Table of contentsIntroductionDifferences with other gospelsThe Lord's PrayerAnalysis of the Sermon on the MountThe role of the Sermon on the MountConclusionBibliographyIntroductionThe Sermon on the Mount mountain is one of the three main speeches delivered by the Lord Jesus Christ in the exercise of his prophetic function while engaged in his ministry on earth. Concerning the Upper Room Discourse and the Olivet Discourse, there is little disagreement among Bible-believing interpreters as to the period of applicability, the persons addressed, or the principles of action they contain. There is no such unanimity in the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, even among interpreters who approach the Scripture from the same literal and dispensational perspective. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayDifferences from other gospelsIn both gospels, the sermon begins with what is commonly called the Beatitudes (Mt 5:3- 12; Luke 6:20-23), short words that begin. 'Blessed are you. . .' The Greek adjective translated “blessed” represents a Hebrew word often used in the Old Testament, notably in the Psalms and Proverbs. It means lucky, well-off, to be praised, etc. The person declared blessed may not feel happy at all; in fact, those whom Jesus called blessed would seem to most people decidedly unhappy. There are four differences between the Beatitudes given by Matthew and those given by Luke. First, Matthew has nine Beatitudes, Luke only four. Missing from Luke are the words concerning the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. Second, while the Beatitudes of Matthew are stated more generally in the third person ("the poor in spirit", "those who mourn", etc.), switching to the second person only in the last Beatitude, those of Luke are all address the listeners directly in the second person (“you poor people”, “you who are hungry now”). A third very important difference is that Luke understands and formulates the Beatitudes in a more literal and more material sense than Matthew. It is not “the poor in spirit” who are called blessed in Luke but “you poor”, not “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, but “you who are hungry now”. Instead of “those who weep,” Luke has “you who now weep,” and instead of “they will be comforted,” he has “you will laugh.” The fourth difference is even more striking. The four Beatitudes of Luke are followed by four corresponding Woes (6:24-26): “But woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are satisfied now, woe to you who laugh now, woe to you, when all men speak well. of you'.The Our FatherSincerity in prayer requires that it be direct and simple. God is not impressed by wordiness (vv 7-8). Nor is the purpose of prayer to give him information. Prayer is the child's expression of his hopes, fears, and aspirations toward his Father, who already knows what the child needs, but who desires communion of spirit with spirit. Matthew gives it here (6:9-15; cf. Lk 11:2). -4) what we call the Our Father, introduced by the simple instruction: “Pray then like this”. Luke puts it after the story of Mary and Martha. Both parameters may be artificial; it is the prayer itself that counts. Marc doesn't report it at all. It begins with “Our Father who art in heaven.” Luke simply has “Father”. Matthew (or his special source)favors the expression “Father who is heaven” or its equivalent “Heavenly Father”, both in prayer and when speaking of God (for example, Mt 16:17; 18). :10, 19). This is a form of Jewish address that Jesus himself may well have used. In one form or another, Jesus' most characteristic word for God was "Father." With the possessive pronoun "my" or "his" or only the definite article (Mk 8:38 and parallels; 13:32 and parallels), it refers to God as the Father of Jesus himself or of the Son of 'Man or the Messiah to come. According to Luke, Jesus, from his childhood, spoke of God as "my Father" (2:49). It is also Luke who records that Jesus twice invoked God as Father from the cross (23:34, 46), and that after his resurrection he spoke to the troubled disciples of "the promise of my Father" ( 24:49). But Jesus not only spoke of God as his own Father; he also spoke of “your Father” (Mt 6:15 and often) and taught the disciples to address God as “our Father” or simply “Father”. In Judaism, it was by no means unusual to speak of God and him as “your Father.” Father, both of individuals and of all the people of Israel. Some prayers in the Jewish prayer book begin with “Our Father, our King.” A famous rabbinic saying goes: “On whom can we rely? On our Father who is in heaven. A prayer in the apocryphal book of Sirach begins: “O Lord. Father and ruler of my life” (Sir 23:1); and elsewhere (51:10) the reading of the Greek text. “the Father of my lord” represents a Hebrew text that was probably intended to be read “my Father, my Lord.” For Jesus, the term “Father” did not just mean Creator, although that was part of the meaning. It did not just mean the supreme authority that we must obey, although it did indeed mean that. It also meant Provider, Protector, Loving Parent, with all that human parenting entails at its best. It indeed meant much more than the most perfect human parenthood could mean. “If you then, who are evil,” says Jesus (Mt 7:11; cf. Lk 11:13), “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good gifts . to those who ask him. » In Matthew, the Lord's Prayer consists of seven requests, of which Luke has five. The first three are requests not for ourselves but for the glory of God and His purposes on earth. The first petition is typically Jewish: “Hallowed be your name.” The idea of ​​sanctifying the name has a long history behind it. Among the early Semites, the name represented fame or reputation; in fact, it expressed and embodied a person's very existence and identity. Thus, God's acts of grace were said to be done for his name's sake (e.g. Ps 23:3); blasphemy or any speech or conduct reflecting discredit upon him was said to profane his name (e.g., Lev 22:32); while revering him as holy. praising him as holy, and thus acting so as to bring honor to him, were called (e.g. Isa 29:23) to sanctify or sanctify his name (literally, making him holy). This must be the first concern of Jesus' disciples. The second request in Matthew and Luke is “Thy kingdom come” (Mt 6:10; Luke 11:2). Jesus proclaimed on his return to Galilee after his baptism (Mk 1:15 and parallels): “The kingdom of God is near. “As close as he was, he had obviously not yet arrived when he prayed this prayer to the disciples. He still hasn't come. It depends on God. “Thy will be done,” whether or not it corresponds to our own desires, is the ultimate wish of every devoted heart. It was the prayer of Jesus himself toGethsemane. What God's will requires must be accepted with sincere submission. This is the passive aspect of the petition. Actively, this means that the one who prays wishes to do the will of God himself and wants each group of which he is a member to do the will of God. The expression “on earth as it is in heaven” applies not only to the third request but to all. three. Critical editions of the Greek text show this clearly by the arrangement of the lines, but our English translations obscure or ignore it. Literally, the expression reads: "as in heaven, so on earth." In heaven, this implies that God's name is hallowed, his kingdom is present and manifest, his will is done. What does “in heaven” mean? Jesus, as a child of his time, may have thought of heaven in simple terms of time and space. Rabbinic Judaism believed in many heavens, sometimes three, sometimes as many as seven. We cannot say what significance such ideas had for Jesus. His statement that those who participate in the resurrection of the dead would be like the angels, who neither marry nor give in marriage (Mk 12:25 and parallels), implies a kind of incorporeal existence. All we can be sure of is that he believed in a real world in which what we could only hope and pray for here was already happening. Regardless, there is no escaping the clear meaning of “also on earth.” Luke's shorter form of the Lord's Prayer omits both "thy will be done" and "as in heaven, so on earth." It is possible that this omission simply reflects the liturgical practice of another group of churches. It is possible that Luke preserved the original prayer. and Matthew presents a liturgical expansion. The same question applies to the form of the address at the beginning of the prayer. There is no way to determine the correct answer. What the disciples are to pray for is not deeply affected. Matthew's form has a clear structure, but this may be the result of the use of prayer in public worship. The remaining four petitions are for our own benefit, but only the first concerns bodily needs. “Give us this day our daily bread” (Mt 6:11; Lk 11:3) is a request for physical sustenance, perhaps intended to cover not only food but all the necessities of daily life. Instead of “this day,” Luke has “every day”; in both cases, a service is only requested for one day at a time. Whether “daily bread” is the correct translation is one on which scholars disagree. The Greek adjective does not appear anywhere else. For me, “our bread of the day to come” seems the best translation. In the morning, this would refer to the day that has just begun; in the evening, that would mean the next day. That the petition has anything to do with the messianic banquet of times to come seems improbable to me. In the following petition, the words “debts” and “debtors” bother some people, who prefer “offenses” and “those who have offended us”. .' This latter reading dates back to the pioneering work of Tyndale (1535). The English Prayer Book perpetuated this interpretation, which is still used in many churches. All standard English versions after Tyndale. however, we have “debts” and “debtors”; and this is what the Greek actually says. In Aramaic, sins are regularly called debts and sinners are called debtors. Luke reads “sins” instead of “debts” (11:4). It is probably just a different translation of the same Aramaic word. The idea of ​​debt is preserved in Luke's “all who are indebted to us,” where Matthew speaks of “our debtors.” SeveralRecent translations read "the evil we have done" and "those who have wronged us" or something similar. The petition (Mt 6:13; Luke 11:4), “And lead us not into temptation,” has troubled sincere Christians. perhaps more than anything else in the Our Father. It seems unworthy and cowardly to ask to be spared from temptation, and the idea that God could tempt anyone to sin seems incongruous (cf. James 1:13). The word “temptation”. however, its meaning was not always as limited as it is for us today. The Bible often speaks of tempting God (cf. Mt 4:7) in the sense of putting him to the test. The Greek word translated “temptation” means trial or trial of any kind, including persecution. “But deliver us from evil. » The Greek is ambiguous (cf. Mt 5:39). The connection with the preceding clause suggests a particular reference to the temptation or trial from which the disciples ask to be spared. So a double petition can mean. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Tempter”; or, since “evil” in the Bible has a wide range of meanings, “Do not put us to too severe a test, but deliver us from evil.” Since we cannot say precisely what Jesus had in mind, it would seem justified to use prayer in one of these senses. The entire prayer is formulated in the plural. Even though Luke's simple "Father" is more authentic than Matthew's "Our Father", both Luke and Matthew read "give us our daily bread", "forgive us our debts" and "our debtors", " Do not lead us... but deliver us. Even in the privacy of his own room with the door closed, a Christian cannot leave his brother out of his prayers. Obviously, this pattern of prayer was not intended to exhaust all the things the disciples could pray for. Everything concerning this subject in the Gospels justifies the hypothesis that everything worth asking or desiring would be an object worthy of prayer, always subject to the words of Jesus: "Nevertheless, not what I will, but whatever you want” (Mt 26:39). .At the end of Matthew's prayer (6:13), some manuscripts say: "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." Amen.' The parallel in Luke (11:4) and some manuscripts of Matthew omit this. It clearly seems to have been added to the liturgical use of prayer in certain churches. There is a tendency in the liturgy to multiply words (cf. Mt 6:7-8), although in this case the language is in no way redundant or inappropriate. It is less verbose than David's prayer (1 Chronicles 29, 10-111), which probably served as a model. After the prayer, Jesus adds in Matthew (6, 14). “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. It is one of only three sayings from the Sermon on the Mount (5:29-30. 312-33) that have parallels in Mark (9:43-48; 10:11-12; 11:25-26). ). In all three cases, Matthew has a doublet later. Analysis of the Sermon on the Mount First, the standard of character in the Kingdom is God-like perfection. v.3-48. This is described in his progress and experiences, in the beatitudes, v. 3-12. Hatch, in his "Essays in Biblical Greek," tells us that the terms used here (πτωχ!!), -ραεις) were commonly used to describe the fellahins of the East, the poor and suffering multitudes whose spirits had been crushed . by the relentless oppression of the wealthy and ruling classes. In this natural condition of the lowest classes of the population, Jesus sees an illustration of the conscious spiritual condition of all who cometo enter the Kingdom. Personally, they feel spiritually bankrupt. Second, this goes for the world, w. 13-16. The members of the Kingdom are like the salt that saves the world from corruption, v. 13 and the light, to enlighten men and give glory to the Father, w. 14-16. Third, its relation to that required by law — it completes the latter, w. 17-47. This is expressly stated in w. 17-20. The first words (“think not”) indicate that Jesus has in mind the already widespread suspicion, and perhaps even accusation, that he was loosening the bonds of morality. This is what He categorically denies. The requirements of the law must not be abolished but met, updated; not lowered, but raised higher, even to perfection. Kingdom righteousness must far exceed the prevailing standards of the scribes and Pharisees. The body of truth revealed in the law and the prophets is likened to a temple slowly rising through the centuries under the hand of God. To summarize, the character required in the Kingdom is that of divine perfection, v. 48. The children of the Kingdom must be perfect like its heavenly Father. That this verse is intended to sum up the teaching of the whole chapter is not only suggested by the nature of the thought, but expressly indicated by the particle. The Role of the Sermon on the Mount These findings from modern biblical scholarship provide a remarkably rich theological context. in which we can understand and appreciate the role and educational content of the Sermon on the Mount. As Pope Benedict XVI observed in his recent study of Jesus, “the Sermon on the Mount is the new Torah brought by Jesus as the new Moses whose words constitute the definitive Torah.” Furthermore, the sermon can also be understood as part of the new covenant that God was creating the new Israel as Jesus' opening speech ushering in the kingdom of God. As the leader of God's new people, he expressed the message of miracles and spectacular healings. What he had accomplished earlier in the gospel of Matthew, that the royal power of God now began to be manifested in the activities and the teaching of Jesus. As Matthew summarizes, “Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and disease among the people.” The sermon that closed this opening section of Jesus' evangelical ministry in Matthew shows us Jesus now describing and explaining what life would be like for his disciples in the kingdom, as he would describe and confirm it to subsequent generations of new Christians, in beginning with Matthew. community, what being a disciple of Jesus would now regularly entail for them. The role of the Sermon on the Mount in Jesus' time and later in the life of the Church was well highlighted by Pope Benedict when he described how: "In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus addresses his people, to Israel, as to the first bearer of the promise. But by giving them the new Torah, he opens them, in order to give birth to a great new family of God drawn from Israel and the Gentiles. Matthew wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians and, more broadly, for the Jewish world, in order to renew this great momentum initiated by Jesus. » Thus considering the Sermon on the Mount as a foretaste of Christian life in the kingdom of God helps us. discover its internal structure and thus recognize the whole speech as carefully fashioned from Jesus' previous words; provide a detailed exposition of his key statement which forms, as it were, the text of the sermon: “I say to you, unless your If righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,..): 13.