The Word of the cross is a living word, crying out for reinterpretation as life takes new shape and expression. Reinterpreting the Gospel was particularly compelling for Matthew's church because his Christians lived in a time of profound transition. The Passion of Jesus, then, was not simply a story of suffering out of the past but a point of identification for the Christians of Matthew's own time. For us twentieth-century Christians, who also know the peculiar suffering and hope of living in an age that is both dying and being born, the Passion of Jesus according to Matthew has special meaning.

The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.

"The Passion is the climactic event in each of the gospels. These volumes elucidate the passion in its historical background and explore its theological breadth and depth."--Back cover

"A Michael Glazier book." Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

St. Matthew Passion is Hans Blumenberg's sustained and devastating meditation on Jesus's anguished cry on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why did this abandonment happen, what does it mean within the logic of the Gospels, how have believers and nonbelievers understood it, and how does it live on in art? With rare philological acuity and vast historical learning, Blumenberg unfolds context upon context in which this cry has reverberated, from early Christian apologetics and heretics to twentieth-century literature and philosophy. Blumenberg's guide through this unending story of divine abandonment is Johann Sebastian Bach's monumental Matthäuspassion, the parabolic mirror that bundled eighteen hundred years of reflection on the fate of the crucified and the only available medium that allows us post-Christian listeners to feel the anguish of those who witnessed the events of the Passion. With interspersed references to writers such as Goethe, Rilke, Kafka, Freud, and Benjamin, Blumenberg gathers evidence to raise the singular question that, in his view, Christian theology has not been able to answer: How can an omnipotent God be so offended by his creatures that he must sacrifice and abandon his own Son?

For personal reading or group study, this is a Lenten book, based on Matthew's Gospel. Includes a reading and prayer for every day from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day and a duscussion guide for eight small group meetings.

The passion is the climactic event in each of the gospels. This volume elucidates the passion in its historical background and explores its theological breadth and depth. With scholarly finesse and pastoral awareness, the author sets the vibrant message of the passion speaking to our lives and times.