D. Matthew 5:1 - 7:28 The Sermon on the Mount

Introductory Matters

1. Outline of sections

It wasn’t just thrown together; it made sense to someone! Here is the outline given in H.D. Betz’s commentary. It’s as good a place to start as anywhere.

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2. Recent major researchers on the SM

Since St Augustine gave this part of Matthew the name “Sermon on the Mount” and wrote a commentary on it, the SM has received a lot of attention. The two most significant, recent, critical writers are (I reckon) W.D. Davies and Hans Dieter Betz Read Davies (The Sermon on the Mount, 1964) and you will see him seek to understand Matthew’s SM as a part of a larger presentation of the Christians’ law-giver Jesus as the Second Moses, set out in five books or narrative and discourse, with the same stylized ending, a presentation that engaged current, late post 70CE Jewish expectations within early Judaism. Read Betz (Essays on the Sermon on the Mount, 1985 and The Sermon on the Mount, 1995) and you will see him lay the foundation for understanding the SM as an older Jewish Christian distillation of Jesus’ teaching that can be understood to exemplify the Greco-Roman epitome. Betz then gives us a massive commentary on the SM (1995). See Stanton for a sustained critique of Betz’s stimulating thesis.

3. Purpose of the SM

It has often been assumed that the SM gives us Jesus’ ethical system, his instructions for daily living. Many have seen it as a system that is impossible to follow but which serves to usher in the grace of God.

Betz, in understanding the SM as an epitome, sees the author Matthew creatively condensing Jesus’ teaching, not to produce something that the disciple can then regurgitate, but rather to “enable the disciple to theologize creatively along the lines of the theology of the master. To say it pointedly: The SM is not law to be obeyed, but theology to be intellectually appropriated and internalized, in order then to be creatively developed and implemented in concrete situations of life.” (Essays, 15f.) It is like an “aide memoir”, carried into battle by a soldier that will allow and encourage him to think his way through conflict. Betz sees Paul as “thinking” his way through a problem confronting the “unmarried” in 1 Cor. 7:25).

4. Distinctive point of view

It is the contention of the SM, stated in the four hermeneutical principles, that Jesus “came to fulfill the law and the prophets”. Examples of this are presented in the antitheses, with their distinctive pattern “you have heard that is was said [quotation from Torah] but I say to you [Jesus’ extension, not abrogation, of Torah]”.

The ghost of an anarchical Paul is often detected behind the label “the least in the kingdom of heaven” given to the one(s) who break the least of these commandments and teaches other to do the same (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9).

The dismissive tone of “do not even the Gentiles do the same?” evokes a time before the community of the Gospel became outward facing, a time in “the mid-first century, when the Jewish-Christian community was still part of Judaism” (Essays, 19.), “The community of the SM is, without a doubt, a Jewish-Christian minority in distress.”(Essays, 21)

5. The SM within Matthew

The SM forms the first of the five discourse blocks of the Gospel. It has been used by Matthew and is marked with favored Matthean language but has it been substantially written by Matthew. No one would seriously see the SM as a cohesive, verbatim piece of Jesus-speak, such as a “sermon”. A piece of the jigsaw is the existence of the much, much smaller “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke 6: 17 – 49. It does not advance things too much further to consign them both to the Q source because the pieces they have in common are so different.

Betz argues that the SM has an integrity that pre-dates Matthew but which Matthew has incorporated and integrated into his Gospel. Wherever it has come from, this Jewish Christian treasure is now a part of a self-consciously Christian community that is looking outward to a Gentile mission field. Its author “Matthew” is the householder “who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (13:52). The SM is the precious jewel amongst the old treasure

The Discourse Itself

The Beatitudes (5:3 – 12)

• Betz refers to them as “macarisms”, using the Greek, rather than the Latin, root to bless
• They now exist as members of a list of ten, though originally they existed independently
• They have been arranged with the most important, the signal blessing, at the head and its counterpart in v. 10
• The other eight have their “pay off” in the future
• They exist in four different forms: vv 3 & 10, 4-9, 11, 12.
• `Why have the macarisms been placed at the head of the SM? What is their function?
• Hebrew literature distinguishes at least four types of macarisms: religion secular, the wise man, and satirical.
• The head macarism (5:3) anticipates the verdict belonging to the last judgment (25:34)
• It corrects the notion that it is the economically poor who are to be called blessed: human existence is recognized as miserable.
• It moves far beyond all other forms of macarism to the status of “a fundamental theological definition” (Essays, 35). “It contains everything one must know to pass through this life into paradise.”
• Betz judges that “the first macarism is unfolded, and variously developed, in the following [nine] macarisms… The rest of the SM is nothing else that the concretization and elucidation of the first macarism.”(Essays, 35)

The Hermeneutical Principles (5:17 – 20)

• The authentic Jesus saying exists as a concept in the mind of the reader. “The text is intentionally written so that that the reader cannot simply read-off the correct saying as he can the false one, but he must construct the saying himself out of the the building materials that the text provides.” (Essays, 41) The correct saying is: “I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets”.
• This points to the functioning of the SM as epitome. The non-text of v.17a “compels the reader to compose the intended text from personal knowledge and experience, based on the building materials at hand.”(Essays, 42)
• The author of the SM makes choices, that differ from those made by the later Evangelists, as to what Jesus material he incorporates. One thing that is important is that he refutes the charge of heresy against Jesus by establishing his orthodoxy as a Jewish teacher.
• It is the written, Hebrew text of the Torah that is authoritative but it is also transient. Torah is neither eternally valid nor did it end with the coming of Jesus (as in Paul). It ends when “all things are accomplished”.
• The third principle distinguishes between the true teacher who does and teaches the commandments of Jesus that are about to follow in the SM, and the one (Paul?) who abolishes even the least (not specified) of these SM commandments of Jesus. At first glance, the teachings of Jesus are light and easy to fulfill (11:30), in contrast with those of the Pharisees, but this is only at first glance. Even the teacher who is judged to be “least” is still a part of the kingdom. “This implies that a form of Christian teaching guided by theological principles other than those of the SM is recognized as legitimate in a relative sense, even if it remains excluded for the teachers of the community of the SM.”(Essays, 51)
• The final principle shows that the SM’s take on the common Jewish quest for righteousness: it can only be spoken about in terms of comparison and contrast. More than external observance, more a “turning toward the inner disclosure of the human heart before God. This is the principal reason the commands of Jesus in the SM cannot simply be regarded as legal provisions, subject to outward fulfillment. Rather they are to be regarded as a set of instructions whose purpose is to educate the disciples of Jesus so that they may be able to recognize for themselves the demands of God that apply to them, and thus do justice in their thought and conduct to the will of God.”(Essays, 53) This is recognizable righteousness.

The Antitheses

• Who called them “antitheses”? The second century “heretic” Marcion, that’s who. He saw a contrast between “Law and Gospel”, the old and the new. He was wrong on this, if not on some other things. He would have said what the SM has Jesus say is wrong, viz. “I came to abolish the law and the prophets”
• “Torah” is not “law” it is the teaching of God. The SM has us formulate the correct saying, viz “I came to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets”.
• The formal structure of the six “antitheses”: “You have heard … but I say …” does not turn against the original quotation but rather extends it. It is like a fence put around the Torah.
• It is without parallel in early Christian literature. Christian vice and virtue catalogs (e.g. Mark 7:21-22 cf. Matt 15:9)come from Hellenistic-Christian sources, not Jewish-Christian.
• There is no accepted order in the antitheses.
• The antitheses deal, under the metaphor of the family, with broken relationships.
• Betz sees the antitheses as pre-Matthean but not going back to Jesus.
• Davies & Allison note: (i) Jesus’ words are not set over against Jewish interpretations nor do they contrast with Torah. (ii) They present a new teaching grounded in Jesus’ authority. (iii) They do not offer a set of rules but, rather, they seek to instill a moral vision.
• Walter Wink’s interpretation of 5:38-42 (seen, for example, in Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way) is a gem

Teaching on Piety

• Into the instruction on piety (6:1-6, 16-18) the Lord’s Prayer (6:7-15) has been inserted. The former has a theology of God who is and sees “in the hidden”. The instruction on prayer (6:7-8) emphasizes God’s omniscience.
• The instruction on prayer is woven around assumptions of inconspicuous piety, a doctrine of rewards that eschews all rewards in this world and a contrast of true piety with the piety of the hypocrites and the pagans, a contrast that comes from within Judaism rather than being anti-Jewish.
• There are issues of authorship of the larger piece on piety (6:1-6, 16-18) and of the inner 6:7-15. The Lord’s Prayer (6:9-13) exists in three independent forms (Luke & Didache) and, as a result of this multiple attestation, can sustain a claim to go back to Jesus. The same cannot be said for its present context (6:1-6, 16-18).

The Eschatological Warnings

• The two ways and the two gates. Jewish tradition knows of the doctrine of the two ways (Deut. 30:15-19). The path leads to the gate through which we pass, not the gate marking the start of the path. What lies through the gate? The Kingdom of Heaven, which has not yet fully come. The path is not straight, it is narrow, it is difficult to find and many take the other path. Few find the true path. Our choices are not obvious.
• The false prophets. The one(s) who we thought was speaking the word of God, we now suspect are telling us lies – false prophets, false leaders. The SM is taking on the colouring of the end of the age – eschatology. They will lead us astray, saying “I am the one, I am he”. The SM grapples to put forward a new test that will get around the old test of fulfillment: you will know them by their fruit.
• Self delusion. Some might be on the narrow path, bearing good fruit and yet not make the cut. They pass all the tests, look and smell like the real thing. They are members of the community, they say “Lord, Lord”, but they are shut out. Who then will be saved?
• There will come a time, the SM tells us, when it will be very hard to tell if we are on the right path. The only assurance might be that the way is not straight nor the path easy.