Race, Class, Gender and Community in Matthew: A Hispanic/Latino Reading

Team Members/Contributors

David Cortés-Fuentes San Francisco Theological Seminary Southern California Contact Me

About this first book grant for scholars of color

Most Matthean scholars identify Matthew's audience and context as a Jewish-Christian community, as well as its relationship to other Jewish and non-Jewish groups in the Roman empire. Other studies focus on Matthew or portions of it, from social and feminist perspectives. Nevertheless, there is a gap in the studies of Matthew that considers the interplay of the Gospel's presentation of issues related to race/ethnicity, gender, class, and community formation.

As a first generation mainland Hispanic/Latino, I find four major topics consistently inform Hispanic/Latino approaches to the Scriptures. This study will approach the Gospel of Matthew from these topics to provide a description of Matthew's particular take, and discussion of how Matthew's perspective can engage in dialogue with contemporary Hispanic/Latino communities.

The project will have six major sections. An introductory chapter discussing briefly the state of the scholarly research on the Gospel of Matthew, with emphasis on the approaches and major topics of the project. A discussion, in four chapters, of the specific topics of the project will bring into the discussion how race/ethnicity, gender, class, and community are important to study and interpret Matthew, and for a contextual reading from a Hispanic/Latino perspective. A final concluding chapter will discuss what this research offers to the understanding of Matthew, with specific examples of how other Hispanic/Latino scholars have commented in some passages.