Paul Foster contributes to Matthean scholarship by looking at the issues of the social location of the community, the role of law within that community and its attitude towards the gentile mission. Against the current trend towards viewing the community behind the gospel as a primarily Jewish separatist group with the central belief that Jesus was the Messiah, he comes to the conclusion that although the Matthean group originated in Judaism, nonetheless, by the time of the composition of the gospel, the community functioned outside the confines of its original locus operandi. Consequently the group was now focussing its attention on recruiting new members from among gentiles, and the integration of recent non-Jewish converts created a number of tensions for long term traditionally Torah observant group members.