Important Schedule Update: Because of the stake’s plan for “Family Togetherness Week” ahead of General Conference, we will not hold class on Thursday, March 30. I will post an updated syllabus once I can tweak some lesson plans.
Lead-up to the First Sermon
The Four Gospels record six extended sermons delivered by Jesus (listed by their traditional titles):
Sermon on the Mount/Plain
Commissioning of the Twelve
Parables Discourse
Kingdom of Heaven Discourse
Eschatological Discourse
Farewell Discourse
The “Sermon on the Mount” (also called the “Sermon on the Plain”) seems not only to appear first in the gospels, but to have been designated the first by gospel writers. In other words, Jesus’s other discourses (like what he gave in the Nazareth Synagogue) did not, apparently, follow a sermon style from start to finish. But this might only remain a semantic concern—we have indications of a few interpersonal dialogues with various people, synagogue instruction, and even in Jesus’s youth, an episode of extended teaching in the temple. So, whether the Sermon on the Mount/Plain must occupy the status of “first” probably matters only if we let it.
The occasion itself for this sermon arose after Jesus had visited at least two synagogues (Nazareth and Capernaum), had begun inviting followers to join his ministry, had performed healings and exorcisms in lakeside villages near Capernaum, and had conversed with mild-to-moderate adversarial audiences about the Sabbath. After an evening of healing everyone who visited Andrew and Simon’s house in Bethsaida, Jesus retired before dawn to some place of solitude not far away and was found praying. His first disciples beckoned him to come back where crowds of people had gathered to meet with him. Matthew has Jesus descending from his solitary place to meet this audience on a mountainside; Luke has Jesus descend to a mountain plain. The precise location seems rather immaterial, since the two gospels agree on vicinity: in the hill country near Lake Gennesaret, Jesus encountered an audience of the size of a “crowd” and taught them in a sermon that announced a radically new orientation to the entire Israelite scriptural and prophetic tradition—a whole new “kingdom of heaven” concept stated nowhere in the Old Testament.
Sources for the Sermon
Let’s consider one important aspect of this sermon: its assemblage of sayings. To understand the structure of the sermon, we have to consider its malleability source-wise. Here’s a short detour that helps to explain what I mean.
In 1945, farmers in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, about 50 miles northwest of Luxor, discovered a clay jar buried in dirt they were clearing. Inside the jar were papyri containing ancient Christian texts that, in published formats, number over 1,000 pages of content.1 Among these texts was the Gospel of Thomas, a source other Christians texts referred to but didn’t reproduce.
This gospel is a “sayings” source. Recall that we identified the principal genre of each of the Four Gospels: Mark is an “encomium” source that presents a kind of eulogistic praise of Jesus, or ideal telling of Jesus’s life; Matthew and Luke are “vita” sources that present a narrative of Jesus’s live story; and John is an “apologia” source that defends Jesus against philosopher-critics from Rome. In Thomas, we read simply a string of discrete sayings of Jesus without any connecting narrative tissue, giving this gospel a different genre, what we call a “sayings” text.
Why this matters for the Sermon on the Mount/Plain has to do with compelling evidence that suggest both gospels of Matthew and Luke relied in places on an earlier sayings source. We don’t have this shared source as far as we can tell, and so it often gets called “Q,” the abbreviation of the name German scholars first gave it. Regardless of whether we accept the Q hypothesis, it remains clear that the Sermon proceeds very much like sayings sources similar to Thomas: Matthew and Luke simply string together individual sayings as one continuous speech; because these two gospels don’t agree on precisely the sequence or the selection of teachings, it’s possible (plausible, depending on who you talk to) that the order of teachings ran differently in Jesus’s original delivery. It’s also possible that Matthew and/or Luke assembled these teachings from several sayings sources into a sermon that they had reason to associate with this occasion.
I try to avoid speculating and rather lay out the field of possibilities then asking whether this context affects our bearing. In the case of the Sermon on the Mount/Plain, I do think these discrete sayings appearing in the style Matthew and Luke present matter—this, as a sermon, offers a stylistic fingerprint, so to speak, that gives us an impression of Jesus’s presentation style, his manner of speaking. And that, in my view, is a big deal. It’s significant just to know that the communities behind the production of Matthew and Luke considered this style of delivering individual teachings the way Jesus sermonized on this occasion. This matters, even if we cannot be certain of the Sermon’s exact sequence of teachings.
Structure of the Sermon
We have two options for thinking about the Sermon’s structure: we can favor Matthew or favor Luke. Because Matthew offers both more of the Sermon’s content and more of a thematic emphasis on the Sermon, most readers prefer to let Matthew’s account take priority over Luke. (Hence, the common name being the Sermon on the Mount not the Sermon on the Plain.) Regardless of order, both Matthew and Luke offer us these thematic clusters of teachings:
Beatitudes and Woes
True Identity
Law and Prophets (which includes a subsection of “Antitheses”)
True Righteousness
Living in the World
Judgment
Way of Righteousness
Two Foundations
One could read these thematic blocks in any sequence, since our sources play flexibly with their own sources in reconstructing the sermon. I’ll give priority to Matthew’s order, simply for its established coherence.
Beatitudes
Matthew 5:3–12 and Luke 6:20–23 present a series of statements about blessedness known as the “Beatitudes.” This has to do with the long Christian tradition of these teachings being circulated in their Latin form well before English translations (and the English language, even) existed. In Latin, each teaching begins with beati (=blessed are).
Now this junction, I’m going to assert our Article of Faith where we say we believe the Bible to be the word of God “as far as it is translated correctly.” In my view, the Beatitudes have not been translated correctly into Latin and King James English. I intend to illustrate what I mean, but don’t feel like you’ll have to reject whatever translation has been meaningful to you.
How Blissful
The Four Gospels come to us in their earliest form as Greek texts, and some evidence indicates they were first written in Greek. The word makarioi appears as “blessed” in the Latin and King James; it is a plural adjective, not a past participle verb, which means beati in Latin is syntactically an incorrect translation. What’s more—this adjective shows up without a verb, which is like saying “blissful the poor,” “blissful the mourners.” In ancient Greek idiomatic expressions, this adjective plus article plus noun (blissful + the + poor) accentuated the adjective. It’s like, in English, stressing the adjective when describing something: “the yellow fire truck.” We could express this saying of Jesus with italics: “Blissful the poor”; “Blissful the mourners.” Likewise, we could look to an English idiomatic expression that we use more often to make this emphasis—“How blissful the poor.”
I prefer this translation over alternatives because of the word makarioi and the word order that emphasizes the adjective not the noun. In this setting, the Beatitudes look something like this:
How blissful the poor in spirit / theirs is the kingdom of heaven
How blissful they that mourn / they shall be comforted
How blissful the meek / they shall inherit the earth
How blissful they who hunger… / they shall be filled
How blissful the merciful / they shall obtain mercy
How blissful the pure in heart / they shall see God
How blissful the peacemakers / they shall be called the children of God
How blissful they which are persecuted… / theirs is the kingdom of heaven
How blissful [those reviled for Jesus’s sake] / great is your reward in heaven
Other Translation Issues
Similar issues surrounding the translation of makarioi into Latin/English have affected other words in the Beatitudes. Without getting deep into a syntax and definitional discussion, here are several re-translations I offer for your consideration. Meanings here derive from many classical and ancient Greek sources, what non-specialists can track using a resource like the Cambridge Greek Lexicon.
“poor in spirit” = ptōchoi tō pneumati: We’ve discussed at length how the Greek word pneuma has gotten translated as “spirit,” even when Jesus (and others) used the word to describe “breath” and “wind”; particularly in Jesus’s discourse with Nicodemus recorded in John 3, the discussion was about God’s breath, as in, the breath of life that God breathed into Adam to make a living soul, and also about wind, and the word pneuma appears in King James as “spirit” and “wind” when “spirit” doesn’t apply (a clear mistranslation when reading the Greek). We’re getting pneumati here, again translated as “spirit” to describe the poor, but, like John 3, there’s a lot of context and history that works against this translation. I favor something like “beggars of souls” or “destitute” or “out-of-breath/overworked/abject” that better get at what ptōchoi tō pneumati is describing.
“they that mourn” = penthountes: This is a solid translation, but for closer accuracy, we might note that the Greek word is saying literally “the mourners.” The “bereaved” also captures the expression well.
“the meek” = praeis: This one’s difficult for how the concept of “meekness” does not appear in ancient languages. The word praeis applies directly to animals, particularly in how ancient Greeks described wild versus tame varieties. When Jesus says praeis to describe himself in another famous passage, he’s not saying “meek,” since meekness enters European languages in the Middle Ages; he’s saying, “take my yoke upon you, for I am tame.” That’s at least how his agrarian audience heard the word. Same here: How blissful the tame (as opposed to wild) or the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
“they who hunger…” = chortasthēsontai: “They shall be filled” isn’t off, per se, but this Greek word has so much to do with feasting, having a grand meal, which I think gets lost in the more generic sense of being filled (with food). Imagine the kingdom of heaven bringing about a grand meal for those who hunger and thirst after righteousness… That’s a different image than hungering and then being filled with some non-specific thing.
“the merciful” = eleēmones: Again, this word brings more than suggested by “merciful.” The notion of pity, taking pity, and giving alms is baked into the root of this Greek word. In even more ancient uses, the root word described literally a “gold plate,” as in, giving of one’s wealth out of pity. But the word also employs an intensifier, and in many ancient contexts, appears in expressions about one’s heart—a heart full of the gold plate, the outpouring of sympathy from one’s heart. That’s embedded in eleēmones, and particularly accessible through a word like “compassionate,” more than “merciful.” Mercy has to do with relieving someone of suffering the person has merited, whereas eleēmones makes no such connotation. How blissful the hearts overflowing with sympathy, for hearts full of sympathy will overflow to them.
“the pure in heart” = katharoi tē kardia: The word katharoi describes “unmixed” or “untainted” relative to liquids. Pure works here. But if we remember how expressions using katharoi to describe people most often had to do with acts of honesty, then “guileless” works better for translating the idiomatic sense of the phrase. How blissful the guileless of heart, for they shall see God. Side note: I find this notion reflected in something Joseph Smith wrote as a kind of prophetic autograph to the Wilkinson family in February 1840: “Virtue is one of the most prominent principles that enables us to have confidence in approaching our Father who is in heaven in order to ask wisdom at his hand. Therefore, if thou wilt cherish this principle in thine heart, thou mayest ask with all confidence before him and it shall be poured out upon thine head and thou shalt not lack anything that thy soul desires in truth.”2 That relationship between truth/honesty/guilelessness and seeing God strikes me as significant and fundamental, especially as Jesus teaches it.
“the peacemakers” = eirēnpoioi / “called” = klēthēsontai: This is a fine translation as “peacemakers,” but like other Greek words in this passage, a certain quality is lost between the Greek and English. If we trim off the plural from the root word, then we’re talking about “peacefulness,” which, if I’m not worried about sounding apropos in English, I’d just render straight as “peacefulnessers,” the “enactors or doers of peacefulness.” It’s one thing to describe people who make or bring peace, and quite another to describe those who bring a fullness of being at peace. Also, the word for “called [the children of God]” suggests something quite different than being called a name. This word, klēthēsontai, means “summoned,” as in “they shall be summoned (as).” How blissful those who build a fullness of peace, for they shall be summoned as the children of God. Of course, this heightens Jesus’s association of peacefulness and bringing peacefulness with one’s status as a child of God—we’ll be summoned into the kingdom of heaven as God’s children who have brought peacefulness to the world.
“who are persecuted…” = dediōgmenoi: Persecution is an altogether different concept than what is expressed in the Greek word here. While we might construe the act of persecuting someone to include hunting, the word had only to do with being pursued within the context of hunting down an animal or chasing away (militarily) an enemy. How blissful the hunted-after for the sake of what is right, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“…revile you…” = oneidisōsin and diōxōsin: Like the previous paragraph, these two words depart from “revile” and “persecute” in the King James Version. Quite literally, oneidisōsin means “to taunt” and has also meant “to accuse” in the context of being prosecuted under the law. The word diōxōsin gets after pursuit, just like dediōgmenoi. How blissful you when they taunt you and pursue you and falsely accuse you of every evil for my sake…
“…your reward is great…” = misthos polys: This translation, like others, isn’t bad, but I do think what polys denotes gets lost in “reward is great,” a passive construction about misthos (=reward). The word misthos describes not so much a reward as a recompense: being compensated after being mistreated. And polys is a multiplier, not simply an intensifier. That whole phrase, I think, can be more accurately expressed in English like this: How blissful you when they taunt you and pursue you and falsely accuse you of every evil for my sake: Celebrate and leap about, for your recompense multiplies in the heavens.
Woes
Luke’s account follows with a series of woes that appears as a juxtaposition beside such rejoicings and positive affirmations in the Beatitudes. If we examine translation possibilities like we did with the Beatitudes, then we get an expanded and more intensified description of those who Jesus laments:
Woe unto you that are rich / you have received your consolation
Woe unto you that are full / you shall hunger
Woe unto you that laugh now / you shall mourn and weep
Woe unto you when men speak well of you / so did your fathers to the false prophets
“you that are rich” = plousiois: Rich works fine here. But plousiois includes a suggestion of opulence, as in, richy-rich-rich. Maybe in today’s vernacular, this could describe the “super-wealthy.”
“you that are full” = empeplēsmenoi: “Full” works well here, but there’s a kind of expanded quality in the Greek word, an ornamentation that exaggerates “fullness.” “Engorged” fits the bill for me.
“you that laugh now” = gelōntes: Laugh, except with the connotation of mockery or heckling.
“all speak well of you” = kalōs: Here’s the problem with translating kalōs as “speaking well”: we lose the class system well at work in ancient Rome that is implied in this word. The example of British class systems for royalty and nobles is isntructive. British law has required subjects to address their superiors with proper titles and language. To speak out of turn could constitute impertinence, a punishable offense. And so, in English, we’re used to such expressed deference in phrases like, “your majesty,” “your lordship,” “her ladyship,” etc. This is what kalōs is talking about: when people speak in such an enforced decorous manner. Jesus laments this and clearly signals that it has no place in the kingdom of heaven. We’re not going to find “your majesty” being employed there, especially when Jesus pronounces a woe upon it.
Bliss and Woe
Between these sections of the Sermon, we can see Jesus altering our view with powerful ironies. Out-of-breath beggars, downcast souls, are the epitome of a not-blissful state; but Jesus holds them up as exemplars of heavenly bliss, as the first in a list about the people belonging to the kingdom of heaven. In the rhetorical sense, this constitutes an effect of irony. The abject of society equals the blissful of society. Those aren’t supposed to square. We might read this as Jesus giving us sight—if we see rightly, we see in the destitute of society the very kingdom of heaven. And why? Because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them! The bereaved are precisely not figures of bliss—that’s the meaning of mourning, to be utterly lacking bliss. And yet, if we see rightly, we can see the bliss because of the promise the kingdom of heaven offers. Not the possibility of comfort, not a conditional meaning of comfort that comes if the bereaved do something, but an absolute declaration without conditions: How blissful the bereaved, for they shall be comforted!
Likewise, if we see rightly, we’ll lament what our common rhetoric sets up as desirable: opulence/luxury/superwealth, hedonistic living, humor at others’ expense, and receiving honorifics—these aren’t desirable to Jesus. He laments, literally saying “alas” to these conditions. My hedonism will mean I will hunger; my laughter at others will mean I will mourn and weep; my high-status from titles and honorifics will be as false as the false prophets.
Next Time
I’ll say more about the “True Identity” section of the Sermon in another newsletter summary. Since we won’t meet for class on Thursday, March 30, I’ll use that week to get caught up.
In the interest of scholarly disclosure, I’ll mention that the scholar who spearheaded early research into the Nag Hammadi texts, James Robinson, directed the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at Claremont Graduate University, which is where I received my graduate training in the history of Christianity. My observations and studies about early Christianity are based in methodologies I learned from scholars like Robinson and his immediate colleagues. Academics trained in theological seminaries often criticize this research institute for its neutral/non-religious methodologies, so be advised that you can find competing views about Nag Hammadi texts and early Christian history depending on which academic avenues you explore.
Spelling and punctuation modernized; see Joseph Smith, Statement and Prophecy, ca. February 1840, in Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, rev. ed., edited by Dean C. Jessee (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2002), 497.