aim of which was to provide a "spiritual reading" of the First Gospel. Because of this aim, one should not expect to find the same detailed treatment of issues or highly technical language as in Schnackenburg's monumental commentaries on the Gospel of John, Ephesians or the Johannine Epistles. However, as anyone familiar with Schnackenburg's careful exegesis would expect, there
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is significant interaction with the biblical text. Though he shows a keen awareness of outside discussions and the secondary literature, his presentation is not weighed down with lengthy footnotes or citation after citation. In fact, there are very few intrusions in his otherwise homogeneous exegetical treatment and there is no bibliography at the end. Rather, in the few places where Schnackenburg has found it necessary to refer the reader to a helpful secondary source, he has cited the pertinent work in parentheses at the end of his own discussion. In effect, the reader is treated to pure exegesis - a treatment which, in places, might more appropriately be termed "pure Schnackenburg." Because this is purely Schnackenburg's reading of the text, a reading not primarily concerned with engaging other views, there are places where his m e t h o d s and conclusions lack validation. For instance, throughout his discussion Schnackenburg assumes the existence of a "sayings source," used during the compositional history of the Gospel. He assumes this source without arguing for its existence or even stating that it exists. While generally accepted among New Testament scholars, such a source remains hypothetical. Also, there are places where he affirms the historicity of a given event and other places where he denies it, yet he does both without a sustained argument and without the exposition of a concrete methodology