AN UNINTENDED READER'S RESPONSE TO MATTHEW 22.34-40*
AN UNINTENDED READER'S RESPONSE TO MATTHEW 22.34-40*

Summary/Abstract: The unintended reader (UR) is neither the addressee envisioned by the author nor the abstract readership implied by the text. The UR may or may not share the unstated assumptions the author brings to the text. This article is an interpretation of Matt 22.34-40 from the perspective of an UR. The Greatest Commandment in Matt 22.34-40 is presented as a summarium of the Torah, which functions as the criterion for the eschatological salvation in 7.21-23 and 25.31-46. For the intended readers of Matthew’s Christian-Jewish community, there would have been shared assumptions about the conditions of salvation that might skew their interpretation of the text. The UR, who does not necessarily share such assumptions, has the liberty to take the text for what it says and the ensuing interpretation leads to an open soteriology that transcends conventional religious boundaries, which will be a hermeneutically distinctive contribution by the UR.

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