Believe Quote by John Shelby Spong

“Modern Christians who find Matthew's preoccupation with [Judaism] tedious and even distasteful, should realise that they live in a very different world from that…

— R.T. France

Matthew is the only gospel that uses the Sermon on the Mount, for example, because that's the new Moses making a new interpretation of…

— John Shelby Spong

“The two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel devoted to the infancy narratives are not a meditation presented under the guise of stories, but the converse:…

— Pope Benedict XVI

“It is interesting that whenever the evangelists Mark, Luke, or John mention the apostles, they call the author of the first Gospel either Levi…

— Brennan Manning

I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try…

— John Shelby Spong

Matthew loved the magi. He gave their story more square inches of text than he gave the narrative of the birth of Jesus. He…

— Max Lucado

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character,…

— Umberto Eco

“The reason we haven't yet fully understood the Jesus story is that we are gospel-based rather than Bible-based Christians!”

— Eli Of Kittim

“Jesus, Christianity, and the New Testament documents are birthed directly out of Judaism, and so whatever else we understand about their meaning must be…

— Jonathan T. Pennington

Another [book on Matthew] is Amy-Jill Levine, who is a Jewish woman who teaches New Testament at the Vanderbilt School of Religion. It's a…

— John Shelby Spong

Matthew being a constant attendant on our Lord, his history is an account of what he saw and heard; and, being influenced by the…

— Adam Clarke

“Discovering the Jewishness of Jesus and of the Early Jesus movement is a crucial step in the continual process of accurate interpretation of the…

— Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg