Endnote 6 – Triumph over Temptation

The discovery of this principle must be credited to Gerhardsson, who also tracked down the interpretation in Mishnah tractate Berakoth (Testing of God’s Son, pp. 71–76). The skepticism shown by Davies and Allison (Matthew, p. 353) is unjustified. Doubts regarding other hypotheses of Gerhardsson regarding the use of the Shema as a structural principle elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel in no way impugn the accuracy of his insight here.