Begging for Their Daily Bread: Beggar-Centric Interpretations of Matthew 6

Zhenya Gurina-Rodriguez interprets Matthew 6 through a beggars-centric hermeneutic, showing that beggars come from different backgrounds and have unique life experiences. She creates three beggar characters and highlights blind spots in traditional readings of the text written by non-poor Western scholars.

Format: Hardback
Length: 152 pages
Publication date: 15 October 2022
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

In her book "Begging for Their Daily Bread," Zhenya Gurina-Rodriguez presents a hermeneutic centered on beggars and interprets the Gospel of Matthew through this lens. She argues that this text could be both engaging and alienating to beggars in the first-century Jesus movement. Gurina-Rodriguez establishes that beggars come from diverse backgrounds and hold different perspectives on their realities of life, despite sharing common experiences such as destitution, homelessness, lack of safety nets, and controversial reactions from the public to their means of survival.

To explore the potential interpretations of a portion of the Sermon on the Mount by these beggar characters, Gurina-Rodriguez constructs three distinct beggar figures. She examines the differences and similarities in their perspectives and highlights the blind spots that many traditional readings of the text written by non-poor Western scholars have regarding life in poverty.

Through her analysis, Gurina-Rodriguez sheds light on the complexities and challenges faced by beggars in the ancient world and challenges readers to consider the broader societal implications of their experiences. "Begging for Their Daily Bread" offers a valuable contribution to the study of the Gospel of Matthew and the social dynamics of the first-century Jesus movement.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978710627