Wilson's book joins a handful of relatively recent studies by scholars interested in socio-rhetorical interpretations of the New Testament, chief among them Warren Carter (who wrote the foreword) and Vernon Robbins (whom the author names as an influence). According to Carter, Wilson “demonstrates that the experiences of food insecurity are integral to the Gospel narrative and to the circumstances of the people addressed by the Gospel” (viii). Overall, I found the latter claim more persuasive than the former.
The first two chapters describe the author's methods, namely, sociological modeling and socio-rhetorical interpretation (SRI). Wilson reads the Gospel of Matthew as a “rhetorical artifact” whose primary purpose is to influence the community toward specific practices and behaviors, including “what processes to follow in situations of food shortages” (28). Wilson lays the groundwork for her analysis of Matthew by discussing food access in the first-century Roman East, including Antioch (chapter 3), and the eating habits, poverty levels, and food sources of the first-century Roman East (chapter 4).
In chapter 5 lies the heart of the book's argument, that the Matthean community's experience of food shortages shaped the way that they remembered and recorded Jesus' teaching. This claim rests on several key assumptions: the gospels were for specific communities rather than general circulation (Wilson presents and argues against Richard Bauckham's view that the gospels were intended to circulate more broadly); Matthew's Gospel was written in the city of Antioch ca. 80–100; and the Christians of Antioch experienced significant food shortages. Wilson argues that the trauma of experiencing food shortages led Matthew's community to “distort” and “construct” memories of Jesus around issues of food access (161). Although Wilson cites the story of the rich young ruler (Matt 19:16–22) as an example, she does not explore why this story also appears in almost exactly the same form in Mark's Gospel.
Wilson draws on the work of Gerhard Lenski and John Kautsky in chapter 6 to examine “the dominant entitlement system,” namely, practices by aristocrats “that undermined the principal survival mechanisms” for the majority of folks who lived at or just above the subsistence level (164). Chapter 7 continues in the same vein with a focus on Matt 19:1–20:16, Jesus' journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.
Chapter 8 offers a broad overview of Matthew's Gospel, divided into six narrative blocks and read primarily through the lens of food access as well as a less articulated focus on the identity of Jesus, the “Savior-Immanuel” who brings access to food, the “Greek ideal man,” “the incarnation of the spirit and divine purpose of God's Law,” and “the ideal king of the realm of the heavens” (230–31). Wilson's main thesis, that Matthew uses frequent references to food access “to exemplify the difference between the realm of the heavens and the dominant entitlement system” (229), comes to full flower here.
In sum, Wilson does an excellent job grounding even small details of Matthew's Gospel in the realities of first-century life. The book never claims to be a theological interpretation of Matthew; nonetheless, its lack of theological sensitivity will disappoint some readers. For example, Wilson names the wilderness as a place people went to scavenge for food but makes no mention of the theological role of the wilderness in Hebrew Scripture. The “realm of the heavens” (Wilson's term for Matthew's “kingdom of heaven”) appears to indicate an entirely realized or humanly realizable eschatology (e.g., 224). A brief section on almsgiving in chapter 4 makes no mention of almsgiving as a key practice within Judaism or even as a practice assumed by Matthew's Gospel (6:2–4) (114–16).
Finally, for a book that draws its title from Matthew 25:31–46, surprisingly little attention is paid to the parable or its influential role in the Christian practice of discerning Christ's presence in the poor. Wilson declares that the “climatic final judgment scene” of the parable names “people having enough to eat” as “the criteria [sic]” for judgment (265, my emphasis), even though the sheep and the goats are sorted according to a number of criteria. Here as elsewhere, perhaps a lighter touch would have been more persuasive (a criterion for judgment?).
Libraries and instructors will find this book a valuable resource for all those interested in Matthew's socioeconomic setting, especially as a supplement to other studies of the gospels that have greater theological acuity but less attention to social context. Undergraduates, however, may find it technical reading, broken up by numerous footnotes. Like Carter, Wilson has provided a wealth of often unutilized social and economic data to gospel scholars.
