The Voice of Matthew

The Voice of Matthew is a unique retelling of the life of Jesus from the perspective of a Jewish believer who wants to connect the past with the future. The writer of this retelling is Lauren Winner, a young Jewish woman who has become a follower of Jesus. She is an extremely talented writer and a lecturer at Duke Divinity School that brings an intellectual edge to the biblical story. At the heart of this retelling is an accurate rendering of the traditional Bible text with historical and cultural expansions of the story that are placed in italic type to help the reader differentiate the expansions from the Bible text. Throughout the book the writer adds significant statements as ancillary asides. These ancillary statements are separated from the biblical text as ruled text. They include further development of the narrative setting, connective statements to explain the story, or development of character or background information. Because Lauren has written all of the material, the elaborations in the text and the ancillary statements are in the same style and tone as the biblical text and make for a thoroughly stimulating read. While Lauren’s writing style is very conversational, her scholarship is of the highest quality. An extremely accurate rendering of the biblical text is the foundation for this provocative and enlightening retelling of Matthew’s Gospel. The reader will feel as if he is having a personal discussion with Matthew. A unique formatting of the narrative text of the Scriptures is being used in all of the Gospel products in The Voice. It is readily apparent who the speaker is in dialogue without the interruptions to the story found in most versions of the Bible, the narrative element of the text is clear, and the ancillary material is easily distinguished from the Bible. The story reads like a novel with fascinating bonus gems provided to make this one of the most satisfying Bible reading experiences ever.The biblical scholarship and writing style have been checked by two biblical reviewers, the senior theological scholar on The Voice Scripture Project, the senior writer, a biblical archaeologist, copyeditors and proofreaders, and the executive editor of the project. Lauren’s work in Matthew has already been used to compile The Last Eyewitness, Songs from the Voice volume two, and the upcoming Son of the Most High. The Voice is a Scripture project to rediscover the story of the Bible. It is holistic, beautiful, sensitive, and balanced. As a part of the project a contextualized version of the Bible is being created through a truly unique retelling process with an emphasis on the cultural transference to the postmodern culture and with great attention being given to literary artistry.