Review: Book of Matthew mostly Quaker-friendly

Rob Pierson reviews GOSPEL The Book of Matthew: A New Translation with Commentary, Jesus Spirituality for Everyone in Friends Journal, 1 June 2017.

Although Pierson questions aspects of Moore's approach, he states:

"However, in the Gospel itself, many of Moore’s translation choices illuminate and enliven what has become, for many, a brittle, faded manuscript. Moore replaces time-worn and doctrine-laden phrases like “heaven,” “faith,” “sin,” and “repentance” with stripped down (but faithful) translations. For example, “sin” becomes “tragic mistakes,” and “repentance” becomes the kind of deep change that averts these tragic mistakes. “Faith” is rendered as “trust.” “Trust more” becomes Jesus’s persistent refrain for entering life in the kingdom. 

Moore also emphasizes concrete symbols at the core of the Gospel — “bread,” for example, as symbol of what is truly essential. More startlingly, Moore replaces “heaven” (an increasingly abstract concept) with its most basic translation, “sky.”

Pierson concludes, "Moore’s Gospel does provide a faithful, readable, and mostly Quaker-friendly rendering of the text with some compelling insights and a few idiosyncratic quirks."