Conjoining diverse methodological and ideological approaches with a focus on specific texts, this inaugural volume to the new series presents ground-breaking insights on the Gospel of Matthew. The eleven essays address women's social roles and literary representations, earthly and heavenly fathers, purity regulations and household configurations, Jesus and Wisdom, professional and lay reactions to women's service, the Canaanite women and the women at the tomb, and the interrelation of Matthew's female characters and contemporary struggles for justice. Throughout, the articles expose the politics of gender and sexuality imbedded in the narrative, and often in the scholarship, of the Gospel.This volume includes contributions by Janice Capel Anderson, Celia Deutsch, Stephenson Humphries-Brooks, Amy-Jill Levine, Thomas R.W. Longstaff, Gail R. O'Day, Caroline Osiek, Marie-Eloise Rosenblatt, Anthony J. Saldarini, Julian Sheffield and Elaine M. Wainwright.