Spring, 1990
In his book LIFE WITH FATHER, Clarence Day describes reading por- tions of his mother's French Bible. For the most part, he did not care for it. Where the English (King James) Bible described God as "wroth," the French had "irrite," which seemed less majestic.
However, there was one place where young Clarence actually pre- ferred the French. The Third Beatitude reads: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5) Clarence complained that this made Christians out to be a cringing, sni- velling lot. But the French Bible had, Blessed are the "debo- naire". Now that was more like it!
If we wish to know what is meant by "meek" in this context, we must begin by noticing that the verse is a quotation from Psalm 37:11 -- see also verses 3,9,22, and 29 -- in fact, see the whole Psalm. The theme throughout is: "When it seems that the wicked prosper and the righteous do not, do not be disturbed or fretful. Trust in the Lord, for all things are in His hands, and those who wait for the Lord's judgement will surely be vindicated, those who trust Him will possess the land." From this we see that the "meek" are those who trust God, who do not worry when faced with diffi- culties or dangers, who are calm and serene, who are not rattled, who keep their cool -- who are, in a word, "debonaire".
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Michael Goulder, in MIDRASH AND LECTION IN MATTHEW, advances the theory that the Sermon on the Mount is a set of eight elaborations on the Eight Beatitudes, (with an interlude and an epilogue). First, he argues that the customary order for a ancient Hebrew would be to make several statements (A,B,C) and then expand on them in reverse order (C,B,A). For example, see the family trees in Genesis 10, where the sons of Noah are named in order: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and then their families are given in reverse order. So, says Goulder, we find the Eight Beatitudes expanded in reverse order.
Persecuted for righteousness' sake (5:11-16) (The Sacredness of the Law 5:17-20) Peacemakers (5:21-26) Pure in heart (5:27-37) Merciful (5:38-48) Avid for righteousness (6:1-18) Meek (6:19-34) Mourning (7:1-6)
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Poor in spirit (7:7-12) (The importance of following these precepts 7:13-27)
I have not Goulder's book by me, and have an uncomfortable feeling that I have not put some of the divisions where he does. But I think I am close enough to illustrate the point. The reader should find that each of the eight elaborations divides in an obvious way into three sections, each capable of standing by itself.
If the above matchings are right, then we are to understand the meek as those who refuse to be obsessed with worries about their temporal security, since they have given God (not mammon) their full allegiance, and their full trust.
The matchings are similarly suggestive of interpretations for some other Beatitudes.
Whereas by a peacemaker we usually mean someone who mediates quar- rels between two other persons, the word here (always assuming Goulder's premise) refers to one who is quick to patch up a quar- rel in which he is one of the parties.
Again, on Goulder's thesis, the mourner is someone who, seeing the sins of others, reacts with sorrow and concern but not with anger or condemnation. Verse 7:6 is a puzzle to most readers. At first glance it is a curious contrast with that which precedes, almost as it Our Lord intended to say: "On the one hand, do not judge others. On the other hand, do not be so wishy-washy that you do not identify and expel from your midst those who are dogs and swine. Be generous in your evaluations of others, but remember that you have to draw the line somewhere." Goulder suggests that the pearls and the holy things are the reputations of others. If we engage in unkind gossip, backbiting, angry accusation, and the like, in the presence of censorious or ungracious persons, we may have a moment of spurious camaraderie with them as we join in agreeing that there is no excuse for X's behavior; but the moment we leave the room, we may be sure that our own faults will be as mercilessly dissected by our erstwhile companions, and all the more eagerly because they and we were united in savaging others a short while back. Thus the swine, having trodden the cast pearls underfoot, will turn upon the caster.
The poor in spirit are those who recognize their needs and eagerly turn to ask God to supply them.
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All this is part of a much broader thesis, which Goulder bases on the fact that several early manuscripts of Matthew have little check marks in the margin that divide the Gospel into fifty-odd sections. Goulder's contention is that the Gospel was originally written to be read in Jewish-Christian synagogues over the course of a year (with the Crucifixion read at the beginning of Passover and the Resurrection on the following Sabbath, and then starting
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over at the beginning of the Gospel on the Sabbath after that), and that the material for each Sabbath and holy day is suited, so far as possible, to the theme of the day. Thus, for example, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the synagogue reading is the book of Jonah, with its theme of God's readiness to forgive those who repent. The reading from Matthew for that day includes 12:38-42, in which Jesus' contemporaries are rebuked for being more hard-hearted than the men of Nineveh.
On this thesis, the Sermon on the Mount is to be read at Pente- cost. Now it has been objected that three chapters are an unrea- sonably long reading at one go, especially with only 28 chapters to be divided among more than 50 readings so that the average reading will be only a little more than half a chapter. But Goulder points out that Pentecost commemorates the giving of the Law at Sinai, and that it was customary to devote the day to a marathon service and study session. An unusually long reading from Matthew would not have been out of place.
The structure is appropriate, with the Eight Beatitudes and an elaboration of each. Pentecost comes fifty days after Passover (hence the "pente-"), so that they are separated by seven weeks, or seven sevens (the Hebrew name of the feast is Shevuoth, or Sev- ens, sometimes translated as the Feast of Weeks), and Pentecost is the beginning of the eighth week. Hence the eight enters in natu- rally. The 119th Psalm, written in praise of the Law, was written in 22 stanzas of eight verses each, with the Eight symbolizing Pentecost. (The 22 stanzas correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the eight verses of the n'th stanza all begin with the n'th letter of the alphabet.) The marathon study just mentioned was divided into eight sessions. Hence Eight Beatitudes are a nice touch.
And the theme is appropriate. Jesus takes His disciples up a moun- tain and there delivers to them the New Law, stated in deliberate juxtaposition with the Old. He says: "You have heard that it was said to the men of old, Do not kill, but I say to you, Do not hate." And so on.
Two digressions that I cannot resist at this point:
(1) Greek uses the dative case for both "by" and "to" -- both agency and indirect object. You have to guess which is meant from the context. In at least two places, the King James translators are judged by most modern translators to have guessed wrongly. One is in Luke 23:15, where the King James translators make Pilate say of Jesus: "Nothing worthy of death is done TO him," which makes no sense at all. A typical modern translation reads: "Nothing deserving of death has been done BY him." In other words, he is not guilty of any capital offense. This makes perfectly good sense. The other place is here in the Sermon on the Mount. The King James scholars translate, "said BY the men of old," where it probably should be, "said TO the men of old," -- that is, said by God to the Israelites at Sinai.
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(2) Every so often, you will meet someone who says: "I have no interest in the religion ABOUT Jesus that has been concocted by Paul and Constantine and the Popes and Jerry Falwell -- all this stuff about the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and so on. Give me the simple, beautiful religion OF Jesus, as found in the Sermon on the Mount. None of this theology about Jesus as the Son of God, just Jesus as the great moral teacher who talked about loving your enemies and about how beautiful the lilies of the field were. If he were alive today, he would probably be active in the Sierra Club or the Animal Rights League."
Well, don't be too sure that the animal rights people would have Him. He did, after all, say that men are of more value than birds (6:26), which makes Him guilty of speciesism.
But never mind that. Note instead that you can't get away from the theology by restricting your reading to the Sermon on the Mount. Note how Jesus proceeds, so smoothly and casually that many read- ers do not even notice it, to identify being persecuted for right- eousness' sake with being persecuted for His sake (5:10-12). Note how, although He teaches his followers to pray, "Our Father," He never uses that expression Himself. Instead, He speaks of "your Father" (5:16,45,48; 6:1,4,6,8,14,15,18,26,32; 7:11), and of "my Father" (7:21), as if to suggest that He is Son of God in a dif- ferent sense. Note also how He claims that when men are seeking to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is to Him that they will make their appeal. Note, finally, how He takes commandments that God has given, and adds His own commands to them, with the clear implication that His commands have just as much authority as the original. No, one cannot take the Sermon on the Mount as one's watchword and throw away the rest of the New Testament, and thereby avoid the question of Jesus' Person and Authority and sim- ply accept Him as a great moral teacher, like Epictetus or Confu- cius, or even like Amos or Isaiah. It won't work.
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About Goulder's overall thesis -- I have mentioned two of his "matches": the Sermon on the Mount for Pentecost and Jonah for Yom Kippur. Naturally, not all of the readings fit the occasion as neatly as this. For one thing, not every day is an occasion like Yom Kippur with an obvious theme to be fitted. But Goulder is usu- ally able to come up with some connection, some a little more far- fetched than others.
Does he make a good case for his thesis? On this I reserve judge- ment. His examples, lined up one after another, are impressive, but I keep remembering a book on Shakespeare's HAMLET that I saw many years ago. The author maintained that the play was intended to be performed on a circular stage divided into twelve pie-shaped wedges. Each wedge was associated with an hour of the day or night, from one to twelve in order. Each wedge was associated with a pair of contrasts, the first of which was being versus non-be- ing, and I forget the other eleven. There was also a third set of
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twelve associations, that I remember not at all. Each character stood in a particular wedge, and moved to the next whenever he had just concluded a speech, so that if he gave twelve speeches he would make a complete circuit of the stage. Every speech, without exception, was related to at least one of the three themes of the wedge that the character was standing in. And the author never failed to find a connection. Somehow, this makes me less certain than I might otherwise be that Goulder's connections are too neat and too many to be explained by coincidence plus Goulder's ingenu- ity. But I note that, although Goulder is himself emphatically not a believer in orthodox Christianity, his thesis is taken seriously by many scholars who are.
Does his thesis imply that Matthew is largely fiction? No. The middle of all three Synoptic Gospels consists of a jumble of materials: a few miraculous healings, a few parables, a few moral maxims, a few more healings, and so on. There is no reason at all to suppose that this is in chronological order, or intended to be, and indeed events given in one order in one gospel sometimes occur in another order in another. There is no reason why Matthew, with a wealth of material at hand, should not have selected for each Sabbath or holy day some sayings or deeds of Jesus that were suited to that day. Naturally at Passover the story of the Cruci- fixion and Resurrection would be retold. And once the idea arose of writing these in a single scroll as a connected narrative, the birth and the baptism would have to come at the beginning. But that the various parables should simply have been assigned to be read on appropriate days -- why not? (For parables, in particular, the notion of chronological order has no meaning. Surely Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan and the story of the Prodigal Son many times. What do you mean, which did He tell first?)
On this hypothesis, is the Sermon on the Mount an actual sermon by Jesus, or a construction by Matthew for calendric purposes? Gould makes no secret of favoring the latter, but I do not see that he presents a convincing case for it. I see several possibilities:
(1) Matthew, wanting a long reading for Pentecost of sayings of Jesus appropriate to the occasion, devised the eightfold struc- ture, took various sayings of Jesus, and edited and arranged and elaborated and added to until he got what he wanted.
(2) Jesus preached a sermon very like that here recorded, giving it an eight-fold structure because He intended it as a Pentecost sermon, and He gave it on a mountain with deliberate symbolic intent.
(3) Jesus preached the Beatitudes on a mountain at Pentecost, and Matthew selected material from elsewhere in Jesus' ministry to expand the sermon to an appropriate length for his purposes.
(4) The original sermon lacked the interlude and the epilogue as given above, but had the Eight Beatitudes and their appropriate expansions, and thus was much more symmetrical. Matthew added the
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interlude and epilogue from sayings of Jesus remembered from other occasions, because he thought they were matter that his readers needed in this context.
(5) Any combination of the above.
It seems clear that Matthew regarded Jesus as Israel's Messiah, and saw His actions in that light. Jesus was baptized in the Jor- dan, as the Israelites were "baptized" in the Red Sea. He then wandered in the wilderness for forty days, as they wandered for forty years. He was tested, as they were.
(1) When God gave them bread from heaven, they ignored His words and tried to hoard it, and then, by an opposite error, to gather it on the Sabbath (Ex 16). But Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God."
(2) They put the Lord to the test, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" (Ex 17). But Jesus said, "Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test."
(3) They were guilty of worshipping the golden calf (Ex 32), but Jesus said, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."
They had three tests, and failed them all, while Jesus had the same three tests, and passed them all. Thus He sums up in His own person the whole people of Israel, or rather Israel as they should have been. He then returns to the Jordan and crosses over it into the land of Israel, as they did at the end of their forty years.
Matthew saw this as symbolic. But did Jesus Himself do so? Why not? Some of His actions were clearly symbolic. He chose twelve disciples to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel, and to show that his followers were the Faithful Remnant, the nucleus of the Renewed Israel. He clearly saw Himself as one with authority, and it would have been altogether in keeping with that self-image if He had taken the Twelve who symbolized the New Israel, brought them up a mountain, and given them the laws that were to govern the New Israel. </PRE>