In the light of the horrors of war and ethnic conflict, ethnicity has become a subject of increasing scholarly investigation, which now includes the field of religion and the Bible. I begin by surveying and commenting on important studies on ethnicity in Matthew by David Sim and John Riches. Then I offer a brief overview of ethnicity theory and create a simple model of ethnicity. After exploring the model linguistically and conceptually with literature from antiquity, I show how modern ethnicity studies can offer insights into ethnicity in Matthew and in particular how priestly voluntary associations called ethnē might help to interpret the special fruit-bearing ethnos of Matthew 21:43 in terms of an alternative leadership to the priests of Jerusalem.
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