The Sabbath in the Gospel of Matthew: A Paradigm for Understanding the Law in Matthew?

The problem of the Matthean understanding of law has proved resistant to resolution, despite a mini-deluge of scholarly output on the subject. In contrast to the widely divergent approaches to the general issue of law in Matthew, however, there is a strong majority opinion that the Gospel was written amongst a Sabbath-observant community.\u27 Despite the occasional contrary voice,2 it is probably fair to describe this majority opinion as a consensu