On Matthew 5:15 through Matthew 5:16

Welcome back, brother or sister, to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  This will be the most exhaustive, intensive, comprehensive gospel study you've ever read by the time we are finished here.  We're on pace to complete this study in... well... quite a number of years.  So sit back and relax and let the data wash over you.

If you desire to start from the beginning, you can find the introductory posting to this writing here.

For the last two weeks, you'll recall, we've been learning about the Similes of Salt and Light.  These "similes" represent the first data that Jesus relays to his followers in the form of a metaphor.  Jesus, as a philosopher, seemed to have been quite prone to metaphor and parable.  This will become more and more apparent to us as we move forward.

Like we've done for the last couple of weeks, we are going to forgo any superfluous research here so that we can stay focused directly on our gospel text.  If nothing else, this is for my personal benefit.  The Similes of Salt and Light have been, in the past, challenging for me to understand clearly, so I want to make sure that we've really thought these through.

Let me not ramble on any more.  We'll get started.  

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Matthew 5:15 through Matthew 5:16

15 Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. 

16 Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

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Recall that Jesus is currently relaying the first parts of what is known as his "Sermon on the Mount."  He is standing, we believe, by himself, on an elevated spot overlooking a "great crowd."  The crowd has come to him because he is proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, and because he appears to have some kind of ability to cure or ease some of the frailties or illnesses in the people.

The crowd he speaks to is described as large, and all of the crowd are described collectively as disciples.  Since Jesus speaks here to a large, anonymous crowd, authoritatively doling out moral data to them, we can assume that these data are for the general public.  That is to say that the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are for the common follower of Christ, not for a select group of elite followers such as the Twelve Apostles.

I will repeat that: the Sermon on the Mount is not for the elite or seasoned follower of Christ.  It is for the common Christian.  It is for every Christian.

Last time, Jesus told the crowd before him that they were the "light of the world."  Today, he continues with the "light" metaphor.  In 5:15, he states the obvious: people don't light a candle and then put it under an obscuring cover.  If you light a lamp and put it under a basket, the flame will not light the room, and will possibly burn out rapidly for lack of air - a pointless exercise.  To the contrary, he says, a lamp, once lit, is placed on a lampstand, where it can "give light to all in the house."

In 5:16, Jesus tells his followers that, just like a lamp on a lampstand, their light must shine before others, so that "they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

There is a deceptively large amount to cover here.  First, we'll talk about the linguistics of the word "light" as it occurs in these verses.  Then, we'll discuss the way Jesus' use of the word "light" here compares to his use of the word "light" in the Gospel According to John.  Finally, we'll talk about the word "must," which Jesus speaks here for the first time, and which marks out critical moral data or instruction.

Linguistics

The word "light" appears three times here: 

- "...they light a lamp," 

- "...it gives light to all," and 

- "...your light must shine."  

Reading these verses in their original Greek, one would find not three repetitions of the same term, but three distinct terms.  For our understanding, we will take a look at each of these Greek terms.

The first word in question, the one from "...they light a lamp," is "kaió." "Kaió" is a verb meaning "to burn." The first instance of the word "light" here, then, represents only the very natural and common act of setting fire to something that was previously unlit.

The second word we have, from "...it gives light to all," is "lampó."  "Lampó" is the Greek verb equivalent to the English "to shine," "to glow," or even "to sparkle."  It is, fairly obviously, a deep root to the modern English word "lamp."

The third version of "light" we want to look at is the one represented in 5:16.  The use of "light" in 5:16 comes from the Greek "phós."  "Phós" represents radiant light, illuminating energy, and can even be related to the term "beacon."

Three distinct Greek terms, "kaió," "lampó," and "phós" get funnelled into one English word: "light."

Knowing the Greek roots of these words doesn't necessarily augment our understanding of these verses, but it does demonstrate how one-dimensional the English translation of the ancient Greek can sometimes be.  This highlights the importance, for us, of going all the way back to the original Greek as often as possible.  It goes without saying that when multiple terms get crushed into one term through the process of translation, we lose some of the subtlety and nuance of the original text.

It should go without saying, too, that subtlety and nuance are manna to you and I.

Light of the World: Matthew's Version, or John's?

Now I'd like to call attention to a verse from the Gospel According to John.  In John ch. 8, we read the following:

12 Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Did you do a double take?  You should have.  Let's revisit what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14.  Speaking to a huge crowd of anonymous followers, in Matthew 5:14, Jesus said the following:

14 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden." 

In Matthew, Jesus elevates and bolsters his followers, who are constituted by a crowd of unwashed, anonymous, middle-eastern humans.  He tells them explicitly that they are the "light of the world." In John, Jesus never says such a thing. In John, for some reason, Jesus has totally changed his mind on this "light of the world" issue. In John, Jesus says that he is the light of the world.

(The Greek word translated as "light" in the Johannine* verse here is, again, "phós," meaning "radiant light" or "illuminating energy.")

The phrasing from Matthew seems to contradict the phrasing from John.  How can Jesus' followers be "the light of the world" if Jesus himself is "the light of the world?"  What can we understand about Jesus' teachings from this apparent conceptual contradiction?

It seems to me that the Jesus we've seen so far in Matthew is both selfless and humble.  He humbly accepted the baptism of another human, John the Baptist.  He selflessly counsels and heals the multitudes.  He idealizes humble human characteristics in his Beatitudes, and he tells his humble followers that they are both wonderful and consequential.

Smash-cut to Jesus in the Gospel of John, who, as we will eventually see, is totally stripped of his humble airs.  The Jesus in John states that he is wonderful and consequential, and that his followers better believe that he is God, "or else."

Whenever we compare the gospels to one another, it is imperative to look at their relative dating.  The Gospel of John was the last one to be written, and would have been composed between sixty and eighty years after the death of Jesus.  The Gospel of Matthew was composed as early as forty years after Jesus' death.  Empirically speaking, then, the Gospel of Matthew carries more weight for us in the realm of the "historical Jesus," because there was literally less time for Christ's message to become diluted prior to its composition.  For this reason we will generally assume that, between two contradictory gospel excerpts, the oldest one is the more accurate.

That said, what we see happening here before our very eyes, between Matt ch. 5 and John ch. 8, is the deliberate alteration of the moral teaching of Jesus Christ over time by human writers.

I'll repeat that: since Matthew 5:14-16 contradicts John 8:12, and since John was written upwards of decades after Matthew was written, we know that someone changed or added to the words of Jesus as they had been passed along from the earliest sources.  We know that the Jesus appearing in John is qualitatively different from the Jesus appearing in Matthew, and we know that those differences were engineered by humans.

That's quite a bombshell for us.  I'd like you to keep this concept near and dear throughout the duration of our study.

The gospels do not always agree in their portrayal of the morality of Jesus, and it is a Christian's responsibility to parse through these differences with a skeptical eye, if they are to be as close as possible to The Man.

Pay Attention to the "Musts"

To conclude, today, I want to call attention to another particular word.  That word is "must."

First, a bit of background.

In an earlier version of my life, afflicted by unmanageable addiction, I availed myself of the Twelve-Step programs for relief.  The Twelve-Step programs are, like the Abrahamic religions, very literature-driven.  There are various books, workbooks, and inspirational compilation texts available in the major Twelve-Step programs, and the intimate study of those texts is critical to the sobriety and longevity of many of the Twelve-Steps' adherents.

I was guided through some of the Twelve-Step literature for a time by a strong man who always told me to pay special attention to the "musts" in said literature.

"I want you to go through the book and highlight every instance of the word "must" that you find," he told me.  "You always have to pay attention to the 'musts.'"

What he meant was that the literature at hand offered a lot of ideas and a lot of advice, but that a small percentage of those ideas or that advice was qualified by the word "must."  My sponsor meant merely to point out that when someone goes to the trouble to say or write the word "must," it is because they want to convey the absolute criticality of a thing.  If the text said that we "must" do something, then it wasn't a "suggestion," it was an absolutely critical requisite to success in sobriety.

I believe that my sponsor's wisdom about the word "must" carries over to our study of the gospel.

Jesus says: "your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

Not "might shine."  Not "could shine."  Not "should shine."

"Must shine."

Unless we find a contradiction to this statement in the older Gospel of Mark (which we won't), we will be taking this statement, henceforth, as an unequivocal command.  A follower of Jesus must be an illuminating light to the world through their good actions.

Isolation and inaction, then, are true enemies of the good of Jesus.  The practising follower of Christ will be justified by the light they spread on earth by their works, not by some quiet, personal profession of faith in impossibilities they never witnessed.**

A follower of Christ must shine.

Shine on.

Love.
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* Johannine means "relating to, or of, John the Evangelist."

** The Gospel of John will proceed to contradict all of this, too.  Again, we will chalk that up to human error or deliberate human meddling, and err on the side of The Synoptics.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:14

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, your guide through the Gospels of Jesus Christ.  If this is your first time, you can check out the Introduction here.

Last time, if you'll recall, we read and digested Matthew 5:13, in which Jesus told his new followers that they were the "salt of the earth."  Remember that Matt 5:13 began a set of verses collectively known as the "Similes of Salt and Light."  Today, just like last time, we're going to dispense with any superfluous topics and focus directly on our gospel reading.  We have some interesting ground to cover, so let's get started.

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Matthew 5:14

14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.

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The metaphors are really flying now.  Last time, they were the "salt of the earth."  Today, they are called the "light of the world," and they are compared to a city set on a mountain.  None of this makes immediate sense, and none of it can be simply glazed over.  The use of metaphor insists that we pause and process.

Today, we'll highlight some linguistic differences between 5:14 and 5:13.  We'll work to ascertain Jesus' general meaning in 5:14 by digesting the language and looking at the traditional interpretation.  Then, we'll look around ancient Galilee to see if any cities were built on mountains in the time of Jesus, since a local "city on a mountain" might help to explain Jesus' choice of metaphor.  Finally, we'll look for attestation of these words in other gospels.

Linguistics

In Matthew 5:13, when Jesus calls his followers the salt of the earth, the word used for "earth" is "gês," a Greek word meaning "land," "earth," or "soil."  In 5:14, Jesus switches terminology from "salt of the earth" to "light of the world."  The Greek word used for "world" here is "kósmos," meaning "order," "mode," or "humankind."

In English, "earth" and "world" can be seen as synonymous, so it is interesting that the evangelist records Jesus as having used non-synonymous Greek terms here.  Let's postulate as to why the terms differ.

Jesus' use of the term "gês" in the salt metaphor makes sense because it refers to the literal earth beneath our feet.  Salt is a mineral found in the soil of earth, and "gês" refers to that soil.  When Jesus proceeds to discuss the "light of the world," he uses the term "kósmos," which detaches us from the physical earth and causes us to look for a broader vision.  His followers aren't the light of the soil.  His followers are the light of order.  His followers, he says, are the "light of humankind."  

Between 5:13 and 5:14, Jesus moves from a concrete, physical term to an abstract conceptual term.  Jesus is, perhaps deliberately, broadening the visionary aperture for his followers here.  It is possible that, by moving from "gês" to "kósmos," he means to tell his followers "don't go thinking that my teaching only applies here in your physical life, when in reality it applies broadly to the whole world, and across all time."

Interpretation

So, what is Jesus' specific meaning in this verse, as he moves a step toward the abstract?  By "light of the world," Jesus clearly means that his followers are to "enlighten humankind."  This is the standard traditional interpretation, with which I agree.  Another way of putting this is that Jesus wants his followers to be teachers of his school of thought. The teaching is not to be hoarded, but given away.

The next portion of the verse, "a city on a mountain cannot be hidden," will make more sense when we arrive at the last verse of these similes, but, based on what we've read so far, we can guess that Jesus is again referring to the relative placement of his true followers among humankind.  His followers, he says, are to be seen very clearly, even from a distance, and are not to hide themselves from the world.  His teachings are for all.

"You will give the world light that it needs.  You cannot hide your light from the world," he seems to say.  This is the traditional interpretation, with which I agree.

In 5:13, as Jesus compared his followers to precious salt, we noted that salt cannot become not-salty.  This seemed to indicate an irreversible status for the true follower of Christ.  Once salty, always salty.  Once a follower of Christ's teachings, always a follower of Christ's teachings.  This kind of irreversible status seems to be reflected again in today's reading, where Jesus says the city on a mountain cannot be hidden.  The visibility of the city is irreversible.  

The salt needed not do anything outside of its nature in order to remain salty, and the city on the mountain need not do anything outside of its nature in order to remain permanently visible.

The salt and the city make no effort, but are important and conspicuous by their very nature.  By these verses, Jesus means that his followers will need to make no effort in being the light of the world.  They will be the light of the world by their very nature - a beautifully empowering concept.

Cities on Mountains?

Moving on, I wanted to note that a city being built on a mountain was not a rare thing in the ancient world.  A mountain, or, more generally, any land that stood elevated above the land which encompassed it, was far more defensible in combat than level ground or low-ground.  Human military commanders have understood the tactical value of high-ground since prehistory.  That said, it is no surprise that many cities all over the ancient world were founded on hills, mountains, or elevated plateaus.

If we look specifically at the Galilee in the time of Jesus, the best example of a "city on a mountain" is that of Safed, which was known in Christ's time as Sepph.  Safed is the highest city in Israel, and is visible from a huge portion of Galilee.  If Jesus' Sermon on the Mount did indeed occur outside of Capernaum, on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, it is completely possible that Jesus and his followers could have seen Safed, sixteen miles to the north, during the Sermon.  Some scholars have wondered whether Jesus didn't actually gesture toward Safed while he said this.  "You will be as visible as a city on a mountain," he might have said, pointing north to the highest land on the horizon.

Whether or not Jesus indicated Safed to his followers or was thinking about Safed during the Sermon does not change our interpretation, but it is interesting to consider nonetheless.

Multiple Attestation

Lets cover one last thing here.  We need to discuss the multiple attestation of this verse.  First, I'll remind you what we mean by "multiple attestation."

In gospel scholarship, and especially in the context of the quest for the historical Jesus, there are specific criteria we use to determine historicity.  These criteria include the "Criterion of Dissimilarity," the "Criterion of Embarrassment," and the "Criterion of Multiple Attestation."  Admitting that the gospels arrive to us through the veil of history anonymous, and through copies of translations of copies, we do not immediately trust anything in the gospels as being true in and of itself.  Instead, we utilize the aforementioned criteria and others like them to suss out what might be true historical data and what might be conjecture or story-telling on the part of any given evangelist.

The "Criterion of Multiple Attestation," sometimes called the "Criterion of Independent Attestation," says, simply, that the likelihood of an event or saying in a gospel being historical increases proportionately with the number of times that said event or saying is recorded in other independent sources.

The word "independent" is key here.  When we look for "multiple attestation," we have to remember that Matthew and Luke share more than half of their material in common.  A huge percentage of the material in common between Matt and Luke comes directly from Mark.  The remaining material Matt and Luke share in common must have come from some other common source.  Whatever that source was, it is now lost to history.  Scholars call this lost source "Q," which stands for the German word "quelle," meaning "source."

That said, we cannot say that material common to Matt, Mark, and/or Luke has been "multiply attested," because Matt, Mark, and Luke are not independent from one another.  Material found common between Matt and Luke always came from either Q or Mark.  However, if some material is found in common between Matt, Mark, or Luke and, say, the Gospel of John, said material can be called "multiply attested," because John was written independently of the other three.

I say all of this to help demonstrate why it is important that today's verse is indeed attested in another gospel.  Given what you've just read, you might be surprised that the other gospel in question is not the Gospel of John.  No, this verse is actually multiply attested in the famed Gospel of Thomas.

We've discussed the Gospel of Thomas very little thus far.  I promise that, during the next few years, we will discuss it in depth again and again.  In short, the Gospel of Thomas is a "sayings gospel"* about the life of Jesus which was lost in antiquity and only recently rediscovered in the brilliant "Nag Hammadi" cache.

Verse 32 of the Gospel of Thomas reads as follows:

32 Jesus said, "A city being built on a high mountain and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden."

Some scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas was written very early. Some scholars will even argue that the Gospel of Thomas is the oldest extant gospel. There are strong arguments to be made that Thomas was written completely independently of Matt, Mark, Luke, and John. If it is true that the author of Thomas did not have access to any of the other known works, then it stands a good chance that Jesus' use of the "city on a mountain" metaphor is historical.

Like... the historical Joshua actually said it.

This kind of measured probability is the closest we can get to standing among the crowd of Jesus' first-century disciples.  It is heartwarming to be so close to the Man, and I can't hide my smile as I consider it.

We will be increasingly on the lookout for the various Criteria of Historicity, and will eventually find cause to work a "Criteria of Historicity" section into each entry of our "sayings of Jesus" index.**  For now, just know that we here at The Moral Vision take nothing for granted.  We assume that any given bit of any gospel might be contrived, and we base our understanding of the historical Jesus solely on data that meet some Criterion of Historicity.

Whew.  That seemed like a heady mouthful.  I hope I didn't lose you to the jargon.

Next time, we'll continue with "The Similes of Salt and Light," as Jesus continues to expound upon his moral vision.  Until then, remember: Christ wanted his followers to be the "light of the world."  If you count yourself among his followers, perhaps you ought to enlighten someone this week.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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* A "sayings gospel" is a gospel that does not follow a narrative arch, but, rather, simply relates a list of things that Jesus was thought to have said.

** I know I've fallen far behind on the index work.  I promise to remedy that as soon as I have the time.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:13

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision.  The Introduction to this writing can be found here, for the uninitiated.

Last we met, we were wrapping up a broad-aperture study of paganism as context for the life of Jesus Christ.  Today, we're going to start immediately with our gospel reading.  The next few verses require more digestion than many of the ones that have preceded them, so we're going to take them very slowly and with special focus.

Let's get started, shall we?

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Matthew 5:13

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

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Matthew 5:13 through Matthew 5:16 are known collectively as "The Similes of Salt and Light."  Whereas the preceding Beatitudes were relatively easy to interpret and extract moral data from, these similes are marginally more cryptic.  Here in 5:13, we read the Simile of Salt, which is entirely encapsulated within one verse.

Jesus tells his disciples, who are still listening to him by the Mount of Beatitudes, that they are the "salt of the earth."  He then poses an odd question regarding the value of salt which has lost its flavor.  "If salt goes bad, what can you fix it with?" he asks.  He immediately answers himself by saying "you can't fix salt that's gone bad.  If it goes bad, it's only worth throwing on the ground and walking on."*

Traditional interpretations of this verse are somewhat dependent on the immediately subsequent verses.  As you will see over the next few weeks, the Similes of Salt and Light are most easily interpreted as instruction regarding the relative place of the disciples in the world at large.

If the Similes of Salt and Light are the answer, then the question would have been something like "Jesus: should your teachings and our adherence to them be secret, or public?"  In 5:13, Jesus responds to the hypothetical question by saying "you who follow my teaching are the most valuable commodity around!  The whole world needs to hear you!  But if you stop following my teachings, you'll return to a state of near valuelessness."

According to traditional interpretation, with which I agree, Jesus is telling his followers that they are necessary and welcome in the world as long as they are living by his teaching.

Interesting to note here is that Jesus seems to describe something that cannot actually happen.  Salt requires nothing to flavor it, and it cannot be washed of its saltiness.  It tastes salty even in its purest form.  If salt didn't taste like salt, it would no longer be salt.  Some scholars believe that Jesus understood salt as such, and meant to tell his followers that, just as salt cannot be washed of saltiness, his followers would not be able to be washed of their spiritual gifts.

We should note, too, that here in Matt 5:13 Jesus is coining a phrase that still has meaning in today's modern world.  The use of the phrase "salt of the earth" to describe character attributes of humans originates with Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew.  Today, "salt of the earth" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a very good and honest person or group of people."  Next time you hear someone use the phrase, you can let them know that they're using a Jesus Christ original.

So, "why is salt the chosen metaphor?" you might ask.  The answer is fairly obvious when one takes a look at the value of salt in the ancient world, which we will do now.

In the ancient world, salt was an absolute necessity for many people.  The primary tool of food preservation in ancient times was salt.  For those cultures that depended on being able to stockpile meat for consumption at a later date (read: most ancient cultures), salt was as important as the nourishing meat itself.  Butchered meat would commonly be dehydrated with salt, which eliminated the potential growth of microbes that cause food spoilage.  Once properly dried by the salt, meat could be stored for consumption months later.

Salt was also highly valued in the ancient world for its flavoring properties.  Before we had access to monosodium glutamate, Frank's Red Hot, and genetically modified super-peppers, humanity wanted badly for ways to make food more palatable.  Salt filled that void.  Whether for curing meat or for flavoring it, salt would have been a staple in any kitchen "worth its salt."

Speaking of things being "worth their salt," we can further highlight the importance of salt in the ancient world by tracing the term "worth one's salt" back to its origins.  In ancient times, Roman legionaries would often be paid a special stipend, along with their regular pay, which was explicitly for the purchase of salt.  Remember: salt was critical for the preservation of meat, and the preservation of meat was critical for ancient travel.  And just what were the legionaries constantly doing?  That's right.  Travelling.  The salt stipend was known as the "salarium," from which we get the English word "salary."  To be "worth one's salt," then, means to be worth one's wages, or to be an effective worker.**

Another common and important use for salt in ancient times, and one Jesus surely would have been keenly aware of, was its use in religious practice.  Most of the pagan world appears to have utilized salt in various rituals, especially during sacrifice.  Salt was so valuable that, in some cases, the mineral itself could be offered up to the gods as a sacrifice.

During his travels in Egypt in the fifth century BC, Herodotus of Halicarnassus noted the following ritual use of salt during the celebration of the Feast of Lamps in the city of Sais:

At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices, there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights in the open air round their houses. They use lamps in the shape of flat saucers filled with a mixture of oil and salt, on the top of which the wick floats. These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps.

The addition of salt to the lamp oil likely made the flame brighter.  Other sources tell us that salt would be caked onto lamp wicks in the ancient world, also to increase brightness.

We would be remiss if we didn't look at the utility of salt specifically in ancient Judaism.  In Leviticus Chapter 2, we learn about Moses' laws on "grain offerings."  Chapter 2 says that, in addition to meat, a Jew could offer grain as sacrifice.  The text then proceeds to describe exactly how grain might be offered.  It says that the person offering the grain is to spread oil and frankincense on it before giving it to the priests at the Temple.  The priests are to then burn a handful of the grain on the altar; the burnt handful is God's portion.  The rest of the offering becomes the property of the priests.***

Chapter 2 of Leviticus goes on to say the following:

13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt.  Do not let the salt of the covenant with your God be lacking from your grain offering.  On every offering you shall offer salt.

Even today, in many Jewish homes, the bread shared during the Shabbat dinner will be sprinkled with salt, or dipped in salt, before it is consumed.  This tradition comes directly from Leviticus Chapter 2.

For the ancient Jews, salt was also necessary for the preparation of a blood sacrifice.  Our old friend Josephus tells us about this in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book 3.  He says:

226 Suppose a private man offer a burnt offering, he must slay either a bull, a lamb, or a kid of the goats, and the two latter of the first year, though of bulls he is permitted to sacrifice those of a greater age; but all burnt offerings are to be of males.  When they are killed, the priests sprinkle the blood around the altar; (227) they then cleanse the bodies, and divide them into parts, and salt them with salt, and lay them upon the altar... 

Whether the offering was of grain or flesh, it is clear that salt was an important component in any Jewish ritual sacrifice.

To reiterate our original point, it is clear that salt had nearly unlimited value in the whole of the ancient world, and that Jesus thought of his followers as valuable in a similar way.  Jesus called his followers the "salt of the earth" rather than the "frankincense of the earth," or the "cedar wood of the earth," or anything else, because salt was more universally important than almost any other commonly traded commodity of the time.  Jesus chose salt as his metaphor because it was universally valuable, and specifically valuable to the Jews, who constituted all of Jesus' early followers.

There is some ambiguity built into this verse.  Ultimately, its meaning is subjective and will continue to be interpreted subjectively.  What we can say for sure is this: in Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are of great importance.  "The salt of the earth."

That's enough of this saltiness.  Next time, we'll have more similes to unpack.  Until then, please share this writing.  Thank you for reading.

Love.
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* If the part about being "trampled underfoot" confuses you, think about the modern use of salt on slick surfaces to increase foot traction.  Ancients used salt in the exact same way, on occasion.

** The phrase "worth one's salt" is not actually recorded anywhere until the around the 19th century AD.

*** Seems kinda like a scam....

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:11 through Matthew 5:12

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If this is your first time to this gospel study, you may want to check out the Introduction, which can be found here.

I should apologize for not publishing anything last week.  I am sorry to have left my audience waiting two weeks for this posting.  I have a reasonable excuse in that I was out of my home state visiting family in Texas.  Making it more reasonable is the fact that, during the trip, I proposed marriage to the love of my life.  Thankfully, despite my many, many glaring flaws, she accepted my proposal.

Seriously, though, thank you for your patience in this and every regard.  Let me not delay today's writing any further.

Last time we met, we discussed some of the basic mechanics of Greco-Roman paganism.  That discussion was prompted by our need to further understand the religious world that Jesus Christ grew up in, which was influenced from all sides by pagan cultures.  It's time, now, to wrap up our mini-study on the pagan context of the first century.  Today, we're going to look at some of the specific similarities between the pagan world-view and the Biblical Jewish worldview.  After that, of course, we'll have our regularly scheduled gospel selection.

Happy reading.

Similarities Between Ancient Judaism and Paganism

For a little over two-thousand years, Christians and Jews alike have portrayed Judaism as being a thing totally separate from the old pagan religions.  The difference between Jew and Gentile, to hear some tell it, was like the difference between black and white.

Like so much of what is portrayed as truth about these faiths, the idea that Judaism and paganism were totally different is totally wrong.  An objective look at early Judaism shows a faith that is remarkably similar in its mechanics to all of the paganisms that surrounded the ancient Israelites.  In fact, I venture to say that an extraterrestrial intelligence, looking objectively at ancient Judaism side by side with any one of the paganisms, would assume that the two were just localized variations of the exact same religion.

We'll wind down this study now with four critical points of similarity between ancient Judaism and paganism.

1.  Both Jews and pagans had a priestly class.

When I was growing up, I wasn't aware that there were "priests" outside of the Catholic faith.  For whatever reason, I never learned, in my early years, that priesthood had pre-dated Christianity.  I guess I remember being taught, or somehow inferring, that all clerical works had originated with Jesus.  It seemed as if Jesus Christ himself had presented to his apostles the org-chart of the Catholic Church.

Of course, I know now that Jesus didn't do anything of the sort.  He offered no organizational chart, and he condoned no human authority.  I know now that the concept of "priesthood" predated Jesus, as the Jews had had a hereditary line of priests since Aaron, the first High Priest of the people Israel.  I am further aware that Jewish priesthood predated even Aaron, and that pagan priesthood predated the earliest Jewish priests.

The Egyptians had established priesthoods in the sixth millennium BC.  We know this from archaeological evidence of organized animal sacrifice dated as early as 5500 BC in Egypt.  Priests existed in extreme antiquity in Mesopotamia, too. In ancient Sumeria, around 2300 BC, there lived a priestess called Enheduana whose writings have survived until now.  Enheduana is known as the world's first poet, and predated the Israelites by centuries at least.  She wrote the "Sumerian Temple Hymns" and various devotions to her patron Goddess Inanna.  The priestly administration of the cult of Inanna may have dated back another thousand years or so from Enheduana.  Pagans had priests millenia before the story of the Israelites began.

Interestingly, priests even existed among the Israelites before the Torah was handed down to Moses on Sinai.  That is to say that there were priests among the Israelites before they had received the basic tenets of their faith.  In Exodus, immediately before establishing the Aaronic priesthood, God mentions other Israelite priests to Moses.  He tells Moses "Go down and come up along with Aaron.  But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord."  

When we consider that the office of "priest" existed in the pagan religions of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and that priesthood in general predated Jewish cosmology by a long-shot, we come to understand that Jewish priesthood was borrowed from, or was an evolution of, older pagan traditions.

The office of "priest" is not a Christian, nor even Jewish, invention.

2. Both Jews and pagans had methods of divination.

As we learned last time, the Greeks and the Romans both had ancient methods of divination.  The Romans would read bird livers or the patterns of bird flight, and the Greeks would visit an Oracle who spoke in tongues.  We can find other kinds of divination in almost any ancient pagan tradition. Most ancient people, it would seem, had some form of divine "Magic 8-Ball" to which they could turn for godly answers.

The ancient Jews were no different from the pagans here, either.  

The Old Testament describes what are known as the Urim and Thummim, or two engraved, sacred stones.  The Urim and Thummim were to be kept with the High Priest, on his breastplate, and could be consulted for divination.  This system, like the Sacred Chickens that we learned about last time, was binary.  The priest would ask a question, and then blindly reach into a pouch which contained both stones.  The answer to the question would be understood based on which stone was blindly grabbed.  It's like flipping a coin, asking God to determine the outcome, and then believing that God did determine the outcome.

Any modern Christian who scoffs at practices like augury or auspicy would do well to remember the Urim and Thummim that existed in their own ancient mother-faith.  The mother-faith, as we are beginning to see, was not that different from that of the pagans.

3.  Both Jews and pagans worshipped at temples which housed gods.

The Temple of Jerusalem (including both Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple) was, to the ancient Jews, the literal earthly housing for God.  God was understood to reside in the most sacred part of the Temple, the Holy of Holies.  The concept of a grand edifice being used to contain a god was not originated with the Temple of Solomon, however.  Pagan cultures the world over had, by the time of Solomon, been building temples to house divine beings for upwards of 10,000 years.  

Egyptians, Sumerians, Minoans and others had all developed varying types of temple architecture for worship prior to the advent of the Jewish faith.  Most pagan temples, just like the Jewish Temple, contained a particularly sacred area within that could only be entered by a member of the priesthood.  Most pagan temples were constructed for the benefit of a single local god as opposed to multiple gods, even though the people that worshipped at said temples would have believed in a whole pantheon.  Most pagan temples also had at least one altar on which to perform ritual blood sacrifices, just like the Jewish Temple did.

I find it suspicious that Yahweh, the "One True God," would arrive on the scene and basically request the same treatment that the "false" pagan gods had been receiving for millennia.  "Build me a Temple like those other gods have," Yahweh seems to have told the Israelites.

Suspicious.

4.  Both Jews and pagans appealed to the divine by the mechanism of blood sacrifice.

The Old Testament is full of blood sacrifices to God.  In scripture, Abraham, before he was even named "Abraham," can be seen slaughtering a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon for his new-found God.  The Bible gives us the sense that sacrifice was something that Abraham's people were already very familiar with by the time of God's revelation to Abraham.

From the time of Abraham, blood sacrifices continued to be offered by the Jewish people until 70 AD.  In year 70, as we've mentioned again and again, Rome knocked the Second Temple down.  Since the Torah says that blood sacrifices may only be performed at the Temple, blood sacrifice stopped with the temple's destruction, and, according to tradition, cannot resume until a Third Temple is built in Jerusalem.

The sacrifice of blood to a god was, like the temple itself, not an idea that originated with the Jews.

Again, Yahweh seems to arrive on the scene covetous of what the pagan Gods have been receiving for millennia before him.  He seems to say "I want you to spill blood on an altar in or near a gigantic beautiful building for me, just the way your ancestors used to spill blood for their various gods in Mesopotamia, and just the way the Egyptians spill blood for their gods in their temples.  Truly, those pagans treat their gods well."

Why does the "One True God" demand what the masses of false gods had always received, rather than some alternative?

If Judaism was totally new and totally different from the paganisms that predated it, why did it so closely follow the pattern of those paganisms?

How were the pagans, without having the benefit of Yahweh's instruction, able to develop systems that were so close to the one the Jews ended up with by Yahweh's command?

Sorry about the rhetorical questions.  I just want to make sure you're with me on this as we wrap this up.

The similarities between the cosmology of the pagans and the cosmology of the ancient Israelites were numerous and not at all superficial.  The way history reads, it is almost as if blood sacrifice by a priestly class at a temple is some kind of natural law, and that Jewish cosmology was nothing more than a refinement of that law.  

I conclude that the religion Jesus Christ practiced all his life can, in a way, be seen less as Judaism 1.0 and more as Paganism 2.0.  It is critical to the rest of our studies to understand just how closely related these ancient thought systems were.  With that, we'll retire this line of questioning.

Now, back to the Gospel.

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Matthew 5:11 through Matthew 5:12

11 Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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The list of what are traditionally called "The Beatitudes" ended last time in Matthew 5:10.  Today, we have what is known unofficially as the "Ninth Beatitude."  Recall that these Beatitudes mark the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which is the first specific teaching that Jesus offers his disciples aside from "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

As far a moral data, these Beatitudes have been a boon to us already.  We've learned in the other Beatitudes that Jesus prefers the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peaceful, and the persecuted.  In the Ninth Beatitude, Jesus doubles down on his aforementioned preference for the persecuted.

Let's notice a couple of things about this reading.  First of all, Jesus doesn't say "if," he says "when."

"...When they insult you and persecute you..."  he says.

So, Jesus expects his disciples to be persecuted, insulted, and to have "every kind of evil" spoken of them.  We can infer, then, that he expects his followers to publicly buck some cultural mores, and to no small extent.  Otherwise, how would they ever find themselves persecuted?

Let's also take note of who Jesus is talking about when he says "they" in 5:10.  Does he mean the Jews?  Does he mean the Jewish authorities - the priests and aristocrats?  Does he mean the Roman occupying force?  We get a clue in 5:12.  He says that his followers will be persecuted in the same manner as were the prophets before them.  Looking back at the Old Testament, we can see that the prophets were mostly persecuted by those with great power.  Elijah, Amos, Micaiah, Hanani, Uriah and other prophets all faced retribution or persecution at the hands of some powerful human authority, either a High Priest or a monarch.

So, 5:11 and 5:12 show us that Jesus expects his followers to be persecuted by High Priests, monarchs, aristocrats, or other powerful humans.  There is no reason to think that Jesus is speaking in metaphor or parable here.  He truly seems to have expected this.

Now let's follow Jesus' expectation one step further with a question: why would High Priests, monarchs, or aristocrats want to persecute a person?

For our answer, we need only look at all of human history.  All of human history teaches us that the wealthy and powerful, as a rule, persecute anything that threatens their wealth and power.

So...

Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of his Galilean Ministry, is telling his followers that he expects them to threaten the power of the powerful.  He expects his followers to loudly undermine the status quo by default.  We've made no logical leap of faith here, and we've missed no secret meaning.  Today's reading shows unequivocally that Jesus intended for his followers to be revolutionaries.

This week, let's meditate on the many ways we can, in accordance with the teaching of Jesus Christ, threaten the power of human power.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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