Many years ago the Hebrew psalmist was overwhelmingly convinced of the presence of God. The human quest after divine presence has taken dramatically different turns in different eras. Today many post-Christian societies more often ask ‘Does God exist?’ or ‘Who is God?’ than assume divine presence. Almost two millennia ago the first evangelist provided a strong voice in a moment of significant transition between religious eras. His is a story of social and religious continuity and discontinuity between two sets of communities, for both of which the presence of God was an essential defining characteristic.

In the current moment of biblical criticism, the means of assessing a concern such as the presence motif within the ancient text of Matthew have multiplied to the point, some claim, of disparity. The choice in this study to employ both narrative and redaction criticism has not been for the sake of a new eclecticism, but is an attempt to respond authentically to some of the structural, historical and theological dimensions which the text exhibits. We have sought to read Matthew as both a mirror and a window – as a unified and dynamic story that invites readers to inhabit imaginatively its narrative world and seeks to structure their responses, and as a text with a historical author and context.