The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple

’... gives us a fine reading of the Sermon on the Mount that stresses its covenantal and liturgical dimensions.’ Letter and Spirit ’Behind all this lie still more basic questions... These questions, crucial to the acceptability of the author’s thesis, will linger unresolved in readers’ minds. But this will not prevent them from having been alerted by this well-presented argument to new possibilities of interpretation that seem, in some instances, to have much plausibility.’ Journal of Theological Studies 'This book is a welcome contribution to studies which highlight the importance of the Temple at the time of Jesus.' Journal for the Study of the New Testament '... Welch has produced a profoundly erudite and deeply meditative argument for the Temple as the chief referent behind many of the words, phrases, and longer quotations from the psalms and other (chiefly prophetic) Old Testament books that for the first time unifies this otherwise puzzling and disjointed Matthean piece and accounts for the power and authority in the preaching of Jesus over which the crowds marvel immediately afterwards.' Heythrop Journal