Reviewed by: Matthew within Sectarian Judaism by John Kampen Charles Nathan Ridlehoover john kampen, Matthew within Sectarian Judaism (AYBRL; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). Pp. xvii + 320. $65. When I began my postgraduate studies in the Gospel of Matthew, my first assignment was to tackle the question, How Jewish is Matthew’s Gospel? John Kampen, the Van Bogard Dunn Professor of Biblical Interpretation at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, takes this perennial question and answers it with nuance and sophistication. As a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the NT, and Jewish history in the Greco-Roman period, K. brings his educational acumen to the “most Jewish” Gospel and argues that the evidence suggests a much more sectarian document than previously recognized. While Matthew has often been advanced as a Jewish Christian composition, K. sees a document created by later followers of Jesus that advocates a particular understanding of Jewish history and a proposal for Jewish life at the end of the first century. Particularly, K. argues that the literary features of his chosen passages are some of the clearest evidence for Matthew’s being a sectarian creation. To advance his argument, K. has arranged his material into seven chapters situated between an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction states the thesis of the book as well as defines some important terminology. K. carefully expresses his concerns about using the words “Judean” and “Jew,” as well as his arguments that Dead Sea parallels should be more prominent in studying Matthew’s Gospel. These introductory matters are taken up in more depth in chap. 1. Here, K. details “Matthew and the First-Century Jewish World,” highlighting four characteristics of the Gospel of Matthew and its provenance: (1) the First Gospel as a Greek composition; (2) Matthew’s audience as located in an urban environment; (3) the text of the Gospel as presenting a pronounced level of conflict with other Jewish groups; and (4) the dating of the Gospel reflecting a situation after the temple’s destruction. K. concludes, “This gospel is not about Jews or even about Jewish issues. It is the argument of this volume that it is addressed to Jews about substantive questions relevant to Jewish life immediately after the destruction of the temple” (p. 20; emphasis his). In chap. 2, K. details his understanding of Matthew within Jewish sectarianism. In defining sectarianism, K. follows the definition of Albert I. Baumgarten: “a voluntary association of protest, which utilizes boundary marking mechanism—the social means of differentiating between insiders and outsiders—to distinguish between its own members and those otherwise normally regarded as belonging to the same national or religious entity” (The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era [JSJSup 55; Leiden: Brill, 1997] 7). In chap. 3, K. deals with the issues in the Sermon on the Mount, concentrating on the historical details of the text and Jesus’s relationship to the law. [End Page 512] In chap. 4, K. examines the concept of wisdom in Matthew’s Gospel, giving special attention to Matthew 11. In chap. 5, he details communal organization and discipline in Matthew’s Gospel, examining the role of Lev 19:17 in Matt 18:15–20. Comparisons with 1QS indicate that Matthew was already well aware of the obligation to treat neighbors with “truth, humility, and loving charity.” In chap. 6, K. analyzes the dynamic between Jesus and his opponents, giving particular attention to Matthew 23 and 26–27. This chapter is perhaps K.’s strongest evidence for a sectarian reading because of the heightened tension between Jesus and his Jewish antagonists. Chapter 7 concludes K.’s investigation of the Gospel evidence. Here, K. repurposes the Great Commission (Matt 28:16–20) to address the commissioning of his proposed Jewish sect. He links this bit of teaching with earlier teaching in Matt 10:5–6: “Go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” K. argues that these verses embody the eschatological vision that parallels the eschatology of sectarian Judaism and undergirds the First Gospel. The volume concludes with a summary of the aforementioned argument and a nod to the themes of separation and difference that serve to summarize K...