The Examined Text: God With Us - Learning to Read the Bookends

Matthew 1:23 & Matthew 28:20

A student once asked his teacher why the same sentence appeared at the start of the scroll and again at the very end. “Isn’t that repetitive?” he asked.

“No,” the teacher said. “That’s the handle. You pick up the whole scroll by both ends at once.”

This week we’re learning to spot the handles. In Hebrew literary tradition and in the Gospels that grew out …