In this provocative book, Ulrich Luz points the way beyond the limitations of the historical-critical method as it has been practiced during the past two centuries. He demonstrates the richness of the insights that can be gained when the interpreter considers a variety of effects and influences that a text has had in subsequent history, a method of inquiry he calls Wirkungsgeschichte.

This distinctive approach, which Luz so brilliantly exhibits in his multi-volume commentary on Matthew, is here applied to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 10, and Matthew 16:18. Insights from the ancient fathers, from Scholastics, from Reformers and Anabaptists, and from many others are adduced to demonstrate the importance of the history of Christian thought for the interpretation of biblical texts.