The aim of this chapter is to assess briefly the role of narrative criticism, in order to ask how the motif of presence is expressed through Matthew's rhetoric. Such an exercise involves swapping a traditional focus on the evangelist's theology for a new focus on story, and the elements thereof.

Method and premises

As Stephen Moore has recently explained, narrative criticism, especially as conceived of and increasingly practised by gospel critics, is above all preoccupied with the evangelist's story, particularly in terms of plot and character. Plot has long been defined as a set of events connected by both temporal succession and causality: ‘The king died and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot; ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is not. Our acts of reading are driven by a powerfully innate desire to supply causal links even where they are not explicit (e.g., in the case of ‘The king died and then the queen died’ the reader naturally tends to assume that the queen's death had something to do with the king's).