David C. Sim

Sim sets out to debunk 19 centuries of misinterpretation of the First Gospel by arguing that it is an anti-Pauline gospel telling stemming from a law-observant Antiochean community in the Petrine/Jamesean tradition. Sim becomes a little laboured around the centre of his argument, as he seeks to outline relations between the Matthean community and Pauline law-free Christianity on one flank and formative Judaism on the other. It is an inevitably dense argument because the relations Matthew's community experiences with these communities were highly complex and antagonistic: indeed, as Sim emphasizes, this in the end led to the demise of the Matthean community and the usurpation of the law-observant gospel by a post-Pauline, Ignatian law-free faith community. Sim's case is a convincing one, though I am not wholly convinced by the degree of antagonism towards Paul by the Matthew community that Sim depicts, not convinced that Paulinism was as monolithic as this monograph suggests.… (meer)